Customer Reviews

Hinterland: Orc Lords

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the better "Gauntlet clones" that I've played recently. It combines simple action rpg elements with simple town building. It's meant to be played in 30 minutes or to over 4 hours, depending on play style and options used. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

I really like the graphics and art. The graphics remind me of Darkstone, the art reminds me a little bit of The Temple of Elemental Evil and even Icewind Dale. The music is standard fantasy, you've heard it all before in other games, but I like that kind of music, and this music is great. I won't be putting it on mute anytime soon!

Character customization is lacking. I enjoy customizing my character, but all that I get to choose here is a name, portrait, and class. There isn't that many portraits to choose from, just a few for each race, but there is a good variety of classes. There is also a good variety of models. Some are fatter than others, some have short hair and some have long hair, there are white people and black people. You just can't pick when creating your character(ex. a courtesan will always be skinny, a brawler will always be bigger. Can't make a skinny brawler. However, skin color is based on portrait used).

The city building part of the game is a lot of fun. From deciding which guys you want in your town, which buildings to upgrade, and where to place your buildings. Having to manage food, search the map for resources for the town, and defending the town against attackers. Some buildings even have more than one upgrade option. Starting out by yourself and building a town from nothing is part of the fun.

Combat is just the basic old style of action rpg. You raise your attack and defense as you fight, gain levels and raise stats and gain new skills, find new armor, weapons and items, left click the mouse to attack till the monsters fall down. Even though it's just like it was years ago, it's still fun here. They even made it easier for you, with auto equipping and using as few left clicks as possible. Having people in town auto-equip and the auto-sorting makes things so much easier. If I have someone in my town guarding it against attackers, I don't have to worry about making sure they equip newly made weapons and armor, they do it themselves, freeing me up to continue my adventure for loot and resources.

Something else that I like, is the ability to take your townspeople and have them fight with you. Take the priest out of his church and have him fight with you, healing you in battle. Or take the farmer from their field and slap some armor on them. You can have up to 3 npc's fight with you. I enjoy the challenge of creating an all female town. Because men and women will come to your town looking to build, I always have to kick the men out, waiting for more women to show up.

The interface is just perfect. Everything is made easy. Looting monsters and from chests takes a split second, selling is as easy as pressing shift and left clicking, there's auto-sorts and auto-equips, the menus are all easily accessed and any important information is just a single left click away. It truly makes an rpg and town building easy.

I would love a game like this with more depth. There are no dungeons to enter, you can only explore above ground. Entering dungeons, having more detailed quests, and having a more robust economy side would have made this game lots better. As a casual action rpg with town building in it, I don't see how it could get any better on the casual side.


A note about the DRM used. There isn't any. There's no cd key. The game cd doesn't need to be in the drive to play.



5 stars overall: The game plays smooth on my medium range computer. The game only crashed once in 10 hours of play. When I opened up the game after the crash, the game was saved right when it crashed. I don't have to worry about losing gameplay in case it crashes. That's a big plus!

5 stars for fun: After 10 hours I'm still enjoying playing it. It's so simple, yet so addictive.

The shelves of your local "Game Crazy" are overflowing with full on intensity first person shooters, hyper complex and addictive massively multiplayer online role playing games, and graphically overloaded games like fallout 3 and bioshock.

That's all well and good.

I happen to like games that fall into the category "putz-around games". Games like Majesty, Age of Wonders, and Dungeon Keeper. Not real intense, no jaw-dropping graphics, no epic quests. Not really sandbox, but not really hard core strategy either. Warlords 3 fits into this as well.

Call me old-school, but no one has scratched the itch in awhile. This game does it very very well. Its fun, its nerdy, its kick-back with the option to scale up the challenge if you so desire. Reminds me alot of Majesty, but different (obviously). Elegant, but not simplistic. Lots of replayability. Addictive like pringles. Its really fun to watch your little village grow and see who the next visitor to your town is. Will it be the fortune teller, or the town guard? Who knows!

So, on a scale of complexity with Bejeweled being a 1 and Master of Orion 3 being a 10, this is about a 3 or 4. In other words, perfect for what it is, and great for twenty clams.

Majority of the reviews on gamesites are pretty accurate. Hinterland: Orc Lords is a highly addicitive and fun RTS (real time strategy) game for the PC. With low cpu requirements it seems ideal for any gamer laptop or desktop. Despite it's low production value i.e. no voice acting, low quality sound effects, and graphics, it holds it replay value amazing well for the mere fact it delievers what most gamers want.

To explore, fight, build, level, command, and conquer.

With all these aspect it's very comparble to Diablo 1, Age of Empires, and a touch of Majesty...all very addicitive, fun, and time consuming games.

