Str: Supremacy [by Black Hammer Game]

Game Review:  Supremacy – Four Paths to Power
Reviewer:  Moritz Voss
Release Date: March 3rd 2005
Developer: Black Hammer Game
Publisher: Matrix Games
Genre: Strategy
System Requirements: 800 MHZ, Windows 2000/XP, 128 mb RAM, 64 mb 3D Video Card, DirectX 9.0+
Players: 1-2
Price: $24.99 (Download) to $34.99 (CD version)


In Supremacy – Four Paths to Power, Black Hammer Game lets you side with one of four commanders in turn-based battles for various solar systems, which take place both in space and on the surface of planets.

This strategy game features outstanding artwork and very good 3D graphics throughout the course of the many scenarios that are available. ranging from traditional conquest missions to freeing captured hero units from a well-defended space system.

While the commander and mentor you choose is a member of one of the four major races that are involved in the conflict – the vicious Cha’ar, the deluded Fvost, the paranoid Groth and the prudent Altans – you get to control units of all four factions, depending on which types of planets you mange to conquer. Your mentor will merely advise you and comment on particular events in the game, or provide information on the selected unit. This is both helpful and entertaining, seeing how the Cha’ar leader will praise his own race’s fighters, while the other mentors each consider Cha’ar fighters to be death traps to valuable pilots in spite of their impressive firepower.

In space, you see a grid with planets, space stations and vessels of all kinds on it. You order new ground or space units on the planets you own, while your space ships and transports attempt to capture neutral or hostile planets and science stations, allowing you to produce more units and enhance your technology.

When attacking a hostile planet, the view changes, and you face a traditional turn based ground battle setting, with units resembling Warhammer 40000 tabletop miniatures in more ways than one. Each planet has two artifacts that were built by the planet’s dominant faction, and these towers grant powerful boons to the unit that last touched one of them. Fvost towers provide a very powerful cloaking technology, making the unit in question practically invincible, until another unit takes the cloaking ability away from it. Other towers may double the attack strength of a unit, or give them an ability to attack and randomly teleport other units across the grid in order to defuse volatile situations.

Space fleets are made up of one fighter type and one small specialty ship of each faction, Groth special vessels are able to destroy troops inside a space transport from several squares away, while Fvost ships are able to travel through hyperspace and cross great distances that way. Ground units include foot soldiers, snipers, medics, and guys with mortars, as well as some specialty mechs and tanks.

The game’s mechanics are really enjoyable; the various units offer a plethora of viable tactics that can lead to success. You can also compete with a friend on one computer or on a network.

Graphics: 9
Supremacy – Four Paths to Power uses the OGRE 3D scene graph, which is a solid and fairly sophisticated graphics engine. You almost never see clipping errors or stray polygons, everything looks quite polished, and the textures are remarkably crisp. You can also choose any resolution that your screen supports.

The animations are neat, but a little choppy, using skeleton based animation would have helped a lot. Also, the texture mapping on the planets in space seems too simplistic. There is an ugly graphical artifact at the poles of the planets which is always in view. Moving it to the side of a planet, or using a different spherical mapping technique would have been the way to go. Also, ships are distinguishable merely by the health markers above them, which are in their respective owners’ color. Individual paint jobs for your own and your enemies’ fleets would have been a nice addition.

Sound: 8
The sound is good and crisp, but the background ‘music’ is a mass of space sounds rather than real music most of the time. Also, the lasers of the space vessels have synthesized sounds that have way too much reverb. While this makes them blend in with the background music in a mysterious fashion, they aren’t really convincing.

The four mentors have excellent voice-overs when they give advice, each with a different voice or personality. It is fun just to click on things you see to find out what your mentor has to say about them.

Game Play: 9
The way the game’s strategy part works is just beautiful. You are really looking forward for the massive ground battle that follows an evenly massive space battle that you meticulously planned and put considerable resources into.

The game is easy and comfortable to play once you get used to the somewhat unusual menu layout and the order of your turns. It’s a little frustrating in the beginning to learn that “Done” means you forfeit all future turns for that unit, including its attack – especially since that’s the default your mouse cursor seems to jump to. The same happens when you select another unit after quick-moving a different one.

The AI opponent plays well when it comes to tactics and small scale battles, but it simply isn’t aggressive enough when trying to expand. This means that you may quickly out-produce it even early in the game. The AI once caused a planet to meltdown by building too many factories, but it wasn’t even doing anything with these extra resources.

There are some bugs in the interface that caused some text in the game not to be displayed on some computers – costs for upgrades or units, names of planets, and some other things. You can find those in the well-written manual, but as it turned out, I didn’t really need the information. With enough factories on my planets, I never ran out of resources in any large or mid-sized battles; the upkeep costs for ships and special unit abilities simply didn’t have an impact.

Value: 8
Talk about production value! The 450 Megabyte download contains lots of scenarios, a detailed manual and a tutorial. The game starts with an impressive video, which is made of painted stills and some animation in the foreground. There are plenty of units and lots of different planets to fight over. What’s sorely missing is a three- or four-player mode, as well as an actual story line or at least a short single-player campaign.

Concept: 7
Supremacy tries to be more than it is, and this is annoying at times. Supremacy is a great small-scale strategy or large-scale tactical game. It is not, however, the strategic simulation of a wartime economy that it tries to be.

Fun: 9
I really enjoyed this game, and if you like exhaustive, planet-hopping warfare, or turn-based tactics in general, this is a very good buy. Battles can take several hours, with repair units and inter-unit dependencies becoming key factors, especially since the AI plays remarkably well in these battles– unless you choose to overrun it with sheer numbers.

Overall: 9
A great game! The innovative tower bonus system that is used in the ground battles is particularly impressive, and the technology tree in the science station menu is interesting and allows for many experiments and play styles. The battles are exciting and, at the same time, require some forethought in each and every turn. Thus, Supremacy – Four Paths to Power manages to appeal to the casual gamer as well as the strategy enthusiast.
Added: June 1st 2005
Reviewer: Moritz Voss
Score:
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