That was a year ago.

Now, Liquid Entertainment seeks to rejeuvenate the Battle Realms franchise with its Winter of the Wolf expansion pack. Players are carried back seven years prior to the events of the original Battle Realms, and dropped into the role of Grayback, Zen Master of the Wolf Clan. Betrayed by the Serpent Clan and cast into slavery by the Lotus, players must guide Grayback through his quest to break his clan free of their bonds, escape the slave mines, and ultimately reclaim their heritage. Along the way, they'll encounter new friendly and hostile units, re-discover the druidic magic of the Wolf, and ultimately square off against the toughest troops of two mighty clans before they can regain their freedom.

Players of the original Battle Realms should be able to leap into all of this with both feet. The interface remains almost exactly the same as the original title, though both the AI and the pathfinding are much improved, and consequently it doesn't take long to re-discover the winning tactics of the original campaign. Or rather, it wouldn't take long, except that players are forced through a series of long, extremely linear mission-based scenarios before they can get into the meat of the game. By way of an introduction to the various unit types, including the abilities of the Zen Masters, Winter of the Wolf elects to take the players through a series of gray, drab, depressing mines, in order to allow Grayback the opportunity to free his fellow Wolf clansmen. While it certainly does set the stage for the action to come, both the layout and the overall feel of the missions seems to indicate that they exist not so much to enrich the gaming experience as to merely lengthen it -- and lengthen it they certainly do. At the end of the first mission to escape the mines, I actually groaned out loud when, during the ensuing cutscene, Grayback announced that he was going back to free each and every one of his brethren. Only after a third long, winding trip through the slave pits were Grayback and I finally free to start building structures, training units and getting into the real-time strategy portion of the game.

It's a shame, too, because Battle Realms is still a lot of fun to play. Battles are still huge, animated and frantic, making even the smallest of engagements more about the preparation than any kind of battlefield maneuvering. Many of the scenarios include multiple objectives, some of which are entertaining enough to re-load and try again -- on one map, for example, a lone Wolf Zen Master must run along hilltops, rolling boulders down a hill and destroying a Lotus encampment, while all the while evading disease-spewing abominations. The balance between water and rice remains to be one of the most elegant resource gathering systems I've seen in an RTS, and is made all the more complicated by random blizzards, which can halt rice growth for a short time. And finally, the basic tensions between worker and warrior populations still make up the fundamental challenge of the game, which is balanced out by the novelty of exploring the strengths and liabilities of the Wolf Clan.

Sadly, the Wolf are slightly more conventional than the Serpent or Dragon clans, and consequently they give Winter of the Wolf a much less novel feel. Where the original Battle Realms derived much of its fun from the novelty of playing anime-style kung-fu characters, Winter of the Wolf reverts to a tribe that's more or less a blend of the Orcs and the Humans from the original Warcraft. The freshness of the Japanese influence seems somehow diminished when it's applied to the Wolf, if not altogether confusing -- does a clan sporting Scottish accents, bearskin cloaks, and employing druidic magic especially care about Yin and Yang, for instance?

All other things aside, Winter of the Wolf does an unfortunately good job of displaying Battle Realms' age. The sprites are still move smoothly enough, but their blockiness and rough textures have never seem more in evidence, and despite the addition of snowy terrain, frosty breath and footprints in the snow, the game still very much looks and sounds dated. It seems unfair to bring these details to light, considering that the game was one of the best games of 2001, but when compared to similarly 3D-powered RTS titles like Warcraft III or Age of Mythology, well, Winter of the Wolf can only confirm that Battle Realms was one of the best games of 2001.

So, for those who have already worked their way through the hot RTS titles of the year and are looking for a fresh challenge, or those who simply can't get enough of the Battle Realms universe, Winter of the Wolf is a good choice. However, casual fans of the original title, or those looking to get their feet wet in the real-time gaming arena, would be better off giving it the cold shoulder.