This sounds simple but it is decidedly not so when playing against the computer. Each mission requires you to invest at least an hour of time, and that’s if you play your cards right. Blunders inevitably lead to a long cascade of setbacks until you eventually lose or simply choose to restart or reload. It’s not that the AI cheats or even that it is brilliant, it’s that the AI is very efficient in a game that requires a lot of efficiency. Even though you’ll see some familiar patterns to the attacks and be ready to counter them, your attention will be focused on handling the attack while the AI can simultaneously send nuisance attacks your way and expand its economic base. The battles are difficult enough to challenge strategy veterans and prove quite frustrating to novices.

Battles take place underground as well.

The benefits enjoyed by the AI do not extend to the AI of your own units. It can be difficult to keep groups made up of units of different speed together as a cohesive unit while moving across the map. When the fighting starts, group cohesion breaks down even further due to the aggressive to a fault behavior of the units. Unless constantly managed or issued hold orders, units will scatter themselves all over the place, individually taking on more than one enemy rather than concentrating and combining their attacks as a group on one or two targets at a time. These problems occur in spite of the game’s support for group formations, which seem to be more useful for standing in review than for marching or attacking.

Armies of Exigo is not entirely derivative. There are a few unit novelties, but the main innovation is the dual-layer map. Other strategy games such as Age of Wonders have used multi-layer maps before, but in Armies of Exigo you can cast spell attacks between the two. It’s a pretty cool trick to be able to send some spellcasters under an enemy base to raise a little havoc. However, in practice this feature makes a difficult game even harder as you must now keep up with the deadly efficient AI on not one but two different maps.

Armies of Exigo includes full support for multiplayer gaming, both in skirmish mode and online. You can play in teams or free-for-all with up to eight total players. In addition to the traditional crush the opposition play, the game supports king of the hill and capture the flag modes. Setting up game’s is quite easy, thanks to the interface inspired by, you guessed it, StarCraft. Armies of Exigo is probably the most fun in multiplayer mode where you at least have a chance of being on equal footing with the competition. You can also fill slots with AI controlled sides, so it can be fun to gang up on the computer for a little revenge.

Overall Armies of Exigo is a better than average strategy game thanks to its basis in a tried and true game model. The presentation is excellent, with detailed units, colorful and lively maps, and the aforementioned cinematographic cutscenes. If you’re a casual gamer, then you’ll find the campaign difficult to the point of frustration and so you’ll need to think about what you are getting yourself into. Strategy fans will be more tolerant of the difficulty and may enjoy the chance to return to the roots of RTS gameplay without putting up with 1990s graphics.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 76%. Armies of Exigo delivers classic 90s strategy action updated with a beautiful 2004 wrapper.

System Requirements:  Pentium III 1.5 GHz; 384 MB RAM;  64 MB Video RAM; 1.5 GB Hard disk space; 8x CD-ROM.

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