Art of War: Holy Wars

Description
Upon finishing installation of this juggernaut, you're greeted with a message saying "Time to kick some Sovereign ass". I would like to say I followed that through, but that would make me a liar, because in actual fact, the Sovereign kicked my ass...which isn't the whole truth, as Oberths kicked my ass, but no matter how many times and no matter how many ships were sent at me, I kept on playing until my base was completely overrun by Dominion and Federation forces that turned my once proud Metathran Celestial fortress into rubble. And it was all fantastic fun.

You see, the thing about AoW is that it throws away pretty much every tactic in the book and replaces it with just two; mine as much as you can from as many sources as you can, whilst building as much of everything as humanly possible. Humanly being the operative word there as even on medium Ai difficulty it can be quite difficult to keep up with Ai enemy or allies. You simply don't have the co-ordination or speed to maintain such manic building as having fifty Dominion bug ships building on the go, which the Ai spams however, this isn't about the Dominion or the Romulans, although being spit-shined for a glossy finish, as they featured the first part to this mod. No, this is the turn of the big guns of the averagely average Federation and the new race to the block, the deadly loyalists of the Metathran.

As we've seen in the development process, the Metathran are completely new off the block and boast some of the most fantastic original designs in Armada, which is equalled only by their dominance late game. Whilst their early ships can barely tote a cannon of any sort, their big guns mean to do business and relay this by firing streams of torpedoes and rail beams that have been beautifully crafted, giving this mod an extra layer of graphical supremecy. Their ships both look bold and efficient, similarly to the Borg, whilst keeping their uniform look that means in battle, of which you will be swarmed in an almost neverending conflict from the minute the first phaser is fired, you'll never lose track of them. Granted, you'd argue that it's hard to lose a Hutet or Dominion dreadnought in battle, but you'll be surprised how little you'll pay direct attention to them when you've got a mass of a hundred other ships to control.

Gameplay mechanics are drastically changed, along with the interfaces. It might seem odd in Armada to not look up to see your resources, but after only five minutes, I found my self instinctively looking to their new position almost as if they had always been there. On the bad side, the general interface buttons on the right hand side (camera, tooltiips etc.) doesn't seem to work quite as well, but unless you're seriously using them, there shouldn't be that much need to worry about them. Whilst I'm also on the more negative side of things, the Metathran seemed to have a few bugs. Whilst none of them inherently effected gameplay (certainly no crashes and that goes for all 4 races when up against each other, making this not only a brilliant mod to play, but a reliable one in terms of not crashing) some were quite frustrating; the unusual, but cool, mining freighters seemed to have problems when docking at the respective station when I was playing as them, but the Ai seemed to have no trouble in terms of getting them into dock, suggesting some sort of pathing problem. Indeed, one of a few, such as when the Metathran freighters are in a queue, they'll slip inside one another, or the Federation HQ Starbase, which builds its ships far to the north of the actual model. Other than pathing, the Metathran super weapon which I was looking forward to detonating didn't quite want to cause any sort of explosion, meaning it and a few resources were lost along with it when it went dumbly up against the enemy fleet.

The Metathran also lack much in the way of select sounds, ie. when you select a starbase, you won't hear anything. Perhaps not so much of a problem, but some sounds would've been nice and with the possible non-entrance from 8472 (although cameoing their Frigates with the Kulinor's stolen special weapon) perhaps stealing their voices would be appropriate, given the Species almost fanatical devotion to purging the galaxy, of which there would seem to be a similar prospect with the Metathran. On the same point as similarity, there's nothing really new to the Federation. Seemingly every ship has a special weapon, most of which just fire extra torpedoes or extra phasers here and there that boost fleet prowess. In this mod, Starfleet does offer a comprehensive line-up of ships, so there's no real need to build one of each ship, as you can pretty much pick and chose the ships you like the look of, with most ships at a particular tech level being pretty similar in terms of defense and offensive value as each other.

What truly makes this mod though are the little things. There are defnitely plenty of them, from the animations on every small structure of the Metathran, to the mining beams and docking manuvers; it seems everything in this universe is living and I think that really helps to make the mod stand out. One of the reasons for this review taking so long is indeed because the mod is so ingrossing, it'll stop you from doing other things, whilst seemingly you'll never really achieve quite a lot in it. The way the mod plays, as I mentioned above, has the races duke it out on an intergalactic battlefield that never really ends. It's almost as if you're in a perpetual state of conflict with no end in sight. Many will love this, as you just get to progressively build bigger and bigger ships until either you, the Ai or a human opponent (this mod would just be lovely to play online against someone) finds some sort of weakness and exploits it, ending the conflict usually pretty suddenly after that point.

It'd take an awfully long time to make a list of all the features, so I'll let you discover them for yourselves, but I thought the maps warranted a comment. Although not essentially required, there have been a few maps created, purpose built to sustain the raging conflict of AoW. Though there aren't too many of them which isn't a huge problem as the mod comes with a map maker and everything is in check for you to create a new map, or edit a stock one so it is more playable for the style of AoW, which if you haven't tweaked from now is, "Build big. Blow up anything and everything".

If I had to say one truly disheartening comment, it'd be that with the mass of ships (that can easily break 1000 in one small area with 3-4 players) the action can become a bit too much and the game really starts to slow down, although not for long as in that lag, it is highly likely that your fleet has been decimated. For those with weaker PCs, I'd recommend either going on a stock map that doesn't have much dilithium on it (being solo with crew as the only resources in game) or a smaller AoW map with less teams. Don't worry, you won't be missing out, as there are plenty of explosions to go around.

I guess though it's time for a conclusion. Even though there are a few negative points, the ends truly justify the means and make this an utterly fantastic mod that is worthy of every player's hard drive. I'd almost go to say you'd be a fool not to download it. I haven't had this much fun in Armada 2 with a mod since Babylon 5 and I'd dare say that this is the best mod to hit Armada 2...until part 3 comes out, which features the Klingons (cry havoc and lets spam the Birds of war!) and the Borg (oh my God! The Spheres! The Spheres!) and is currently titled "Resistance is Fun!". 11 out of 10.

[i]In order to play the mod, [url="http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Star_Trek_Armada_2_Art_Of_War_Part_1;83619"]Art of War part 1[/url] needs to already be installed.
DIrect feedback can also be left on the forums, [url="http://forums.filefront.com/st-a2-modding-editing/344929-art-war-ii-quick-update-6.html"]here[/url].[/i]