Wrath Unleashed - Review

Added March 3rd, 2004 by Chris

Introduction:

Instead of releasing yet another Star Wars game, occasionally LucasArts will grant gamers something a little bit different. Recently, they released The Collective’s strategy/fighting game Wrath Unleashed. Long-time gamers will immediately think of Archon when they get their hands on Wrath Unleashed. A mix of turn-based strategy and 3D fighters blend to make a rather intriguing package.

Gameplay:

The opening cinematic lays out a story of four demigods, all related to some elemental power, bickering over control of a destroyed world. You’re goal in the game is to lead a demigod and their respective army to victory over the other demigods. This is accomplished via a single player campaign or a multiplayer battle. Armies in the campaign are automatically assigned, while multiplayer allows each player to field a custom army.

Each battle has different victory requirements that usually consist of holding multiple temple spaces or taking control of a special space on the world map. Players take turns moving units on a hex based map until two units end up occupying the same space on the board. Instead of the attacking player’s piece simply capturing the other players unit, the players units are transported to an arena for a melee and magic showdown. The player that wins the fight takes control of the contested space on the board. To make this a bit more strategic, various units have different levels of health, (an Ogre Mage has three bars of health while a Unicorn has only one) different attack strengths, and varied magical effects. Typically a weak unit will lose to a stronger unit, but after a fight a unit does not regenerate health. A strong unit such as the Ogre Mage could lose to a weaker unit if it had been weakened in previous battles.

The strategy portion of the game is rather simplistic at first glance, but has some deeper nuances. Each tile on the map is affiliated with one or more elements (earth, air, water or fire) and a unit occupying a tile of its own element gains an advantage in combat. The demigods also have a wide range of spells they can cast that can resurrect a defeated unit, change terrain type, or teleport a slow unit further up field. Teleport gates scattered across the terrain can be used to quickly move troops behind enemy lines.

The fighting portion of the game features great character design and good animation. Combos consist of varying button presses such as X,X,X or X,Y that are all rather easy to master. Blocking/Strafing doesn’t seem to be very useful once the enemy gets your unit locked up in a long combo. The most interesting fights tend to be when a weak unit with terrain advantage fights a much stronger unit. Pulling off a victory under those conditions is quite satisfactory and is one of the finer points of Wrath Unleashed.

Graphics:

The first thing that is noticeable about Wrath Unleashed is the game’s character design. The Collective forgoes the typical fantasy stereotypes and gets a little creative with the art direction. Unicorn’s horns sprout from their lower jaw, adepts ride hulking steam powered beasts, and the demi-goddesses are even more shameless than the DOA girls. Each army’s units are draped in their respective color, so it’s obvious even to an onlooker which fighter belongs to whom. The arena designs are very bland compared to the character models. Luckily, the fighting characters take up a majority of the screen during most contests and the poor arena design will be the last thing on your mind as you control your battling titan. The terrain maps that the strategy portion of the game take place on won’t be winning any graphics awards, but they do the job. Terrain types are easy to identify without moving the cursor over the space and individual units are distinguishable even from a distance. Overall the graphics are solid and present a believable war between gods, but never seem to push the Xbox’s limits.

Audio:

Audio in Wrath Unleashed is fairly typical for a fantasy game. Swords clang, fireballs whoosh, and dragons roar, but none of it makes you jump out of your seat in awe. The voice acting for the demi-gods is fairly well done and not the least bit irritating. The monotone female announcer voice during the game does get a tad repetitive if players are squabbling over a temple. Hearing “Player 1 is Close to Victory” every other turn can become irritating quickly, especially if you’re player two. The most interesting voice work is the narration by Mako (the voice of Aku in Cartoon Network’s Samurai Jack) during the introduction cinematic and the Campaign briefings. Overall the audio is adequate, but Mako’s gravelly narration adds a bit of flair that ups the sound rating a bit.

Controls:

Wrath Unleashed is a button mashers dream. Combos in the arena consist of short strings of button hits, such as light, light, heavy or light, light, light and so on. This makes the game very easy to control, but can be frustrating for gamers used to fighters with more depth. The controls on the strategy map are intuitive and frequent context sensitive tips appear on screen to remind you what various buttons do in any given situation.

A: Light melee
X: Heavy melee
B: Light Magic
Y: Heavy Magic
Left Trigger: Special Magic
Right Trigger: Block/Strafe

Replay:

The Campaign mode entails a measly sixteen missions that are only useful to unlock the god forms of the demigods and a few additional maps. The difficulty ramps up fairly well, but a dedicated player will complete the campaign missions rather quickly. Multiplayer battles are available but the lack of maps for 3 and 4 player modes cause the game to get stale in a hurry. The slowness of the game, load screens take a while and other players pondering every single move for every piece can drive you mad, also lowers the games replay value. After an hour and a half of back and forth fighting in a three player game, I finally moved my demigod into a fight she couldn’t win just so I could drop out of the game. Another glaring oversight is the lack of Xbox Live support for those times when your gamer friends are indisposed.

Summary:

Combining a strategy game with a fighting game is all about play balance. Is the strategy game too complicated or too simple? Does the fighting portion actually add strategy to the game or is it a stunt to bring in a larger audience? Wrath Unleashed does a good job of giving gamers a simple, but deceptively deep strategy game and a decent fighting portion that actually affects the games outcome. Neither portion shines when compared to other games of the appropriate genre, but taken as a whole Wrath Unleashed is a nice game. If you enjoyed Archon in the past or want to try something a bit different I’d suggest inviting over some friends and giving it a rent at the very least.