Retrospective - Warhammer: Shadow Of The Horned Rat
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- In this we dive into another game you've probably never played. With a deep dive into what Warhammer RTS games were like in the past, back when they were made by a company called SSI studios.
I played this so much as a kid that I have the music and certain parts of the voice acting indelibly etched onto my brain.
AMBUSH!
@@oldmanbanjo”PREPARE!”
Engage!
We fear the beast!
Dark Omen had so many improvements over this it's hard to play this one now.
I'm going to eventually get around to doing a video on it. The thing I struggle with is for some odd reason I find the controls harder on Dark Omen when it comes to the PS1 and I can't get the PC version working at all. Also, the game is even harder if memory servers.
But I definitely want to finally see the ending after 20 years.
WaaaaAaaaaAaaaaarpstooOOoooone!
Played this to death as a kid. Have fond memories of my older brother swearing like a sailor when units decided to move in wrong directions or cannons exploded
Yeah, the cannons are either what wins you a battle or loses it for you.
I played it on ps1 and pc and still play it today.the music the atmosphere and the story is great
Yeah, narration from the old man in the cart is amazing.
Cool video :) I have really fond memories of the sequal - Dark Omen.
I may do a video on it, but at the moment PS1 emulation is the only viable option.
I think i did it the way you described, because i remember being stuck in this game for maybe 2 years, always losing pretty much at the altdorf-fight with grimgor. i didnt knew at the time that the canons are the key, i always led them shoot by themselfs instead of leading shots. and i remember endless waves of skavens and only beating the missions by shear force and luck with the siege weapons. The first year i didnt even knew about the treasures, leading to much confusing on my side on to why my runs would sometimes have "completely different items" - as i stumbled on them by pure chance only. And then - came the banner. the fukkin godly banner of terror. at first, i didnt knew what this thing even did as i slapped it on some infantry unit. suddenly, i was winning games. not by margains, but by crushing my enemies. i slapped the bad boy on the second cavalry you get (i think) and charged the hell out of everyone. it was the most badass feeling ever, after this strange game fukked me up for so long. after that, i was a warhammer-fan for life. And loved the skaven ever since, despite them pissing me off to no end in this game. 10/10, fukk the controls.
I love the game, but replaying it for this video. Oh my god, poor childhood me.
"Honor and a sore head do not pay the Innkeeper" - Dietrich.
I didn't know how true those words are when I first heard them at 12.
Hehe. The voice acting in this game was class.
"AMBUSH"
Finishing Dark Omen was my biggest achievement in my gaming history. Im gonna play shadow of the horned rat just to hear those engage sound effects
I'm going to do a retrospective of dark omen when I can get the chance, but I can only get it on PSX emulator...and it's very difficult.
I downloaded it and can run it using a DOS Emulator. PC much more preferable to PS2 Emulation. Yea, DO was hard but I keep hearing SoTHR is harder. I always liked the atmosphere in a battle when the unit commanders would say 'Engage!'. It was fucking awesome!!@@oldmanbanjo
This was such awesome game. I played it as a kid not even knowing english :) Later i picked it up again. I finished it quite a few times, each time trying to take other routs to see, what will change. As i allready knew what each mission looks like and where the hidden treasures are, i was able to make some games without loading the game (basically playing on Ironman mode). So then i made myself a challenge to beat the game without any cannon units. Only archers/crossbows. This option led to some new units being available to me that i never saw before (i remember the Reiksguard knight and i think it was the Volant Venators, both units armed with lances). And with some loading i was able to finish the game. I had i think about 5 or 6 units of cavalry and this was the key to victory. it was quite easy to make one frontal charge with infantry/cavalry and then circle around the unit and make a flank/rear charge with some lance armed cavalry. and most of the time this was enough to break the unit right on charge. it was very satisfiing to finish the game like this :)
I played a lot of Dark Omen. But i really missed the recruiting system of Horned rat. i did not like that you ca recruit your troops anywhere in the wilderness and no only only in cities and fortresses. But regarding the UI and graphics it was a blast in that time! Much improvement over the Horned rat :)
Yeah, it's a great game. I bet it did teach you what the phrase 'AMBUSH' meant lol. I'm going to eventually do a Dark Omen video, I only played a bit of it because it had to go back to Blackbuster.
