...and so disappeared my first week to Dominions II. I played the demo for a weekend and then immediately turned around and ordered the game online (which is the only way it can currently be purchased.) To say the least, this game is the turn-based strategy game that I've been waiting for since Master of Magic. My girlfriend, an avid Civ player, is also well on her way to getting hooked.
Dominions II puts you in the position of a Pretender God leading one of seventeen races (each with its own special units) on a quest to establish your faith (Dominion) as being the worthiest claim to divinity in the land. You design your own God from a variety of creatures and then go about the business of beating down the opposition, through either brute force or prayer, until only your faith remains standing. Dominions is designed for use on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris-based systems, with a single CD being the install base for all four. The CD comes shrink-wrapped with a thick instruction manual, although most of the manual, after a lengthy description of the rules which I highly recommend reading, is comprised of magic item and spell descriptions.
Gameplay: This game overwhelms you with options and that makes it a blessing to the experienced grognard and a little frustrating to the novice who just wants to get his/her feet wet. The game doesn't offer any sort of tutorial and the interface, while streamlined and fast-paced once you get into it, isn't exactly intuitive, particularly if your thinking is generally real-time strategy when, in fact, Dominions II is turn-based. You accumulate resources and gold, build commanders, assign them armies, and send them forth into the world. In the meantime, you're also hiring mages to research and cast new spells, sending out scouts and possibly assassins to patrol nearby provinces, and, perhaps most importantly, sending your priests about the world to build new temples to your faith and spread your word. There's a -lot- to do with just the basic commands.
Then you toss into that mix the fact that all seventeen races come with unique strengths and weaknesses which require you to adapt your strategy in using their individual units and you begin to marvel at the sheer depth of options this game offers. There are hundreds of spells to learn and over 1000 individual unit types in the game. There's also a robust magic item creation system and plenty of monster summoning if you're not happy with your own race's specialized troops. In short, if you've thought about having it in a fantasy-based strategy game, it's probably here.
What you shouldn't expect is direct control over the battles themselves. Like the above-mentioned predecessors in the strategy department (Civ, Master of Magic), battles are conducted by the AI which then gives you the results in figures. You can, however, opt to watch a full graphical replay of the battle which can be a great deal of fun when storming underwater castles or chasing demons across the countryside. However, the game does allow you to position your troops in customizable formations, script behaviors for your armies, and script up to five individual actions (and then a behavior) for your commanders, so the amount of actual control over the combat is better than the usual fare that I've become accustomed to.
Dominions II is playable as a single-player game or via TCP/IP or E-Mail with up to 17 players. Single-player is serviceable, with an AI that's generally good but has a few glaring problems (like the inability to recognize that it needs to build new forts) that can be easily exploited. However, it's in multiplayer that the game really shines. There's the opportunity to engage in diplomacy via sending messages and bribes of all resource types back and forth and the sheer variety of strategies available to human opponents alongside the constantly changing maps makes for an absolute certainty that gameplay won't become repetitive.
Story: - Story typically isn't all that important in strategy games, but Illwinter (the design studio) has done a great job of incorporating lots of flavor into its world. Each map comes with text describing its world story, each nation comes with several paragraphs of flavor text to get you into the mood, and each unit carries with it a paragraph or so of description telling you what its place in the Dominions II cosmology is comprised of. Given that there really isn't more story to be had over the course of this type of gameplay (since it basically boils down to killing your opponents and perhaps role-playing a bit with them as you're doing so), it's pleasant to find that Dominions has at least given the playing pieces on its chessboard some story-based gloss to distinguish them.
Graphics/Sound: - I'll be short. If you buy a game primarily on the basis of its ability to push the technical envelope in this category, you'd best look elsewhere. The graphics, while they involve nice 3-D backgrounds, are fairly basic sprites with units in combat having only two sprites -- at rest and striking. While this might be a downside in terms of eye candy, it's a huge advantage to the mod community (one which Illwinter is taking large steps to support) as you can, with great patience, put together your own units in Paint and incorporate them into the game. If you want even more options than the ones offered in the game, you're free to create them. It should also be pointed out that the non-combat graphics, i.e. the still fare that is generally at the heart of strategy gaming, is very well-crafted and pleasing to the eye. The maps are gorgeous to look upon and while the GUI and its tiles are simple, I've seen enough badly-crafted home-brewed efforts to recognize quality when I see it.
The sound is also very basic, but Illwinter struck it gold with a few of its beeps and boops. One example that stands out is the lovely sound of R'lyeh Starspawn (think D&D mind flayers -- and yes, that R'lyeh) mindblasting their opponents into oblivion. There's a lovely insidious roar that sounds like you're in some sort of football stadium of the damned that's tied to that action that gets me every time.
Play Time/Replayability: - There is no "play time" per se, as there are maps of varying sizes for varying numbers of players, from 2 to 17 (although you can set the AI to cover as many as you like for the single-player experience.) The maps randomize a great deal and can be adjusted through several sliders so each play-through is going to be unique even before you alternate between different race and god formats for yourself and your opponents. It's turn-based and has that same "one more round" sort of mentality that the best inspire and gameplay is definitely geared towards long-term. I'd say the average game (if you're playing "blitz" and just packing in as many turns as possible while still managing your army reasonably well) would take 10 to 20 hours of play, although that can adjust up or downward based on the above-mentioned sliders and the number of players involved. Your early experiences, however, will likely be considerably shorter as you play several quick games of being mopped up by the AI and/or your fellow players as learn the ins and outs of the system.
Replayability is where this game truly shines. To begin with, Dominions has a growing fanbase that should give you a wealth of different players and styles to challenge yourself with. Furthermore, Illwinter's embrace of the mod community through inclusion of an admittedly basic map editor and documents explaining how to create your own units and items has already led a few creative types to generate their own maps and alternate army sets (downloadable at Illwinter's site) that can be easily added to the game and switched on/off at whim.
Final Recommendation - While this game isn't without its faults, it's impossible to overstate just how amazing a job its creators (basically a design team of two) have done in bringing this game to market. The fact that they've also got a long history of being extremely accessible on their forums, supporting mod-happy fans, and patching regularly in response to bug findings and player critiques of game balance shows that they're extremely dedicated to their craft and the community that supports them. Download the demo, enjoy the taste it gives, and then buy it. Homegrown efforts like Dominions II deserve support from a larger audience, particularly when they manage to be this beautifully elaborate and deviously intricate. The only reservations I have would be dispelled with a little patching of the AI and further development of the modding tools available to users. Otherwise, if this is your sort of game, I can't recommend it more to you. Besides, the creators are self-admitted long-time Ars Magica fans – that in itself should hold more than a little appeal for those wondering what sort of flavor their mechanics might contain.
