Fashionably Late Review
Hegemony Gold
By Rituro - May 3rd, 2011
Much like Alexander the Great retracing the steps his father en route to becoming a legend, I, too, walked in the sandals of Philip of Macedon before embarking on the expanded elements – the “Gold” part of the game’s title, if you will – of Longbow Games’ take on ancient Greek warfare. Unsurprisingly, I found most everything in Jorge’s original review of Hegemony is still spot-on; that being said, I felt it necessary to open my look at Hegemony Gold with a rebuttal and an addendum.
First, as a rebuttal, I did experience the “putting out fires” syndrome Jorge alluded to with regards to defending your holdings from a myriad of would-be invaders and, if I may say so without offending my Editor-in-Chief, I was somewhat annoyed by it. Nothing broke the flow of the game’s narrative quite like having to turn around your Companion Cavalry/Hypastis one-two-punch-of-doom* and their peltast** escorts to go stop the Athenians from raiding your coastline or burning your farms, especially after you’d just spent a good chunk of time managing supply lines and food levels and were finally ready to go beat down the Illyrians. Sure, it’s easy enough to deal with in the long run, but it still breaks the flow of the game, which is a big peeve of mine in a game whose tempo lies in that happy medium between the breakneck speed of StarCraft II and the plodding pace of the Total War series.
“Red rover! Red rover! We call Clarence over!”
Second, as an addendum: damn those Paeonians. No, really; damn those cavalry-happy butchers all to hell and back. You want a tough tactical challenge? Try to stare down consecutive waves of full-complement cavalry brigades with incomplete forces still recovering from the previous year’s charges. It is not pretty.
Right; with that out of the way, onto Hegemony Gold. Everything you’ve learned in Macedon is now applied to the Archidamian and Ionian Wars, both of which pit Athens against Sparta in different theatres of war. The Archidamian War sees Sparta on the offensive after Athens overextends itself during a campaign against the Persians. What this means for you (the Athenian commander) is that your forces are separated and spread across the map, just as the Peleponnesian League forces (led by Sparta) begin to put serious pressure on your home city and the surrounding area. Not only will you be tested in your ability to carry out mission objectives without drawing serious Spartan ire in the form of massed Hoplite brigades, but you must also wisely build up your forces to counter enemy assaults without running short of cash when the larger fighting starts.
Slick in-game manual and diplomacy options.
Hegemony Gold’s second full campaign, the Ionian War, is set along the titular Ionian coast and flips the script, putting you in charge of the Spartan forces after the events of the Archidamian War, where Athens has not only weakened itself after the dismal failure suffered in Sicily, but violated the Peace of Nicias and invaded the Spartan lands of Lacedaemonia***. The goal here is to starve out Athens rather than besiege it directly, a task accomplished by island-hopping your way from fortified city to fortified city, being as effective a saboteur you can with limited forces. With triremes patrolling the waterways constantly and offloading raiding cavalry and peltasts, this is not a campaign for the uninitiated – prepare for a long, grinding war of attrition where the odds are always stacked against you.
The real star of Hegemony Gold, however, is the wonderful “Sandbox Mode”. In his original review, Jorge questioned the game’s longevity; well, question no longer – any of the major powers from the three campaigns can now be taken under your command, from King Leonidas’ all-Hoplite Spartans to the bow-and-boat armies of Crete. Without any mission-based objectives in your way, it is about as straight-forward a fight as you could ask for, which can be a boon or a curse depending on how much you relied on the rewards and bonuses from successfully completing objectives.
This is what happens when you put a kayak expert in charge of a warship.
The bottom line is that Hegemony Gold expands on the original in the best possible way: by providing large-scale, engaging content and a wide open sandbox that finally gives war-gamers a reason to come back to ancient Greece for one more conquest. Hegemony Gold is available for the PC; click here for more information.
