Sunday Musings - Dark Omen

As a continuation of last week's Shadow Of The Horned Rat scribblings, I come to Dark Omen. This has been a weird experience as for the first time, I've been genuinely tempted to go back and rewrite parts of an earlier Sunday Musings due to the experience. What I felt in a lot of ways was the deep strategy of Shadow Of The Horned Rat (and my general awfulness at gaming) was in fact luck on my side as Dark Omen takes that engine and cuts the fact, leaving a much leaner, more playable game as a whole. Dark Omen retroactively reduced my enjoyment of Shadow Of The Horned Rat by just simply being a much better version. Which is upsetting due to my love the Skaven.

We return to the story of Morgan Bernhardt and The Grudgebringers many years after the events of the first game. We after combatting the Greenskins and the Undead for this outing, once more travelling along the Old World bring doom to those who defy us. And also ourselves when the battles go wrong.

The engine is pretty much the same, though streamlined a fair bit to make the management of issuing orders to units far more...well....manageable. Much like the first game, there is a strong need to pinch every penny and level an apocalyptic level of care on your troops as it's so easy to get caught in the treadmill of not catching up to full army strength. Wizards take on a more central role in both story and gameplay this time out, and the ability to induct other commanders and their forces feels like busy-work, but can come in very useful for the latter missions towards the endgame.

But what stands out this time is the genuinely lovely talking heads and cut scenes that move the story along. For a game of this age, it stands out strikingly with the 3D landscapes to gallop or simply trudge across, through a series of well made, varied missions and challenges. Turn based strategy is and always has been a hard sell, more so that RTS releases were in the late 90s. But when done well, they are a genuinely rewarding experience, and Dark Omen comes close.

As always, I remain

Adam

*Who are not Dwarfs