Wrath Unleashed
- February 10, 2004 00:00 AM PST
Wrath Unleashed follows in the footsteps of Archon but doesn't quite live up to its pedigree.
Take a strategy board game in which you summon monsters and combine it with a fighting game that has combos, special moves, and Tekken-y stuff like that - hey, cool idea! But Wrath Unleashed only appears to have all the elements of a successful merger. You'd be better off playing Monopoly and settling rent disputes with rounds of Soul Calibur II.
Archon's Legacy
Wrath Unleashed pits four gods against one another in a celestial war of elemental monster-battling and overwrought mythological dialogue. The game takes place on a hex-based board, and its rules bear some superficial resemblance to those of chess, though without the subtlety or finesse that comes with thousands of years of refinement. Games against human opponents (up to four) too easily become looping tugs-of-war to move your most powerful piece to endlessly claim and reclaim a key temple; and games against the computer are often won because the A.I. makes a bizarre move that exposes an easy-to-exploit weakness. Your spell selection is limited, and summoning monsters isn't as rewarding as it should be because you start with a full set of creatures and can't create new ones-only resurrect the ones that fall.
The fighting that ensues once monsters occupy the same space isn't very deep, either, with slow-to-execute button-pressing combos chained together with little finesse or fun. The graphics here aren't quite on an Xbox level, either - while the enemies and backgrounds are well designed and interesting, they lack some of the texture depth and lighting tricks you've come to expect from the machine.
Fantasy Math
If either half of Wrath Unleashed had been more fully formed, the game would have been easy to recommend, but as it stands, half a fighting game and half a strategy game does not make a whole game. Seek out Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds for a much more well-blended mix of brainpower and reflex.
