Northland – PC – Preview 2

A few months ago, I was
fortunate enough to get to preview the new GMX Media and Funatics Software RTS
style title called Northland. Northland is actually a continuation of the game
Cultures 2, which revolves around the adventures of Bjarni (son of Leif
Erickson) as he and some friends that he met on his journeys went to stop a huge
serpent and the end of the world. In Northland, one of his friends named

Hatchie
from the Orient calls on Bjarni and his soon to be wife, Cyra to help him stop
serpentine creatures that are spreading chaos and destruction throughout

Arabia.
In the original preview, there wasn’t a whole lot that had seemed to change from
Cultures 2. Well, there are now some new additions since the game has grown
since then, so I’ll detail them for you here. The original preview can be found
at this link:

https://www.gamezone.com/gzreviews/p21824.htm

 

In Cultures 2, the large
majority of the focus seemed to be on building up your Viking civilization and
completing relatively simple missions to find your friends and build diplomacy
with other cultures. In the most recent Northland demo, the biggest change that
seemed to pop up with both demo maps was a higher focus on fighting and action.
The simplistic “Go and check out the smoke cloud” mission style was replaced
with “The neighboring kingdom is almost empty, and the king tells you of demon
guardians that need to be destroyed” kind of thing. This made it a little more
exciting, and I really got intense in trying to find the lairs.

 

This new focus on combat
also presented a neat little change of direction for my Viking villages as well,
since it suddenly became more important to focus a lot faster and heavier on
building things like defensive towers, training camps, and even schools to
research and learn better technology quicker … especially when it was revealed
that a civilization of outlaws that I had very bad relations with was discovered
soon into the start of the game, therefore scrapping my initial thoughts of
“Well, I’ll just build my village for however long I want”, which I did a lot of
in Cultures 2. Of course, I also needed this kind of plan to take out demons
too, as mentioned in the earlier paragraph.

 

Another thing that I saw in
Northland was that the stories and mission based characters or items seemed to
revolve a little more on fantasy creatures and magic. Magic chests have been
added into areas of the map that can be found and opened by a hero which contain
restore potions and whatnot, and creatures like demons and large serpents have
been added into the storyline and missions so humans won’t be the only enemy to
fight here. There were more than humans in Cultures 2 of course, especially
considering the plot, but there again just seems to be more focus being placed
on it to make it more of a fantasy style of gameplay. Cultures 2 had a lot of
actual Norse mythology embedded in it, which remains here in Northland as well
too though, so for those of you who loved the original … it’s still in there. 

 

Lastly, it seemed as though
the leveling up of the characters and the buildings that I was able to build and
upgrade seemed to churn out a lot faster, speeding up the overall pace of the
game, and food even seemed to go a little quicker as well putting a higher
emphasis on making sure that promotions (taking a character from farmer to
miller to baker, etc.) were more of a focus.  

 

Graphics and soundwise,
Northland is still shaping up to carry on the cartoony and fun little style of
the Cultures 2 series, even with the higher combat focus. The interface remained
very user friendly and quick to maneuver with, and there will even be the
addition of a “build your own map” feature so you can hop online with friends
and challenge them in areas that you design yourself.

 

Cultures 2 was one of those
rare, overlooked titles that tends to pass the world by at times, and Northland
is shaping up to not only carry the torch of it’s predecessor … but also become
better than what it was originally based on. The new addition of a higher combat
focus and more mythology and magic being added in turned out to be a welcome and
faster paced change, so I’m really looking forward to the finished product.