Ah Square-Enix, you’ve given us some great times over the years. Your role playing games have drawn me into the greatest fantasy adventures. It’s fair to say, that you are the best and most dominant role-playing game developer in the world. You have such a successful track record with what you do best, so why would you try to deviate from your path and team up with developer WarGaming.net to create a real time strategy game? You make RPGs, that’s it. You’re not a jack-of-all-trades, you’re not Activision or Electronic Arts. I’m almost offended that you made me waste my time on this title that I found so boring that I couldn’t even finish it! That’s right. On September 22nd, Square-Enix and Wargaming.net released for the PC, Order of War, a World War 2 RTS, and let me tell you, it sucks!
Order of War takes place during the summer of 1944, the end of World War 2. There are 2 campaign modes that let you play as the American’s as they push into German soil from the west, as well as the Germans as they hold off the Red Army’s assault from the east. That’s about it. There are no primary characters to get attached to except perhaps the narrator who transitions you through the different sub-missions in each level.
I didn’t play through the entire campaign for Order of War, hell, I didn’t even get past the 4th level. Throughout the two campaigns, there are 18 levels, and each one should take around 30 minutes, so in total, the campaigns should take you roughly 9 hours to complete if you are a god of real time strategy games. I on the other hand got my ass handed to me in nearly every mission. It’s really annoying to play 30 minutes into a mission and fail, only to have to start the entire level over.
Each mission in the campaign is broken down into several smaller sub-missions with primary and secondary objectives. But there is no checkpoint or save system, so if you mess up in the 4th sub-mission, it’s back to the beginning for you.
The campaign is of course single player, but there is also a skirmish mode that you can set up for instant action. You can replay any previous level once you complete it, and there is a multiplayer death match mode as well, but none of these kept my attention either.
Order of War is not your standard run of the mill real time strategy game. There is no resource collection or base building, so when you run out of the troops provided to you from the beginning or when they are added throughout the mission, that’s it. The majority of the missions have you trying to capture an objective, be it a town or key location; by killing all of the enemies by it, and having your troops stand next to it for a period of time. Upon capturing the objective, you will begin generating resource points, which can be used to purchase some additional troops, or to call in an airstrike or paratroopers.
The problem with the game is that it is unnecessarily hard. Why on the first level am I losing so many troops that the narrator starts making fun of me and sending me more? Why am I so greatly outnumbered on every level?
What it came down to is this, the Order of War is boring because everything moves SO SLOW. The troops and tanks and whatever else you have, move so slowly across the screen. If you are deep into enemy territory getting your ass handed to you, and you purchase some backup, you’re going to be waiting several minutes for them to finally get to you, then position themselves correctly to actually shoot the bad guys. Ugh…
Anyway, after each mission you can purchase upgrades for your different units, but that’s about the only cool feature.
Where Order of War fails in Gameplay and Design, it greatly makes up for in Presentation. The graphics are amazing and the way they are presented to you is fabulous. As in most real time strategy games, you view your units from a birds eye view; but you can also zoom right down to the ground for a third person perspective. There is also a camera system built in that allows you to sit back and watch in a very cinematic style as your units fight. This was the coolest feature of the game to me. Oh, you better have a pretty damn beefy computer if you want this thing to run faster than 15 frames per second. Once a couple hundred units are on the screen, that frame rate drops pretty quickly.
Another really cool feature was the opening cut scenes before each level. It combines narration as to what you will be doing, with 1940s video clips from the war, with cool animations and drawings around the different vehicles and weapons that were used.
The sound track also shines as it is fully composed by award winning American composer Jeremy Soule (Soul), who has recorded great audio for lots of your other favorite games.
Order of War is an untraditional real time strategy that presents an extremely challenging and dreadfully boring game play experience, mixed with great visuals, hundreds of units on the screen, and troops that move slower than a snail. Frankly, I think this game would only be fun for you history buffs out there that want to play it how it really happened. You know, against all odds, overcoming great adversity and what not. Square-Enix, please don’t deviate from your path of righteousness. Bring me more role playing games, bring me more Final Fantasies!
