60 Second Review of…
Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns
Tom's Review: Imagine if a really inoffensively awful
movie called The Godfarmer came out in 1972. When The Godfather
opened a few months later, would people not go see it because they
confused it with The Godfarmer? I'm worried this is what will happen
with Kohan, which came out shortly after a game called Konung. Here's
a handy mnemonic device: "Kohan: be a fan. Konung: it's a pile
of dung." Yeah, I know it's lame as far as mnemonic devices
go, but I can't get "every good boy does fine" or "beer
and liquor, never sicker" to work for this. And I'll do whatever
it takes to help you distinguish this wonderful RTS from its limp
homonymic predecessor. Because just when I thought RTS games had
gotten as good as they were going to get, they got better with Kohan.
It has the complexity of a wargame with none of the minutiae. And
it has the pace of a real time strategy game with none of the sprawl.
It's simple enough that you'll be playing all its features in short
order, but sophisticated enough that you'll spend hours on end trying
to get better at it. It may not be flashy, but it's got it where
it counts.
Mark's Review: Kohan's a great game. I can't imagine
that it won't be on my short list for the best strategy game of
the year. Timegate really has managed to bring the feel of a turn-based
game to real-time strategy, and the result is a game that feels
complex, never drags, and is quite satisfying. Some of the concepts
in Kohan — companies, formations that affect speed and combat
effectiveness, routing and retreat, morale, entrenchment —
have long been known to turn-based games. Now they're known to real-time
strategy, and shame on future RTS games that ignore Kohan's innovations.
As good as Kohan is, it's not perfect. The campaign's a bit uneven
and multiplayer, while lots of fun, still becomes a production race.
I'd like to see Timegate attempt to throttle back that aspect of
the multiplayer in future games. What a cool game, though, and what
a debut by Timegate.
Publisher: Strategy First
Developer: Timegate Studios
Genre: Real time strategy
Requirements: P400, 128MB RAM, 600MB hard drive space
April 10, 2001
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