I picked up Kohan 2 which has been on the shelves since last fall, but it had recently caught my eye when browsing, I don’t keep up with game news as well as I should. The Kohan games are one of the reasons I still love to play offline real-time strategy in the midst of all the new MMOs.
The new Kohan looked very promising – the intro screen had very nice graphics, though this isn’t really carried over into the game at all. Sure there are new races and units, and the graphics for the cities are much more detailed and interesting, but I was a little disappointed in the fact that the game play itself hadn’t changed much. Needless to say, the enhancements were still nice and made me feel like it was worth the purchase.
If you liked the first Kohan games, expect there to be not much of a learning curve for Kohan 2 because of the similar game play. The additions to the game definitely make things more interesting, but the basics are the same (you can read my old Kohan review to get the idea). In fact the buildings for your town are pretty much the same, though there is an added bonus of being able to learn technologies for your units once your buildings are upgraded. At least it’s something to spend your gold on when you’ve maxxed out your town. Units are recruited in the same way, but you can save custom configurations of each group of recruits to make it quicker for you to recruit. And of course there are the Kohan, your immortal leaders, whose portraits now look more animated when they are in your armies. They sort of sit there sometimes looking bored, sometimes looking agitated, I think it’s based on the actions you take with them but frankly I haven’t had a chance to notice a pattern. The looking around etc. was a little weird at first but I got used to it after a while.
The graphics for the Shadow towns are really cool and evil looking, and some of the former independent races (Gauri, Haroun, and Drauga) have their own towns for you to conquer, and their own sets of unique units and buildings. There are still little fortresses and Rhaksha nests that you can destroy to get money. The difference here is that in the previous game, some of them gave you a technology as well, but in Kohan 2 these structures need to be held and can be conquered by your enemy, thus losing the technology associated with it.
I wished that I could zoom out a little more, though it could be a function of my screen resolution. Things seem to look a lot larger in this game than in the first Kohan, which perhaps makes it feel a bit more realistic. The detail of the towns is a lot nicer – you can actually see your buildings being built by workers, scaffolding and all. Rather than having to open your town screen to select a building, you can select it directly. Upgrading your town gives you walls, which you can also see being built by workers.
I am usually not one to do campaigns, since I like playing a randomly generated map with goals of conquest; but since I was a little bored with these I decided I’d try the campaigns. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality and work that went into the storyline. The cut scenes are nicely done in widescreen view, even though it has been done in other games already (reminds me of the Age of Mythology scenes, among many others), they made the game a bit more interesting. You’ve got some voiceover dialogue as well.
So even with the similar game play, these nice updates added to the value of Kohan 2. I guess you don’t want to mess with something that works!