Highland Warriors is a real-time strategy game that brings together the great battles between Scotland and England with some of the most innovative gaming technology available today. The story line spans the 500 years of history covered in the timeline mentioned above. There are 4 clans in the game: the MacKay Clan (Mystics), the English, the Cameron Clan (Warriors), and the MacDonald Clan (Merchants). You begin as the MacKay Clan, uniting Scotland for the first time (since prior to that period the Country was divided by race, class and clan.) During the next campaign the player becomes English (King Edward) and is fighting to enslave Scotland for England. Following the English Campaign, William Wallace leads the Cameron Clans Campaign's, sparking the Scottish revolution. The final campaign involves the MacDonald Clan uniting Scotland under one crown, that of Robert the Bruce. The story has great appeal to anyone wanting to know more about Scottish history.

In terms of gameplay, Highland Warriors is pretty standard real-time strategy fare. You have to gather resources like food, minerals, wood to fuel the creation of numerous civil (town center, mill, farm, mines) and military buildings (barracks) and units (farming peasants, builders, swordsmen, armored cavalry, axe warriors, longbowmen, and many more). You can actually upgrade these units to become master in one particular task, such as building, cutting down wood and farming. That means that workers gain experience points as they gather a certain type of resource, and after a while, they can obtain a master-craftsman award that lets them gather that specific resource more quickly, at the expense of being more inefficient at gathering other kinds of resources. For example, a Wood Cutter can, if cutting wood for long enough, become a Master Wood Cutter, and then he can cut wood more efficiently, but at the same time, he becomes less proficient at all other duties you ask him to perform. The system of master-workers also adds precious little strategy to the game.

The more exiting characters are the Heroes, each Clan has its own Hero with special talents, as well as the ability to make the units around them better, or in some cases worse. As I mentioned above, there are four races in Highland Warriors: the English, The Mystics (The MacKay Clan), The Merchants (The MacDonald Clan) and The Warriors (The Cameron Clan). Each race has dramatically different combat units that have unique strengths and weaknesses as well as sharing some of the more basic units and buildings. The campaigns in the game (one for each side) are pretty large and will do well to entertain you for awhile but there's a slight problem, it's just too easy. There is no doubt that any users new to this style of game will appreciate this very "high" playability, however veteran players will complete the game within two days. Also the AI can be pretty frustrating, especially for those of you who didn't install the retail patch v1.1. There were some AI issues like poor path-finding, lag during movement, some units that mysteriously refuse to attack on order, or even units that accidentally killing themselves. That's why I gave the game only 65% despite the fact that v1.1 patch fixed many of the problems. Highland Warriors has some good ideas, but it definitely lacks polish. I really don't understand why the press demo I have played last year had better working AI then the final retail version.

With so many RTS games on the market, and newer ones coming out by the week, it's really difficult to recommend this game You might think I didn't like Highland Warriors after reading this review. Truth is, I thought the game was good, but not good enough to warrant a higher rating (bugs, high retail price). I strongly recommend trying this game (Demo1 / Demo2) out before purchase. For some, the game may be incredible...for others, it may be very forgettable.

System requirements
Minimum: Intel Pentium III 800 MHz, 128MB RAM (256MB for Win2k/XP), GeForce2 MX 32MB (or comparable ATI), 850MB HDD free
Recommended: Intel Pentium IV 1,3 GHz, 256MB RAM, GeForce3 64MB RAM (or comparable ATI)