@@oldmanbanjo If you enjoyed Horned rat, you will also enjoy Dark omen, i am sure of it :)
I loved Horned rat because it was very hard to master, compared to other ¨strategy¨ games. It is shame that such games are not developed these days...
Any other weird Warhammer universe RTS games I should over?
Edit: It's nice to see the algorithm finally picked up this video as opposed to usual rubbish I post. Big videos like this to come, including a Dark Omen one....when I beat it.....
ABSOLUTELY!!!! Please cover Final Liberation: Epic Warhammer 40,000 . Created during the glorious age of Live-Action Cutscenes. COMMISSAR HOLT IS THE ONLY MAN I WOULD FOLLOW INTO HELL!
My first encounter with Warhammer
Me too!
hard game? yes, but when you learned the different missions and accepted that cannons and wizards where the main way to kill the enemy things helped.
also playing it with a slow PC helped since everything but the winds of magic slowed down. Basically making wizards more powerful.
Also some units would improve massively with the right magic item. (the avengers with dread banner so they cause fear would autobreak any smaller unit that lost a round of combat)
they need to make a sequel to Dark Omen, a throwback game for us 50 and uppers
Sadly never going to happen as long as Sega have the license. I think the only way we get anything similar is if Creative Assembly go bust and don't end up making Total War: 40k. Which looking at SEGA's current financial report....is a possibility.
@@oldmanbanjo Sega owns the rights? Interesting...
@@Zennofobic Yup, they bought it and sold it to Creative Assembly back in like 2015. Before that it was Strategic Simulations before they went bust. They actually made around 5-10 Warhammer games. Most of them 40k.
@@oldmanbanjo I remember Chaos Gate, I haven't touched a video game in 20 years. Used to be a hardcore gamer into forming clans and playing in tournaments (Unreal Tournament, Americas Army). Too much online drama and I think I was into gaming to satisfy my Napoleon complex for organizing teams and leading people but became too time consuming. I do want to reload Dark Omen though but that will happen when I feel like learning how to modify the install to work with modern Windows.
Not only played it. One of the first games I finished. I am to this day very fond of its atmosphere.
I've Beaten it 1996!! Playstation
Did you also use mostly cannons? I'm going to try to beat Dark Omen next. That's one's gonna be rough.
Noone mentions how powerful wizards are. Especially Amber wizard. He could wipe entire armires. And with Celestial wizard together it was insane. On the other hand I never used cannons. They are not very reliable and accurate. Cavalry and wizards were key to victory for me :)
The reason for this, at least for me is I try and use them, get them killed from mismicro. It's easier on the PS1 though than PC - but I just struggle.
@@oldmanbanjo Interesting I played PS1 version, didn't know the PC version was not as good. Yeah you have to protect your wizard well. I used to keep a wizard and ranged units together so if something runs to him I just sacrifice my ranged unit to keep enemies in close combat. Though Curse of Anrahir on Amber wizard (forgive me if I misspell any name here, lol) would slow down any threat coming to him while your ranged units can shoot them down. You should level up your Amber wizard to max because he is a serious threat then. Hunting spear one shots most of characters and beasts and has decent range. Flock of doom one shots entire unit and if it doesn't it makes them panic and run away. There's one more spell which is absolutely insane that makes enemy unit completely freeze and do nothing and it doesn't go away until you declare another target of spell(and yeah you can shoot them while they are frozen, they can't run away in panic). So at any time you can handle 2-3 units with Amber Wizard alone and if you have Celestial wizard with him you can build a wall and stand in corner of a map while your enemies have to walk around it all the time while they being shot by everything...
I used to find leveling up the celestial and bright wizards far better because I was bad at controlling or using the amber Wizards spells. I didn't know what I was doing
i used to love this and the other one dark omen i think played them on ps1
The real store clerk was out for lunch, the entity that you interacted with was actually sigmar guiding on the path to his righteous glory lol i still consider myself new to the warhammer franchise but warhammer fantasy got me more interested, the skavens form of speech is always the best-best
I actually lol'd irl.
Great stuff mate. This reminds me of the good ol days when buying and playing computor games was like the wild west. The cheap games boxes at the game store where amazing.
