Holy War Review: Crusades In Our Time And Age
By: Vincent Haoson
The Crusades, in historical context, is one of Christianity’s darker points, as wars ravaged lands, and lives all in the name of God, there have been questions about the true intent of those wars in the first place. It really boggles the mind how people would go to such lengths for the sake of religion doesn’t it?
Now, wouldn’t it be quite possible to enjoy the Crusades if you remove all the political mumbo-jumbo and just concentrate on the strategy and battles?
The creators of Holy War think so, and they have the game to prove that point.
Welcome to the Crusades Sir!
Holy War is a game that puts you in the shoes of a crusader. You either belong to the Christians, the Saracens or the Pagans. It doesn’t really matter which side you belong to as everyone starts out equally. There are no special bonuses for any of the three.
I find it fitting that the game doesn’t have any race advantage. The game relies heavily on the amount of players per religion especially in the Order battles that you can participate in as you progress through the game.
Gameplay
Holy War’s gameplay is simple. You build up your character through training the various stats you have. To train you need to get gold, which is earned through working or pillaging from other players.
To sum it up, your goal in Holy war is to become a strong soldier by building up your character through stat upgrades and equipping the best armor and weapons gold can buy.
You have Land too
The game of course is not one-sided. Meaning you not only get to attack, you also need to defend. The thing about defending from attacks is that the success of an enemies attack is based heavily on how much you have developed your land.
You start off with a patch of land with nothing on it. After investing your gold you can then develop your land into a sprawling estate. The more you develop your estate the better the chance you can fend off attacks.
Chat with your Fellow Crusaders
Holy War also has a live messaging system that’s very close to being a chat system. You can talk to anyone that is online in the game and even do trades by adding a trade link.
The messaging system gives the game a more lively feeling. At least you get to talk to other players in real time, though this is just a minor feature that is easily overlooked.
Hi ho Hi ho to work we go!
If you have finished attacking or doing whatever it is a crusader must do for their cause, you are then left to do nothing. However in Holy War you can use the time between your attack turns to work so that you can still earn gold even if you’ve used up all your attack points.
However be warned, once your character starts working, your character can not do anything else in that time. Plus, working uses real time measure, so when it says one hour it really means one hour.
Too common for its own good
Holy War is a good example of a browser based grinding game. Training your “crusader” and upgrading its stats is reminiscent of MMOs. The only difference with Holy War is that you are doing it in a browser instead using a client.
Holy War’s gameplay is not something new or innovative. The character leveling, the way your characters grow stronger and the way your character gains gold and heightens its defense has been done by other browser-based games. The only thing that separates the game from the others is the use of the Crusades as its springboard. What you get is an overused game system clothed by a different package.
Conclusion
Surprisingly, Holy Wars is a game that can really be interesting to play if you give it enough time. That is if you are into browser based grinding games without a decent storyline. While I did mention earlier that the game is just a repackaged and overused game system it does have some merits.
One merit would be its message system. To be able to chat and trash talk or curse the player who you attacked or who handed you your butt is a nice system that gives the game a little color. As little as it may add, it does helps the game a lot.
I really can’t deny that the game does grow old after playing it for, say, a few weeks. At that point the game has nothing more for you. What happens now if you get the top items, weapons and shield? Nada, just the satisfaction of being on top of your game, and this only goes so far and it’s not even funny that when you get to that point you’ll really question why you played the game in the first place.
Holy War is a game that has novelty due to the fact that it’s based on history. As colorful as the Crusades may have been it is not really that much of an appeal to most games.
The game is more suited for casual gaming. Of course whenever holy battles or even order battles are done things do get interesting, but the thing is you get to only enjoy them when you get to a certain level.
The game is good for those who are at work or those who want to at visit something different than their social networking sites. If you are looking for something concrete in a browser game then I’d suggest you go to other games.
The Good:
– The gameplay is easy to understand
– The learning curve is not that steep
– The game tries to balance the orders out to maximize the battles
The Bad:
– The interface is too bland
– The game also adapts the link clicking system
– You can’t control your character if he goes to work leaving you twiddling your thumbs for hours on end.
