Gameplay vids and/or demo please?

[morrisseymuse]

Hi all, there's a dire shortage of proper war/tactical games on console so I've been following the Great Battles Medieval game in recent weeks with much interest.

I've watched and read interviews and info about the game and it certainly looks promising, but I'd love to see the game in action to better grasp how it actually plays, either by gameplay vids or a Live/PSN demo if that's at all possible please? As so far I've only seen a couple of seconds of it in Ian's (insightful ) interview with Medievalist and the only other clip of the game I can find is in the official trailer.

I'm right in thinking it's an 'RTS' of sorts in the vein of Total War, but with the ability to pause time to issue orders to units in a turn-based way? Plus the 'leveling up' of units as well.

[lordzimoa]

I posted this somewhere on a forum before, expect no Total War.

It is a totally different game design as the TW games, so hard to compare apples and peers, both are strategy games set in a historic surrounding, but the game mechanics and designs are hard to compare.

I would call GBM more a role playing tactical game set in the 100 Years War with a focus on well researched Medieval military history/tactics.

Where you can customize your unit squads with hundreds of different weapons, arms, equipment and skills to your personal liking and tactical playing style, with a strong base set out of the board gaming and miniature background following a more linear historical campaign.

People who expect a game like TW will be greatly mistaken, disappointed, amazed or surprised, it is no TW clone, although we realise any game in this genre will always be compared to the TW series.

That alone is a compliment to CA and the TW concept and market dominance. But it doesn't mean it is not possible to design a fun game following another approach. I hope we have proven that.

The best advise I can give is read the game guide that I posted in the first post and have an open mind to something different.

The game guide is closest of explaining the game play and there are already some reviews available. I think this is a game you either love or hate that is what we see all around. I personally think it is really great and a refreshing design that actually works well for PC and consoles. I still play it myself on the Xbox 360. I rarely do that with games we worked on for so long, but I like the RPG squad element, the wheeled UI, simple mechanics for the player and on the same time the constant increase in difficulty and tactical options. The game builds up, the first few missions are not that hard, but once progressed in the game it can be very hard and I like the endless training, equipping and drilling of my pet troops.

Game guide is here:

http://www.slitherine.com/gbm_overview



Cheers,

Tim aka LZ

[morrisseymuse]

I posted this somewhere on a forum before, expect no Total War.

It is a totally different game design as the TW games, so hard to compare apples and peers, both are strategy games set in a historic surrounding, but the game mechanics and designs are hard to compare.

I would call GBM more a role playing tactical game set in the 100 Years War with a focus on well researched Medieval military history/tactics.

Where you can customize your unit squads with hundreds of different weapons, arms, equipment and skills to your personal liking and tactical playing style, with a strong base set out of the board gaming and miniature background following a more linear historical campaign.

People who expect a game like TW will be greatly mistaken, disappointed, amazed or surprised, it is no TW clone, although we realise any game in this genre will always be compared to the TW series.

That alone is a compliment to CA and the TW concept and market dominance. But it doesn't mean it is not possible to design a fun game following another approach. I hope we have proven that.

The best advise I can give is read the game guide that I posted in the first post and have an open mind to something different.

The game guide is closest of explaining the game play and there are already some reviews available. I think this is a game you either love or hate that is what we see all around. I personally think it is really great and a refreshing design that actually works well for PC and consoles. I still play it myself on the Xbox 360. I rarely do that with games we worked on for so long, but I like the RPG squad element, the wheeled UI, simple mechanics for the player and on the same time the constant increase in difficulty and tactical options. The game builds up, the first few missions are not that hard, but once progressed in the game it can be very hard and I like the endless training, equipping and drilling of my pet troops.

Game guide is here:

http://www.slitherine.com/gbm_overview



Cheers,

Tim aka LZ

Thanks for the info, the guide was a help.
Probably my main issue I have with the TW games (and some other RTS's) is the speed they run at, often it's tricky trying to manage tactical movement while dealing with 100's of units at once, so an element of turn-taking is certainly interesting.
How do the battles play out exactly? Am I right in thinking then that you give your units commands in a paused state of time, then you resume the game for the units (and your enemy obviously) to carry out the moves and you enter the paused state whenever you give new orders/alter existing ones?

The ability to customise your army is also intreging, I like the idea of units that gain ability naturally through fight experience and training.

[lordzimoa]

Indeed it is a WEGO sytem where you can pause at any time during the battle to alter your orders/tactics. For those who find this cheating, they can just opt to issue starting orders and let the battle play without any pausing. But like this you can play at your own pace and style.

[morrisseymuse]

I can see how some people may object to the ability to freeze time and the effect it would have on realism but I wouldn't consider it cheating myself, as you say, it's just another way of playing to me as well.

Of course you can't do it in real life, but the ability to pause time would be useful to make more thought-out decisions on-the-fly I'd imagine. It could add to the strategy of the battle with you pausing to spend time to think (the game is clearly challenging enough even with the pause feature by the sound of things ) about your next moves, almost like chess really.

So while it may not be 'realistic', I can see the option giving several enjoyable advantages in a game setting. I remember playing the Fire Emblem game on the Wii a while back which was a totally turn-based strategy battle game and I was addicted to it for weeks. lol

GBM sounds like it could be what I'm looking for though, I may give it a look soon.

[pipfromslitherine]

IIRC (and it's been a long time since I played GBM in multiplayer!) there is a limit to the number of times you can pause to give orders before you need to wait for it to recharge - in multiplayer only of course.

Cheers

Pip