Heroes of Annihilated Empires

It's okay, nice looking, very confusing. If you are not interested in reading the manual, probably not the game for you, it doesn't offer much in the way of in game guidance or tutorials. Took me three tried to finally beat the opening scenario, not too bad. A tepid one thumb up, but I've only played a little of it. ADDENDUM: I have three hours under my belt now and I am quite enjoying it.

it's heroes of annihilated empires, epic RPG+RTS what else can you ask for? Well, i could ask for more maps, updates fixing stuff, but GSC is the worst at doing that, so i won't ask much

Heroes of Annihilated Empires, developed and published by GSC Game World, is an ambitious attempt to merge two traditionally distinct genres—real-time strategy and action role-playing—into a single cohesive fantasy experience. Released during a period when hybrid genre experimentation was gaining traction, the game sets out to offer players the freedom to command vast armies while simultaneously nurturing and directly controlling a powerful hero character. Rather than forcing a strict division between macro-level strategy and personal combat, it encourages players to fluidly shift between overseeing entire battlefields and stepping into the boots of a singular champion whose growth and abilities can decisively influence the outcome of war. Set in a richly imagined fantasy world centered around Atlans Island, the game introduces multiple factions with distinct identities, aesthetics, and tactical philosophies. Elven Sylvan folk, brutal Cryo barbarians, industrious dwarves, and undead legions each bring unique units, magical abilities, and battlefield strategies. The visual design leans heavily into classic high fantasy tropes, with lush forests, towering citadels, arcane spell effects, and monstrous adversaries populating its maps. The diversity among factions is not merely cosmetic; each race demands different approaches to economy management, troop composition, and combat tactics, reinforcing replay value across both campaign and skirmish modes. At its core, the real-time strategy layer revolves around familiar pillars: resource gathering, base construction, technological upgrades, and large-scale army production. Players harvest materials, erect defensive structures, and build production facilities to field increasingly formidable forces. Battles can escalate into sprawling engagements featuring hundreds of units clashing simultaneously, capturing a sense of scale that remains impressive. Yet what differentiates Heroes of Annihilated Empires from many of its contemporaries is how it integrates hero progression into this structure. The central hero unit gains experience, levels up, unlocks new abilities, and equips items that enhance performance. This RPG-inspired progression introduces a personal dimension to warfare, transforming the hero into both a strategic asset and a focal point for player investment. The hero mechanics significantly shape gameplay rhythm. Early in a mission, the hero often acts as a primary combat force, capable of single-handedly clearing enemy groups with spells and enhanced melee prowess. As armies grow larger, the hero transitions into a battlefield leader, augmenting allied units with buffs or unleashing devastating abilities at critical moments. The interplay between nurturing your hero and managing an expanding military machine creates a compelling duality. Players who prefer micromanagement can dive deeply into character builds and ability timing, while those who favor broader strategic planning can focus on economy and troop movements. This flexibility defines the game’s identity, even if it sometimes results in uneven balance between its two halves. The single-player campaign provides narrative structure through a storyline that follows the struggles of the Sylvan people against encroaching undead forces. While the writing delivers moments of intrigue and fantasy drama, the storytelling can occasionally feel conventional. Nevertheless, the campaign offers varied mission objectives and gradually introduces mechanics, encouraging players to experiment with both RTS and RPG elements. Outside of the campaign, skirmish and multiplayer modes extend replayability, allowing for custom scenarios and competitive engagements that showcase the game’s large-scale battles. Technically and visually, Heroes of Annihilated Empires reflects its mid-2000s origins. The environments are colorful and detailed, with stylized units that maintain clarity even amid chaotic combat. Spell effects and large-scale clashes contribute to a sense of spectacle, though the interface and control scheme reveal the era’s design conventions. Managing massive armies can sometimes feel cumbersome, and pathfinding issues may arise when navigating congested terrain. The artificial intelligence, while competent, does not always display sophisticated strategic adaptation, which can diminish challenge in extended sessions. Despite its imperfections, the game’s ambition remains its greatest strength. Few titles of its time attempted to blend full-scale RTS mechanics with meaningful RPG progression so comprehensively. While the fusion occasionally feels uneven—sometimes leaning too heavily into hero dominance or conventional resource management—it nonetheless creates memorable moments where a carefully leveled hero turns the tide of a sprawling conflict. The sense of commanding an empire while personally shaping its fate through a single character offers a distinct flavor that separates it from more purely focused strategy or role-playing titles. Heroes of Annihilated Empires ultimately stands as a testament to GSC Game World’s willingness to experiment within the strategy genre. It may not achieve perfect harmony between its two core systems, and its presentation bears the marks of its time, but its scale, faction diversity, and hybrid gameplay structure provide a rewarding experience for players who appreciate ambitious design. For those drawn to fantasy settings and large-scale warfare, and who enjoy the added dimension of hero customization and progression, it offers a uniquely layered strategy adventure that remains notable within the landscape of classic PC strategy games. Rating: 8/10

