Ancestors Legacy

Review

The Middle-Ages is probably one of the most fascinating eras in human history. It started in the late 400’s AD at the fall of the Western Roman Empire and lasted all the way up to the 1500’s AD. Europe, at this stage, had plenty of small kingdoms with their own rulers. As the centuries progressed, many of these small kingdoms allied themselves and became forces known as The Anglo-Saxons, Germans and Slavs; all of them with incredible conquest stories. During this period, new invaders from the north arrived on the scene. . . the Vikings . . . set on spicing things up in Europe a tad more. Are you related to one of the groups of people mentioned above? Whether yes or no, jump into the thick of the Medieval Ages, in Ancestors Legacy!

Ancestors Legacy is a real-time strategy game developed by Destructive Creations and published by 1C Company.

This game offers 4 campaigns (Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Germans and Slavs) which include 5 chapters to complete per campaign in the single player mode, as well as a multiplayer mode where you can either battle against the AI, or opponents online.

Straight off the bat, you’ll be able to choose which of the four nations’ campaigns you want to play, which is a massive bonus, in my opinion. You’ll still have to successfully complete a chapter to unlock the next, which is fine. In terms of difficulty, you can elect to play against easy, normal or hard AI in the campaign mode.  Each chapter in the normal difficulty progresses in length, starting at around 30 minutes for the first chapter, all the way up to over 2 hours for the final chapter.  At the time of writing this review, I have finished the Vikings campaign and played 2 chapters in the other three campaigns.

The first aspect that I really like in the game is the cut-scenes between the missions. They are based on facts, splendidly portrayed with stunning illustrations, and superbly narrated. Personally, I felt that I was in the middle of a documentary before going into battle - just spot on!    

The layout is pretty conventional as far as this genre of game is concerned.  The action takes place on the majority of your screen. On the lower right-hand corner of your screen you will find the interface functions of your towns, buildings, upgrades and military units. On the opposite corner, a mini-map will be displayed, and between the two corners are your units. The maximum number of units you can create at any given time is 10, and each of these units will have a maximum of 10-foot soldiers, either five knights or chivalry units, and three with weapons of destructions, such as the catapult.

In each of the single player missions, you’ll have to achieve certain tasks, which can vary from capturing villages, destroying outposts, sabotaging specific resources (such as a well) or rescuing some of your countrymen or pirates (Vikings) from captivity. Most of the maps have villages to capture. By taking these villages you’ll gather resources to build new defences both in your main town, as well as in the captured villages. If you gather enough wood, you’ll be able to build traps on roads (mud paths, really), which will serve to slow down incoming enemy forces, and even cause heavy casualties.

In terms of the gameplay, it is pretty much an isometric style with great graphics and fluid animations. The interface is very easy to use; you can either select all units, or just one at a time, and give them orders to go somewhere or to attack an enemy unit. What you really need to be good at is hiding some of your units in the bushes and flanking the enemies from the right and the left, to deliver as much damage as you can to the opposing units. Bear in mind that your own forces may find themselves in this same predicament. There are basically a couple of ways to get your units back to health. The first way is to fight until you destroy your opponent. You may or may not lose soldiers in your squad.  Their health bar might swing from green to red, which means that one or more soldiers have deep wounds. To heal these injuries, all you have to do is to set up camp anywhere on the map (if you’re not involved in a fight).  If you’ve lost a few soldiers, head up to your main town, or the village you captured, and replenish your squad(s).

If you like playing skirmish, or against other players online, it's extremely easy to set up and you’ll find plenty of servers to play in.  From what I can gather, most of the servers are based in Europe.

Graphically the game looks great and is very easy to get used to. As I mentioned, I really like the cut scenes, and the soundtrack is pretty good, too. All the controls seem to work well, as far as I can see. The only issue I encountered is that I could not re-load a saved game after an update.  Apart from that, it’s smooth.