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Beast and Bumpkins
Page 2
Graphics, nice but not excellent
Of course you can't kill Evil if you don't have a decent army right? Right, so after a few levels you can create a footman's guild. There you can create soldiers to defend your town and to wipe out Evil.
The enemies are more impressive then any other old RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game and they sure look Angry, Scary and Very Evil.
First of all, something about the graphics. The graphics look nice but not excellent either. Remember this is a strategy game that really doesn't need any high 3D-landscaping. It would be excellent if everything should be in 3D move but well that ain't the case with Beast and Bumpkins. So the Graphics look allright to me in normal SVGA.
Your peasants are Menfolk (that can be transformed into soldiers, knights, ...), Womenfolk, Children, Grand-Dads & Grand-Mums that will help you in protecting your village in the beginning of the game. Later you will be able to use Knights, Mages and more lets say, more Stronger and Impressive peasants.
A neat thing is this game is that the developers know what 'getting old' really means. Your people won't stay young forever (duh!) and they will get old someday so ... they are pretty useless in protecting your village. Don't count that they will work like harvest something because they walk so slow that doing a walk from the upper left corner of your screen to the lower right one might kill them!
The best way to prevent is, is watch how much Seasons are passing by before a peasant gets old. Then just before that 'critical' old-age season arrives, put your peasant straight to the footman's guild where he will be transformed into a (young and fresh) Soldier. Strange enough, this soldier won't grow old that fast.
No In-Game music, peasant!
I also noticed that when you are playing there is absolutely NO In-Game Music at all! No music? Yes, not even Midi.
Midi is as bad as playing without any music at all. I can't really think of a reason of not including some audio-tracks with this game. Isn't it quite obvious that every game needs in-game music while you play
them? Well, perhaps flight sims doesn't need music but the rest of the game-genres do need in-game music.
Pretty sad from E.A. The only thing that you can do, and that is what I did, is put the sfx volume bar at 100% and run some Mp3's or an audio cd from your Hi-Fi system.
For the Sfx (the Sound effects) they sounded good. It wasn't irritating at all without the music and sometimes it even has some fantastic humor in it.
Protect your Womanfolk!
Protect your Womanfolk because they are the Weakest of all. They aren't as strong as your Menfolk so watch them closely. Don't leave them unprotected at all.
Make sure that you have a good Birth Population, if this is not the case well you can forget about completing that Level.
Like in other RTS games you will need to get Treasures and Food in order to keep your village up and running. Beasts & Bumpkins is not an exception in this. You can harvest your own grain, gather your own apples, serving meat and more. But harvesting is quite realistic here. As you might know, Winter isn't a good season for harvesting your grain and other food. So harvest carefully.
Also, watch out for mushrooms and other suspecious things, it could be a trap from Evil.
It took me some hours before I got in Level 5 or 6. Excellent in Game Duration but the gameplay slacks in a way. I was somehow demotivated to play any longer. I think that Electronic Arts made it a bit too difficult for the average gamer.
Still my opinion is that a game like Settlers II is much more impressive and much more fun to play with. Lets say, if you adore Settlers 2, stick with S2. If you want improvement in Real Time strategy, stick with S2.
I think that Settlers 2 is still 'one' of the best real time strategy games comparing to Beast & Bumpkins.
However B&B ain't a bad game. No sir. But the Developers could have come up with a little bit more originality.
Conclusion?
Beast & Bumpkins from Electronic Arts is a Strategy game that is just below the average Real Time Strategy game. The game lacks in originality because it is always the same idea over and over again. We want someting fresh and new!
There is also No in-game music when you are playing and listening to 1 of your Audio-Cd's really pushes the game-atmosphere in danger.
I wonder, why did E.A. make this game too difficult? Beats me.
Still B&B is a very realistic RTS game which has an excellent intro (but that won't let you buy this game) and only reserved to 100% real time strategy players that don't care whether a game is good or bad as long Real-Time strategy is involved. Some may find this game very amusing, some don't.
I was 1 of those gamers that rather stick with an old RTS game than putting Beasts & Bumpkins on the front row.
-Bjorn
Ratings
Manual:
75% |
Graphics:
80% |
Music & Sfx:
75% |
GamePlay:
70% |
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This game scores
 
on our 5-point Rating System
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