Gives RTS fans a taste of wider strategy, and strategy fans a taste of RTS.

Seven Kingdoms II strikes a delicate balance well; it presents enough strategic problems to keep a wargamer happy, while still being fast-paced enough to cater to fans of RTS games. It provides a very rich gaming experience right from the clean lines of the beautifully presented main menu.

The general plot is familiar enough; as the King of a small civilization, you must expand your territory and influence over a map containing independent towns and enemy powers. While all this is going on, the Fryhtans (big nasty monsters) are also expanding. (For a more blood-soaked game, it is possible to play as one of the Fryhtan races rather than as humans.) You win by being the last player standing, although in set-up it is possible to alter the victory conditions. More peaceful players will be reassured that it's possible to win by being one of only two powers left if you're allied, and that kingdoms can be conquered by "buying" them if you're patient enough to develop your economy rather than your war-machine.

Towns are the key to the game; they are full of peasants who provide soldiers for your forts, and workers for your factories and mines. As the game progresses they can also be trained as Special Units, or work as researchers in your Towers of Science. Each town is composed of members of one particular race; independent towns can be persuaded to join your kingdom by a mixture of a General of their race in a fort nearby, or a spy spreading propaganda for you, or employment in the form of nearby buildings and markets. Units of races other than those in your controlled towns can be hired in Inns.

The mention of spies shows how rich the game is. Your spies can be infiltrated into enemy forts; if the enemy subsequently promotes your spy to be the fort's General (warfare leads to quite a turnover of Generals!) then he can capture the fort along with all its troops. On the other hand, on the easier difficulty levels, this whole part of the game can be completely ignored, and herein lies the key to the 7K2's replayability; the ease of customizing it.

When setting up a game, almost everything can be changed. You don't like the hassle of setting up new towns? Click, and your initial town is guaranteed to be near a mineral deposit. You want more Fryhtans, or none at all? Fog-of-War or not? An unexplored map? Almost no money? Or even: you don't want to mess about with all these option screens? Fine, just choose a pre-set difficulty level and away you go!

Similarly, within the game, adrenaline addicts can turn the speed up; and strategists will be relieved to hear that orders can be issued to units while paused. Town workforce-distribution, research, combat, and trade routes can be micromanaged to the sim-fan's delight, or left for the computer to cope with once vague orders have been given.

There is full multiplayer capability (as is now expected in such games) and a very interesting Campaign Mode in which scenarios are randomly generated, also adding to replayability. The graphics are cleanly drawn, with (mostly) different tilesets for each race, the sound is atmospheric, and touches like individual names for every unit make 7K2 an immersive experience. A standard game can be completed in about two hours, something which many empire game writers seem to have forgotten is important to some of us!

Only a few minor niggles: some of the tutorial missions don't quite play out as described. It can be very fiddly to set up trade routes. While there are hot-keys for NEARLY everything, a few useful ones have been omitted (e.g. cycling through civilian builders). And the manual repeats a lot of basic information while remaining strangely silent about other details.

But these are very minor. I haven't played such an enjoyable game for a very long time, and I recommend it to all strategy fans.

Reviewed by Marc Read, PC Gameworld.