Great video.. I just got it from GOG and runs great on Win10. These older 40k games are really sucking me in. Great gameplay
SOTHR is my Favorite Old School RTS! I got it on PS1 when it came out on a whim. I already Loved RPGs by then so I was like "Hmmmm I really like the cover art! Ima grab this!" Fell in love with it almost instantly! The controls were way more clunky on controller than keyboard and mouse, I know that now. Just grabbed it up recently on GoG real cheap! Alot of good memories for less than 2 bucks! This one Is OG in my book! Separates the "Strong" from the "weak" In RTS land!
Really enjoyed that one!
Aw thanks dude, means alot.
I liked the game back in thee day, but it was unpredictable how the dice would go.
I might still have the box for it with thee book with all the monster stats in my basement.
While I recall also playing Dark Omen my memories of that game is more shaky.
To me Skaven talk like they do in this game more so than how they talk in Total War or Vermintide.
The magic system in Dark Omen was so much better, and your cannons do not blow up randomly!
I remember having this on my ps1 as a kid. Nothing came close until I came across the total war series
My introduction to Warhammer. I have all the music set engraved to my head. I remember how hard controls were (even more if you have a huge manual in English and you're an 11 year old non-native speaker). Once I understood how it's played, I loved it.
The attrition system was very unique - and some paths you could take could destroy you (the unwinnable pass over the mountains). On the other hand, you had other paths that were opening completely new narrative opportunities, this game definitely was worth multiple plays, and it had very rewarding strategy and tactics. I feel it was harder and smarter than Dark Omen, because in Dark Omen you could trigger and kite one unit of the opponent at a time, while here entire bunches were noticing you and coming at you and you had to fight at multiple fronts and protect your flanks.
Yes, some things were junky (like linking rate of fire to initiative, those wood elves were practically holding machine guns).
I haven't seen another game oozing so much Warhammer lore until Rogue Trader.
One of the best games in gamer history, alongside Ultima Underworld and X-Wing.
Dude! X-Wing Alliance is on my retrospective list. Give me another....six months to get to it
Could never clear it as a kid. Could get to the 2nd last battle. Always loved playing it. May have to foenload and have another crack
I just did on psxe android, very choppy and hard to play with the pad. So nostalgic though, spent 4hrs on it yesterday, felt like Xmas 97 again 😂 dark omen next!
I still have the original. Great game.
I watched Ravandil years ago before knowing of this game. A long time mystery has finally been solved.
i beat this game proper as a grown up
Played it, won it. My best achievement in a 40 years of gaming.
Yeah, replaying for this video showed me that I wasn't just a kid bad at games - it was HAAARD.
@@oldmanbanjo SO HARD!!
Great video!
They just don't make them like they used to.
No they do not. But at least I don't have to reload this much!
this game misses some management options that were corrected in Dark Omen : low reinforcements, couldn't manage magic items properly... Great musics, game's CD can be read as audioCD. The manual was actually also a mini Warhammer rulebook.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that! My copy was used so the manual was a bit ratty. But yeah, it was cool - the reinforcements suck - but on PC you can....fix that.
did anyone ever complete shadow of the horned rat? from what i remember, you get to a point where you can go west and help the dwarves now and get a bad ending, or you can go through the goblin camps to get further into the game for the proper ending, and i dont know anyone that got through the goblin camps.
I can get through the first one but you lose too many men, cant buy re-inforcements, and have to get through 2 even bigger goblin camps after that.
If anyone can do that 100/10 well played sir.
I've beaten the game so have a few other commentors'. The issue is just you need to reload a lot if you don't win a battle hard enough.
beat it a number of times. But yes reloading saves is a must if you take heavy casualties.
It was a great looking game but I really struggled with it.
Had the PS version. It had issues loading and eventually became unplayable. Was stuck on a level at athel loren if i remember right. A doomwheel would annihilate my entire army single handedly. Didnt matter what i threw at it hammerers with great weapons. Slayers that never wounded on worse than 4+. A treeman, my knights would charge it with lances. All would die
Yeah, so that was the whole issue I raised in the video. If you check some of the other comments on this video, you cannot beat the Athel Loren fight. Which is crazy frustrating. You've got to go help the dwarves and then circle around. That Skaven army is too big.
