Etherlords II
I've been waiting for the release of Etherlords II since about half and hour after I first played Etherlords 1 and realised I had come accross a fantastic new game. It was a beautiful game with wonderfully creative and unique art, an awesome combat system, and a single-player campaign with some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard anywhere in anything. Well, nothing's perfect. So I just skipped the single-player in Etherlords 1, but still played the multiplayer for months, and even when I stopped playing for a while it wasn't long before I dug up the CDs to play it again. I treasured some of the decks I had created, particularly the ones which allowed me to beat a friend of mine who I always compete with in strategy games. We've always been good at games involving designing a character. In games like multiplayer Fallout: Tactics or Freedom Force we were unstoppable. I once made a Freedom Force character name Sean Connery who went about 30 games in a row (all 4-player free-for-alls) and won every one in about 5 seconds, until I pitted Sean Connery against my friend's top character. I almost won, but not quite. Anyway, back to what I was saying. So I was a huge fan of Etherlords 1, and the info I heard about Etherlords II was making me rabid for more, particularly hearing how they were going to do single-player completely different. Maybe they'd make it worth play both modes! Woo! And so it came out, and I bought it the first day I could find it. Ahh, at long last.
*Installs Etherlords II*
*Starts Etherlords II*
*Etherlords II locks up computer before getting past the menu*
Hm, that was odd... I don't think Etherlords 1 had a single bug... Well, I'll try again.
*Etherlords II locks up computer*
Dammit.
*Etherlords II locks up computer*
No. Work!
*Etherlords II locks up computer*
Urge to kill rising.
*Etherlords II locks up computer*
[insert bloodthirsty rage]
So, yeah, turns out that while it works fine in every other situation, when running Etherlords II on a Windows 2000/XP system with a Radeon 9700 or 9800 (Pro or non-Pro) it... doesn't work... Dammit! And here I just bought a new Radeom 9800 Pro and gave my old card to my brother... Argh... So I went over to my friends house for a couple days and we played a decent amount of it, and I'm definately pleased with everything aside from locking up my machine. The single-player is much better, and I'm sure I'll play through all 5 campaigns (as opposed to Etherlords 1 where I only finished the first mission in the first campaign and decided I couldn't stand the voice acting anymore, and that I didn't like how they set up single-player in general), and the new additions are good. There's tweaks to old spells and abilities, new spells, creatures, a whole new faction's worth of new spells and creatures that are available to any faction (and that's in addition to already getting new things for each faction). Basically, it's everything I'd hoped it to be (well, I would have like an actual new faction, but that's not as important, since they already have a really good balance to the game) aside from the part where it won't run on my computer. *Sigh* Ah well... I guess I'll just wait for the patch...
*Starts playing Freedom Fighters*