This game is a forgotten gem. A great blend of RTS and RPG with some pretty good balance, one very respectable campaign with 16 missions (around 20+ hours of gameplay), four races and a Skirmish mode. It goes for a very cheap price and is a lot like the first Spellforce game, albeit with a better story, good voice-acting and on a signficantly larger scale. It genuinely feels like armies fighting each other. Before anything, it's worth mentioning this game has multiple issues you need to fix in order to run it. Firstly, make sure the game is set in compatibility mode for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Then you need to make sure the game runs using only one CPU core, otherwise it WILL crash OFTEN. I'll link the basic guide I use but there are other ways of doing it online as well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3661843453 It's from a different game but it works for ALL old games with the issue. Just search for engine.exe , the game's executable. Last on the list of big issues, the game's cutscenes stopped working after Windows 8. Fortunately staticsnake compiled them all here for our convinience: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3328544605 Additionally, the game's main menu does NOT support resolutions above 1040x. If the confirm/cancel buttons are not visible for you, you may use ENTER and Escape to confirm and cancel things respectively. The game itself runs just fine on any resolution. I've suffered no crashes whilst using the fix, though the game does have some stuttering when loading/navigating the map too fast on some of the massive levels. Do note that if you have a high resolution device like me, you may still need to lower things to 1920x since the UI doesn't scale properly. For mid-mission related issues, you can zoom in with Insert and Zoom out (do not) with delete. There doesn't seem to be an option to reset the camera size once click them, only alternate between them. Beware the golem spell is bugged, it removes a spell slot if equippped. Do not pick it. The game has a very reliable auto-save system, but I strongly recommend you to keep 3 saves and alternate so you have options to load from earlier in case you make mistakes. Some levels can take 2+ hours to beat. Also on the topic, do not EVER click the reset button. It will restart the mission but also erase all of your hero data so you'll be back to level 1 with no equipment. You can still load a save from before if that happens and keep your progress. Onto the campaign. You follow one hero's journey, the narrative is sufficiently good but it has nothing too complex. You'll mostly be playing as the Elf/Forest Warriors race, which has all of the magical units you'd expect. Fairies, Dryads, Unicorns and Ents. There's quite a lot of different enemy types since the game has multiple creep/neutral factions, each with around 2-5 units. They include everything you'd expect from a fantasy game, in fact, that's applicable for the entire game. Though I will say, props for taking an unique approach and not simply having the factions be Human-Elves-Orcs-Undead. The levels do an okay job of varying things and the different enemies you face keep things half-interesting. Though most enemies (and units) resume to simply charging or a simple ranged attack. Some non-hero units have auto-casted abilities. That said, the enemy AI is surprisingly competent and orchestrates ambushes and multi-front attacks if you don't take care of outlying camps. It's a feature dampened by how strong your hero gets later on, but admirable nonetheless. The levels can be quite massive, which makes navigating them a chore, however the game does an okay job of balancing that between its hero-focused RPG sections and more RTS-focused sections. They're well-designed and level difficulty varies greatly and you'll find 50% of each level is optional content to gain levels and loot. Levels also have easter eggs for you to find which hint at the world's secrets and cut content. The first level is harder than most of the game. As a tip, you need to make sure less than 4 civilians die before getting the order to fall back, otherwise you'll fail. Rest of the missions are pretty straightforward though sadlly, I haven't found a button to see the objective menu... When in doubt, just explore the map and look for NPCs with an Exclamation Mark above them. Again though, level design is competent, the game doesn't give you many options to get lost. On the 6th level, at the end. just rush the building with your Pegasus unit. You do not need to destroy the camp. There'll be a mission to defend your camp, you only need to defend your camp. You do not need to take out the enemy bases. On the 8th mission, make sure to rush the enemy buildings once the RTS section starts so you don't die. Each faction stands out with unique units, roles and its own thematic. I quite enjoyed how the terrain differs from Elven & Undead influence, healing the land of rotting it. Units are well-balanced, though by mission 3 or so your hero starts carrying HARD. Later on, you can solo entire missions as long as you keep a good defence of your base. RTS-portions tend to be easier than RPG leveling as a result. (See the difference between 500 20hp units and one 2400hp mini-boss) You'll have a good variety of buildings and units at your disposal in missions, with upgrades tied to individual units. That said, units don't have voice lines when clicked/ordered. You'll only be hearing voice-acting through mid-mission dialogue (which has subtites) or cutscenes. There are multiple grammar mistakes though. I quite enjoyed the narrative. Music is iconic, I love it. Though it tends to get repetive since there aren't that many tracks. You'll be hearing the same songs at hour 1 and at hour 10. Fog of war doesn't work properly. Your units can shoot beyond their sight range and you can still see in the dark. Makes it rather intriguing to look at what awaits you later into the level. At certain distances, you can click and view the stats of enemies through the fog of war as well. It's also how you can see what you missed and spot cut content/development left-overs. The game was meant to have expansions/sequels that would explore more of the world and offer campaigns for the different races, however those never saw the light of day. It's sad but the game still offers a respectable amount of content as is. The RPG side of things works great, there's lots of spells, many hand-crafted items, little RNG involved in looting, and the game does a good job of keeping you supplied with a steady gold income (from killing units, as well as selling old equipment) and shops places across the levels. Whilst there's multiple builds available, I STRONGLY recommend you to orient towards a Mana and Spell-focused build. Do note that there is RNG in the choice of two upgrades you get when leveling up. Since the levels can be massive, it can be quite annoying to walk to a shop and back over and over though. That can also be a pain to handle for your army's mobility, especially since most units are rather slow. Positioning is very important. Mid-battle, positioning isn't as big of an issue since you'll have many spells to heal your units and the enemy just charges right into your lines. It can help out with certain spells. For example, there is an Ice Arrow spell that deals solid damage in a massive straight line. I once knocked out 100 enemies with it! Path-finding can break when units have to cross large-distances, so make sure to either use a command-queue (Shift+Click) or to use short-distance movement. Graphically, the game mixes 3D assets and larger units with 2D smaller units. It looks dated but everything's still eligable. I personally enjoyed it. Overall, and in consideration of the fixes to the game's many issues, I give Heroes of Annihilated Empires an 8.5/10. It's a great game, good fun and worth checking out.