@@oldmanbanjo they didn't need the rest of the army. The doomwheel would defeat me all on its own. Not sure what happened to the game after that. Would be nice to play it again one day and take the correct route.
SOTHR was an absolute ARSE of a game to beat. I don’t think I ever did….
I was so pleased when I did. I finally realised the power of cannons. Dark Omen...not so much
@@oldmanbanjo never played that one… kinda got the final fantasy and metal gear bugs. Dawn of war changed all that though… 🤘🏻🇬🇧 awesome video man.
thanks man GJ
This game is both brutal and clunky, repeating a mission over and over did feel a bit like a chore sometimes, but when you are in the mood in a fantastic experience.
I played the crap out of it the ps1 version loved it ❤ I wish it would get a modern remake it would be a great game on mobile…. But space marine 2 is going to be amazing!!!!
Our brothers up North in Zuthba are in Dia need of assistance commander!
I do not remember the Graphics being so bad..... XD
Clips here are from the DOS version. The PS1 version had slightly higher resolution graphics.
@@oldmanbanjo cheers buddy, thanks for the info
cool video bro, i remember those days
Aw awesome. Did you play Dark Omen too? Was it good?
@@oldmanbanjo i didnt play it, i remember when it came out. i was hooked on the elder scrolls 1 or 2 at the time, either arena or daggerfall. games were more magical and misterious back then werent they? before there were guides to every nook and crany. i think your video show that pretty well, how gaming felt back then. i subscribed
Oh I had that bloody annoying game, a massive green foot used to always squash my starting units early in the game and that was it, game over man. Utter rubbish
I played,, and beated, Shadow of the Horned Rat back in the 90"s
I love it
Aw thanks dude. I'm glad this video is slowly taking off. More to come including a Dark Omen retrospective and a whole 'old 40k games' retrospective. You remember Final Liberation?
SOTHR was way harder than Dark Omen on the PlayStation.
I played it, a lot to be honest. Took me a while to finish it but i never gave up.
:)
I still own this game
What's it going for on ebay?
@@oldmanbanjo no idea..my copy is not for sale
Ah, so you've just had it all this time? I wish I'd kept mine. It might be buried away in a box. That box art was peak 2000s. @@devonwong6471
@@oldmanbanjo 90's even :D
In warhammer fantasy, my favourite faction is Estalia
i wanna play in this game again but with graphic engine warhammer 3)))
Lol Red Alert is a great game though!
The cut scenes are fantastic
Yeah they really were. I'm going to start a second channel for longer retro-retrospectives in the future and I'll do a video with all of them...sometime in 2028 when time allows.
@@oldmanbanjo 2028?? Good idea though!
great vid!
Ahh thanks!
yeah you can beat zufbar missions xd
I didn't say you can't beat the zufbar missions. I was asking if you can beat the game WITHOUT playing the Zufbar missions. I've never seen anyone do it.
@@oldmanbanjo the game forces you to go to Zhufbar, no matter which of 3 routes you choose (straight to Zhufbar/Carlsson extra missions/Loren early). Route to Loren ends at the mission with lots of Trolls, where all your army auto-flees
5:37 : That looks like a bleached version of Nicholas Cage lmao
I never saw it before....
I played this 😂😂😂
.,.
After recently going back to this and the PS1 version, I have to say, I think the PS1 "despite the controller" is a better version of the game. in my top 10 PS1 games definately.
Yup, I'm currently playing through Dark Omen to make a video on it. I think the PS1 versions are superior having played both now.
@@oldmanbanjo I'd say that PS1 version of SOTHR is easily better in terms of controls, framerate and graphics, as well as spellcasting - Amber Spear is godlike compared to PC (although PS1 doesn't have dwarven Gyrocopters).
Regarding the Dark Omen, I'd say they're really similar to each other, but PC version wins by a small margin with graphics and audio this time, as well as online multiplayer
@@1ochotnik I agree completely
Hey there! I just randomly stumbled upon this video. I'm not into Warhammer at all, but I really liked your narration and the time and effort put into this. I can tell this game means something to you and even if Warhammer isn't something that interests me, the way you present the game and structure your video feels like something _I_ would do about a topic I'm passionate about. So for that alone, take my thumbs up and keep at it!
Aw thanks. It's nice to see the algorithm picked this video up after all these years. I think it's because one of my other videos just blew up.