Here's a game I can only imagine was developed by people who played WarCraft 3 and thought they totally should make one of those, then learned the hard way that making RTS games is not an easy thing. The resulting product boasts an extraordinary feature list on Steam, all of which ranges from barely true, to exaggeration, to flat-out falsehoods, and amounts to a virtually unplayable experience.

The story takes place as the Elven homeland from this extremely forgettable fantasy land is under siege, and follows Elhant the elven ranger as he tries to stop it. Elhant is such an incredible, incredible prick, most of the experience is spent hoping he dies a horrible, painful death. Alas, we never get to see that, as his story ends in a cliffhanger that was never continued, presumably because the first game in this supposed trilogy tanked.

HoAE is completely unbalanced: most campaign stages begin with the enemy swarming and killing most of your pre-deployed army, meaning you'll spend the next several minutes kiting with your hero. It's also filled with bugs, ranging from benign, like being able to kill enemies from behind walls, to painful, like pathfinding issues with the friendly AI, to flat-out crashes mid-mission. Strategizing is less about the units and more about how to play the jank in your favor.

I have no idea how this has a mostly positive rating on Steam -- I'm guessing the game either has a really dedicated multiplayer scene, or there's shenanigans going on. I'm guessing the latter, since it used to be Mixed back when I bought it. Either way, don't fall for it. Replay WarCraft III instead, and hope that one day the RTS genre makes a ressurgence.