Спробував пограти, не сподобалося з першої хвилини. Не знаю чого я очікував... Здається це був явно провальний проект Скрізь ці роки Підтримки екрану немає, розширенян екрана у грі щось не змінюється, ніякі додаткові опції нормально не допомагають, гра просто не налаштована на сучасні монітори, але як би це дивно не звучало, пограти можна, місцями вона нормальна

its an oldie but a goodie - though the unnofficial patch is recommended

Goated Fantasy RTS

Якщо ви колись до дірок затерли кампанію в Warcraft II і ночами «фармили» в Diablo, то Heroes of Annihilated Empires — це ніби результат їх стратегічно-рольового роману. І, треба визнати, дитина вийшла вдалою. Гра дивним чином поєднує масштаб класичної RTS із майже діаблівським відчуттям героя в центрі подій. Тут ти не просто будуєш базу — ти вирощуєш армію, яка буквально заповнює екран. Десять тисяч скелетів нежиті із десяти тисяч. Коли хвиля юнітів накочує, як бухгалтерія в кінці кварталу, — відчуваєш справжній епік. Окремий плюс — атмосфера. Лор не для галочки, сетинг витриманий і цілісний. Це не «ось вам ще одна фентезі-мапа», а світ, у який хочеться зануритися. Однокористувацькі утички проти компухтєра мають характер, кампанія — настрій, а музика не намагається бути геніальною, вона просто працює. Баланс… майже збалансований. І це я кажу без сарказму. Так, якщо ви фанат пошуку експлойтів, то знаєте, що робить пауза, як себе поводить маг нежиті і до яких веселих наслідків це може призвести. Але якщо грати без спортивного маніакального бажання «зламати систему», усе працює більш ніж пристойно. Це чудовий варіант, щоб після важкого дня запустити кілька сесій, не перевантажуючи мозок зайвими складнощами. Гра не вимагає від тебе кандидатської — вона дає простір для тактики, експериментів і трохи ностальгічного задоволення. Heroes of Annihilated Empires — це той випадок, коли старошкільний підхід не виглядає застарілим, а навпаки — чесним. Якщо вам близькі масові баталії, герої з прокачкою і легкий аромат фентезійного пафосу — ви знаєте, що робити.