Orc Lords for it's price is a great deal,[..]is a lot of game. Unfortunely for a 2009 title it feels and play a lot more like a title from about 15 years ago. Still, I continue to find myself playing and after finishing a campaign, playing again with a higher difficulty setting, different hero/heroine, and method of winning. You may find yourself just admiring your small town just because.

There's a lot of RPG's, RTS's, out there but with so many, sometimes you just need a break from the deeply involved storylines and this is the answer. It has just enough hack and slash, micro managing, and wit to keep you entertained until the game you've been waiting for comes out next quarter.

Hinterland: Orc Lords would be perfect if it had the graphics of diablo 2 or Baldur's Gate, the ability to import customizable character protraits, more than 2 camera views, and some better sound effects.

4 stars and definitely worth [...]

Pro and Cons of Hinterland:

I bought this on the strength of other reviews and I actually enjoyed it a lot. Here's my take on the game and why you should buy it:

Pros-

1) lots of replay value
2) decent fighting action
3) lots of random loot, monsters and scenarios
4) different world, combines elements of video games: sorta Civilization meets fantasy, or Master of Magic type...
There are plenty of Diablo like elements in there: waygate type portals, drag and click etc.
5) ok music
6) fairly difficult combat for each mode.
7) fairly smooth action, point and click fast respoonse.



Cons-
1) cannot return to previously saved game, always constantly saves, so if someone dies you cannot go back to the point when the follower was alive. What's the point of saving then?
2) there is a relative lack explaning the functions of the game with the manual and inside the game. for example, I'd like to know what an upgrade of Inn to Tavern does for me (if anything).
3) No hot keys, you have to drag potions onto portraits of characters, this often results in losing a follower.
4) The music repeats its theme song over and over again, otherwise ok.
5) I don't like how there's a limited city size
6) The villains have the same layout as the heroes, which doesn't make sense.
7) I often run into the problems of clicking onto a building in a crowded town when I wish to exit. (I did solve this by using the region/town screen)

All and all,this game is completely worth the money, time and energy to invest. What I complain about in general are small nitpicking things, except for the hotkey and save issues.

This game is fine as a quick distraction, but there is no depth to the gameplay, and was only fun for a few days. I highly recommend Majesty 2 over this title. The two games are similar, but Majesty 2 is way more fun.

First off, I see people comparing this game to other games - some compare it to an rts - which it is definitely the farthest from - and some to old action rpg's - which it is definitely much closer to in nature but still not the same. It is unlike anything I have ever seen or played in 30+ years of gaming. yes, you go out and kill things - yes, you get to form a party but you can't control what they do - much to (my) your dismay sometimes. The comparison to majesty might be the closest what with using buildings to "recruit" npc's. However, you recruit them directly, one per building and THEN build the structure. It is from this pool then that you are allowed to choose up to three villagers to accompany you on "raiding". Your town produces gold which you use in turn to hire more townspeople and upgrade structures. You further augment gold from your raiding (killing of monsters). Raiding also allows you to secure locations which are needed to recruit additional types of npc townspeople. Once you've killed everything on the map - you "win".

On the innovation I give it a five. On fun I also give it a five. On the perfect blend of rts and rpg I also give it a five. On game length and replayability I give it a .1 -- that's right - .1

It looks like the team took all of a couple of weeks to make the game. It's incredibly simple - which is good - but it's also painfully short. You can play an entire game in a few hours. Once you've played a few - you've pretty much covered the entire territory of replayability. It is very much like one reviewer said "much like solitaire" It's the same thing over and over again with different minor variations as different cards are drawn (allegory statement not actual gameplay).

It's really unfortunate the team at tilted mill didn't take some time to actually make a campaign for this. This feels very much like an unfinished game played in "sandbox" or "random map" mode.

it's still a ton of fun - although short lived. I paid 10 bucks for it and I'd say that's about exactly what it's worth. I very much hope it's a prelude to something better and much more substantial by this talented team.

Hinterland Orc Lords is a pretty simple game, but it is that simplicity that makes it so enjoyable to play. It is quite easy to become addicted to playing it. If you are looking for something that is fun and simple that you will never grow tired of, then give Hinterland a try.

This is an interesting little game. First, it's not trying to do much: the game play length is short and there isn't any depth. Basically it's a Diablo style game with some shallow city building tacked on. What makes this game different is that it's a casual game that relies on replay rather than length and depth; a single game is not meant to engage you for weeks or even days.

I feel that it almost works, but that it's a little too shallow. More complexity on the town building and dungeon side would go a long way improving the game. Collecting things or having achievements would also be a plus.

If you're in the mood for a fast casual game this isn't a bad choice. The game play is fast paced and forces you to focus on what you're playing.

I'm sorry but this game is horrible the graphics are terrible they aren't even realistic looking and there is no story line all you do is just pick a difficulty and pick what you want your person to look like and just kill everything on the map its meaningless