Is Armies Of Exigo The Most Forgotten RTS?

Hello lads, ladies, gents, ladetts, whoever and whatever. Today we head to battle in a cult classic RTS game titled Armies of Exigo. Sadly a game not many people talk about to this day. So I wanted to give it some love.
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[@hybrismc4105]

I believe the D&D-RTS Dragonshard from roughly the same era has a simultaneous over- and underworld-layer as well. That one's also worth checking out for its gameplay if you can get it to run.

[@Karlec46]

I'll put it on my list for sure. Thanks for the suggestion :)

[@drago939393]

Metal Fatigue from 2000 had an underground layer, too! It even had a 3rd "orbital" layer as well.

[@ivansalamon7028]

YES! YES! YES! The campaign was epic. Horrifyingly difficult pre patch too. The memories of thod game are countless. The atmosphere sublime. The gameplay, too, was not far from perfect, in a way. Its a hell of a game, beautifully crafted. Looks good to this day.

[@Deus888]

I remember liking this game a lot when it came out.

[@hideshisface1886]

I remember this game. It has generally a wonderful level of polish to it, but it is hampered in certain aspects by some... very weird design decisions. The game came after Warcraft 3 and has similar overall style of your basic heroic fantasy, AND you have heroes in it, so it was obvious it was going to be compared to Warcraft 3... Except the game does not lean towards heroes nearly as much - and its balancing is more around that of StarCraft. This means it failed the Warcraft comparison right from the gate. Another problem lied in campaign setup - you learn early on that your units level up and keeping veterans is valuable... EXCEPT the game does not give you means to heal your units early on. You have no healer hero, and healing units are not available, nor do your units heal passively - so you have no way of keeping your veteran units alive, making them functionally useless early on. AND by the time you get those healer units, the game ramps up the scale pretty massively... so single units no longer matter as much. This unit level up system would work better on smaller scale - but instead we have a StarCraft-esque 200 limit here. Healing overall is very limited - humans, if I recall had only the priest and the chapel. The fallen had relatively slow passive regen. The "I can't believe its not Orcs" had their healing limited to sacrificing goblins for AoE heal - you had to kill a unit to heal others, meaning your healing was literally hard-capped. From my memory - the campaigns were also pretty brutal. Human campaign started relatively easily, but it ramped in difficulty massivley by the second half, after the siege defence mission. And don't get me started on Fallen and Beast campaigns. My especially big gripe was with the no-build missions - these were, if my memory serves me right, especially poorly designed - they were basically puzzles of the "do exactly what deisgner intended and when, or die". It was very easy to screw yourself and effectively soft-lock a whole mission by one sub-optimal engagement... Which, I must say is quite an infuriating flaw. These were individually small gripes that unfortunately kept building up, harming the game in the long run.

[@Kumogakure42]

That FF8 soundtrack😂.

[@Pepecigar]

You have a pleasant voice to listen to, if you could speak a little bit slower it would be perfect.

[@drago939393]

The issue with Exigo... I mean, AoE... I mean, Armies, is that it's ultimately "StarCraft with a hint of WarCraft, in generic medieval fantasy". It doesn't have the gripping and compelling story of WC/SC, while also lacking both the flair and exaggerated character of both. Mechanically it's completely fine, but the end result is a very dry and frankly uninspired game, even if it is completely playable and respectable in really every facet, including the ambitious two-layer system (hello, Metal Fatigue with three layers). As such, how is the game meant to stand out and carve out a niche for itself? The best RTS were the best/remain the best mostly due to a strong single-player experience (exciting campaign, strong story, raw style that sands out, fun units with powerful abilities, skirmish replayability) alongside a sandbox editor and casual PvP or PvE multiplayer - on top of solid core mechanics (controls, AI, pathfinding, combat). Armies I think has the substance but not the flair, oddly enough. As far as the video title goes - I raise the Kohan series.

[@Karlec46]

I will add Kohan series to the list of games to get to! I really appreciate the comment

[@touchstone6567]

You should play Age of Empires 3

[@Karlec46]

I should