Would love to get other factions campaigns. Great RTS with RPG elements.

[h2][i]Запахло весной и олдскулом, время хрустнуть фалангами и засесть за обзор.[/i][/h2] Не все вспомнят, вернее, не только лишь все, а мало кто, но студия GSC Game World не одними маслинами богата. Оставила она след и в жанре RTS-стратегий, выпустив Казаков и героя сегодняшнего выпуска, барабанная дробь, Герои уничтоженных империй. Заманивать словом «heroes» в названии было с их стороны опрометчиво, но я не в обиде, шалость удалась, и игра вышла хоть и не шедевральной, но запоминающейся, а это чего-то да стоит. Многое не реализовали на старте, устарело со временем (про амбиции создать целую вселенную и бульварно-ширпотребные книги умолчим), но фишка этой игры притягивает и ныне — ЛИВНИ юнитов, сметающих всё и вся (и дохнущих) за доли секунды. Никаких фэнтезийных ТСЖ, где на одного жителя положено строго две с половиной коровы и дрын какой-нибудь, только месиво «стенка на стенку», причём без разогретой до состояния плазмы видеокарты (стим-версия капризна, но на пиратке никогда не жаловалась на проседающий FPS). Сюжет ограничен одной-единственной кампанией за образцового Логоваза, у которого в лесах опять неспокойно, лютует мерзость всякая. Затяжные реплики, избитую эльфячью драматургию можно смело пропускать и переходить к соку, мякотке, эссенции — к боям. Кайф приносят оба режима игры. RTS-составляющая позволяет побыть в роли охочего до создании пушечного мяса полководца, а RPG — нюхать цветочки, шарить по бочкам да тележкам, колдунствовать, набирать экспу, закупаться оружкой, ну и т.д. Баланс тут по субъективным прикидкам отсутствует, вроде как знающие люди со мной солидарны. Но честно сказать, так наплевать… Я знаю немало ультрасбалансированных современных игр, но они неспособны мне и толики того удовольствия обеспечить, которым пичкает до отказа HoAE. Графика красочная, даже слишком. Очень сочные цвета, приятные анимации, всё такое ✨фантазийное✨, а драконы рассекают по неровностям ландшафта и пикируют на врага (в моем воображении) столь же прекрасно, сколь и топорно. Картинка ни на кого не равняется визуально, но может оттолкнуть — тут уже дело вкуса. Музыка — очень! Оркестровая, эмоциональная, подвигающая на подвиги. Но чертовски мало композиций. Застревают в мозгу и сразу же приедаются. Все механики понатасканы отовсюду и заметно упрощены, но они очаровательны в своей понятности. Например, расчёт наносимого и получаемого урона не требует от вас знания три икс в кубе плюс константа, но вынуждает подумот, прежде чем оголтело кидаться в недруга пачками воинов всех мастей. Десяток магов может запросто вынести орду солдат, если вовремя их наплодить. Юнитов уйма. Эльфы, нежить, механики (с дирижаблей) и криальцы (who?), что уже не так шаблонно, как ожидаешь. У каждой из четырёх рас есть и крестьяне, и наземные типы войск, и ВВС, и флот, и разведчики, и бомбардировщики, кто по кайфу, и всё это без тонны описаний и справочников. Карт для разовых схваток, увы, всего ничего, и, несмотря на обилие мобов, очень уж они бедны по наполнению — по пальцам можно пересчитать уникальных строений и моделек. Немного обидно. Не немного так-то, а конкретно, потому что мой внутренний ребёнок до сих пор верит обещаниям из Игромании и ждёт вторую часть. Игру явно планировали как нечто большее. Но получилось так, как получилось. У нас на руках одна игра, и она не такая затягивающая и проработанная, как её легендарные собратья. Но камнями её закидывать всё равно не хочется. Да и не за что. Да и незачем (кому на неё не пофиг в 2026, кроме таких же ностальгаторов, как я?).