My Thera review

**Julianus Flavius** · December 27, 2009, 05:47 PM

As a gamer, I always look to reviews to decide which games to buy. However, I can't help but notice that Thera has no review with advice/praise for Oneill and a way of showing people why they should download the mod.
So (Drum Roll) here's my Thera review.

When it comes to mods, historical accuracy mods tend to be the main ones. Although many of these mods do their job very well, it sometimes feels a bit stale, where the player feels 'straightjacketed' into playing a particular way, taking particular provinces. For example, I have never played a game as Romans where my objective was not to conquer the historical Roman empire's lands.
One mod stands out from the crowd: Thera. Players are free to conquer as they please, because the world is a completely fantasy one. Sure, it's not perfect, some voices need changing (Why not make the Romuli use the R:TW vanilla voices, and the Hispanics and Valahllians use Rome barbarian voices?) and the city layouts need to be changed (Why not ask EBII if you can use their Roman layout for the Romuli?), but the mod is fun, pure and simple. It reminds me of the Warhammer Fantasy universe, with echoes of our own world woven into a completely new story that feels at once refreashing and familiar. Basically, the world of Thera is every bit as immersive and complex as our own.
The unit models are excellent. The map avoids the vice of having huge clumps of forest but still makes choke points and vital passes. The latest version is the best yet, with some factions getting a new interface (Romuli is all classical-looking, for example) and all-new music.
In conclusion, this mod is the mod for people who don't like mods that are strictly historical, because said mods can tend to have heaps of grey and brown troops that are the same fighting each other all the time, with next-door-to-no variation between factions, whereas Thera has vibrant colours, lots of faction differences and all are different, so much so that removing a faction in a campaign feels like taking something irrepacable from the world. In vanilla, you conquer Hungary, Poland, and Denmark, and they are so drab that they aren't missed. In Thera, you conquer one faction and it feels like you've removed a whole culture from the game.
9.3/10 overall
9.8/10 graphics
9.1/10 gameplay
9/10 sound

**TheFirstONeill** · December 27, 2009, 05:58 PM

Since this is a pre releasse beta, we have not done any aggressive marketing of the mod, that will be done on the full release, to ensure all the wrinkles are ironed out.

Regarding the voices, adding more soundpacks increases the filesize by a large amount, and with the compressed installer already at 875mg, the benefits are outwieghed by the increase in file size. However a huge amout of work has gone into the sounds, removing references to vanilla factions (england, france scotland in ) in strat map voices, and prebattle speeches, ect. Along with new music types including roman-esqe and oriental music

Praise should go to the entire team of Tzar, Aduellist, and Eothese, along with the carry over elements from version 2 whcih were crafted by Caki .

(oh and its O'Neill,

)

Thank you for your input into the project, and I hope you enjoy the full version, which wil be released in the new year. Work over the holiday season means there are actually a lot more changes from the Beta than I had orginally planned.

**Julianus Flavius** · December 27, 2009, 06:28 PM

Fixed the spelling error

Maybe you could do a seprate sounds download. That way, people that don't really listen to the voices won't have to cop the extra download size.
But then you'll have 2 different versions of Thera floating around and tracking bugs will be hard. You have a really hard job don't you, trying to decide what to change and what to leave (I've only really understood that when I tried to start my own mod)

**The Holy Pilgrim** · December 27, 2009, 06:43 PM

Why not just make an add-on sound mod that you can just apply to Thera (sound folder only download). The normal version will still have the sounds folder, but the little sub-mod would have the files Julianus Flavius suggested.

P.S, what will be in the final release that isn't in the beta? I'm just curious.