Caltrops - Reviews





	[quote name="Bananadine"][quote name="Mischief Maker"]I've heard that it's supposed to be the greatest fantasy 4X since MOM with over 1,500 units and created by a 2-man team. <A HREF="http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/Dom3/1.htm" TARGET="new">$55 for an indie game with DOS-era graphics???</A> WHAT'S THE REAL STORY???[/quote] That's right, I'm a masochist! The manual certainly makes it sound cool. I'm a sucker for lists of six hundred spells! But thus far I have only played the game long enough to totally get my ass kicked in a way that is 90% reminiscent of similar ass-kickings in Shogun: Total War, which had something like... zero spells. And maybe a dozen-ish units. There's a quote in the game's manual (in the part where the authors actually warn the spoiler-averse against reading their strategy suggestions) from a player who had the impression that the game was so complex its own designers couldn't remember what some of the spells did, which he said summed up some of the appeal of it for him. It's like treasure-hunting with game mechanics, and what you find, you get to use as a weapon! Which sounds awesome. But so far, just a Shogun-esque ass-kicking for me. Maybe I will report further if I ever learn what the hell I am doing, which I probably eventually will... though the game's dead, flat interface does little to aid me in this endeavor. (I don't mean to say it's one of those "spreadsheet" games like Master of Orion III; the menu system is surprisingly spare and elegant so far--it's just that it misses lots of opportunities to display Civ 4-style context-sensitive help and event animations and stuff.)[/quote]