Braveheart PC CD 1999 3D **RARE** Vintage Classic Real Time Strategy Game EIDOS

Braveheart combines real-time strategy with global maneuvering in a sword-clashing re-creation of the battles between Scottish clansman and expansionist English aggressors. The latest 3-D engine and state-of-the-art motion-capture technology give Braveheart serious, make-you-cringe combat realism.

Review

Braveheart is a perfect example of how an ambitious game design can end up being something of a double-edged sword. It combines strategic empire building with real-time 3D combat and takes place in late 13th-century Scotland, the same setting as the Mel Gibson movie. However, despite its intriguing premise, Braveheart's assorted play mechanics coexist about as peacefully as the Scottish clans depicted in the game.

Your goal is relatively simple: As the leader of one of 16 major clans, you must unite the others in order to stave off the invading English army. However, accomplishing that goal is rather difficult, even on the easiest setting. You do most of your work within the game's turn-based clan-management interface. Here you can monitor every aspect of your clan, including your territories, towns, armies, caravans, and spies. You begin the game with a single territory, a pair of armies, and a pair of leaders. From these humble beginnings, you must extend your influence through diplomacy and warfare (but mostly warfare, as you might expect from a game boasting a 3D combat engine).

Leader units can not only lead an army into battle, but also take on a variety of special missions. Without a leader, armies are limited to guard duty, ambushes, patrols, or training. With a leader, an army can engage in full-fledged battles and undertake an array of diplomatic missions and covert operations, most of which can help make your campaign run a lot more smoothly. For example, you can kill an enemy leader to weaken opposing armies, or march into an enemy clan's territory and demand its unconditional surrender.

Missions of this sort are assigned from the turn-based interface. From here, you can also micromanage each of your towns: how much food each should produce, what type of weapons to craft, and what extra buildings and fortifications to construct. The people in your towns also have a happiness rating, which is easy to manage as long as you keep everyone fed. Trade caravans are important to your clan's economic prosperity, though controlling them tends to be a painful exercise in micromanagement. In fact, the process is so clunky, and the automatic control of caravans is so effective, that you'll wonder why manual control is even an option.

Managment is the crux of the turn-based game. You must keep an eye on your clan's daily routine every turn. You have to continually send scouts to explore neighboring territories since you can't automate the process, and apparently know next to nothing about the surrounding lands. You have to keep sending spies to rival towns and then recall them a few days before they get captured - and then send them out again so your information remains fresh.

Braveheart's multiplayer is pretty solid, though it only supports the 3D combat portion of the game. So even though you can play the game with four players over IPX, TCP/IP, and Mplayer, you still have to deal with all the limitations and flaws of a 3D combat engine.