Thanks for watching! Have you ever played ParaWorld? Was this a "childhood gem" of yours? Let me know what obscure early 2000s game I should play next! Subscribe: ua-cam.com/channels/-nIhxjNqjcm8EmpPWBg3wA.html Buy me a Coffee: ko-fi.com/jauwn Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Jauwnio
Hey Jauwn, I do have a very obscure German game from my childhood, but I am not sure it'd be up your alley: Desperabis. It was released in 2000, but not commercially, no, this is a freeware first person action adventure created by one or two guys on a custom engine - for MS-DOS. It was the type of game you'd find on those CDs that came with gaming magazines around that time. As far as late 90s/early 2000s freeware games went this one had a lot content for such a small team. I last tried to play it ages ago, but DosBox never wants to use the right speed. There are videos of someone playing it normally however so it should be possible. Also: there is no English translation. Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see someone shine a light on games that kinda came and went or where never really noticed at all!
While you are on a sort of streak looking at german RTS games, I’ll pitch in both the settlers series as well as SpellForce (the latter being a true childhood classic of mine) Edit: I’ll also add Earth 2160, the factions in that one were super cool back in the day
I personally recommend Goblin Commander : Unleash the Horde! It's a fairly obscure console action/RTS hybrid with a lot of jank, but also a lot of charm :)
Paraworld looks like a game I'd have loved back in the day. Gives me real Age of Mythology vibes. And Startopia would be my suggestion. Or Republic The Revolution (A political/revolution sim set in a post USSR hellhole from the makers of Evil Genius). Still never seen anyone cover that game.
I feel bad for SEK, I didn't even know their games existed until now but they all seem so cool and original and it feels like they deserved more praise.
There's a really cool indie RTS that came out recently I like called Against the Storm, but other than that I really have only been playing Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft 2. D.O.R.F looks awesome too but that's not out yet
@@jauwnI forget the name but there's one being developed currently that looks like a spiritual successor to Command and Conquer. Ok, looked it up it's Tempest Rising. Looks pretty cool.
I'm sure you've grappled with what to do once NFT games stop being interesting to talk about, and I think you've definitely found your stride with these deep-dive essays on obscure foreign games. The amount of work you put in is impressive. Thank you for the great entertainment Jauwnathan
ParaWorld was a great title. I remember game journals back then lamenting that the game as prone to fail because the RTS genre was as good as dead back then. If I am correct, it was the most expensive german videogame back then.
If you're on a "weird RTS with innovative stuff that is actually just okay overall" streak, I would LOVE to see a video on LEGO Rock Raiders (or its fan remake, Manic Miners)
That's a very confusing title because I'd immediately think it was a remake/sequel for Manic Minor on the ZX Spectrum, rather than having any connections with the Lego game
Man, what a blast from the past. I thought I misread the title and thumbnail first, but no, it was actually ParaWorld. One of my most beloved games of all time because of how unique it was and sadly still is. We need more dinosaurs! (And bring back Dino Crisis, Capcom!) Also, even as a German myself I never realized it was actually developed here until the studio had announced their closure back then, shattering all my hopes of a sequel to it.
It cannot be understated how high quality these review videos are. It’s remarkable for these videos to be this good given Jauwn hasn’t even been making them for too long. They remind me of Mandalore Gaming videos.
Basing this on info from another review. The unit management system was so good apperantly that the founder of the ESL (a german gaming Esport organization) left a quote on it stating that they knew what makes a EXCELLENT Esports title "The creators of ParaWorld have understood what ingredients you need for an excellent eSports-title" Also there are apperantly still people that play it, you just gotta search for them, a video creator by the name Doped Bones did a review where he coverd the game and talked about the mod side of it and included instructions how to help play the Multiplayer if someone here would be interested. With that said im glad to see this game has some attention thrown its way, speaking as someone who had a poster of this game hang on his wall for at least a decade with that Glorious Trex hanging above my bed. Thanks for covering it.
dude WHAT?!?! I tried so many times to figure it out, I even read the whole manual looking for that and swear I couldn't find anything explaining how to do it. I guess i gotta re-do the video now lol
That timing is impeccable. I just finished a 4 day 100% playthrough of the campaign on hard difficulty yesterday, and have been giving Mirage mod a shot now that CEP mod has been discontinued for about 10 years already, been playing around with the map editor again, took me right back to my childhood. It is a very janky rts compared to the likes of SC2 but still holds a special place in my heart til this day.
@@Radnugget More specifically, obscure retro PC games. There are way more of them than console games, and the vast majority of them have been forgotten. It's nice to see another channel cover games that people most likely have never seen or heard of before.
@@percher4824 yep, PC games is my niche. I never had a console growing up until the PS2 and my dad had a “gaming” PC in the late 90s early 2000s when I was young so I really only knew PC gaming
From what I know, the expantion works only in german and polish, but there is a dedicated community on discord keeping the game alive, both with multiplayer and patches, of which I'm a proud member. This is still one of my favourite games of all time, even after playing over 1000 games from different genres. This game may be a relic forgotten by most, but it still lives on in it's full glory with us, the players
RTS games went from one of my most played, most beloved game genres to the one I straight up won't play anymore because I've had more than enough of them for the rest of my life. I wish I'd played this one back in the day though, it looks like fun
Yeah, like I said in the video, the strict adherence to the "RTS formula" means that basically every variation of the genre had already been done by 2010. Plus with how complicated they are to make, it seems that most devs moved their resources to other more popular genres
I stopped playing them because they didn't evolved. I wish the 90's mindset would be still here where developers would care less about money and more about creating something what doesn't exist yet.
1:14 Ironically, if one goes by the proper meaning of strategy, Hearts of Iron is the only real-time strategy game on this chart, all the others would be real-time tactics games, but the genre has a broken name, so I agree that it does not really fit in there.
Exactly, RTS to me really basically means “command and conquer inspired”. I guess that’s why they had to invent “grand strategy” to mean that those games are the true strategy game, or whatever 😂
@@jauwn Yeah, makes perfect sense. Grand strategy is the layer above strategy, so it is also correct or actually more correct for Hearts of Iron. From smallest (time/space) to largest it is: tactics, operations, strategy & grand strategy. Hearts of Iron IV, basically covers all 4, since one also shuffles around single divisions.
I remember reading an article about this game with pretty impressive screenshots of dino textures. If I remember correctly they were amazed at bump mapping on each unit (that was before normal mapping was a thing). I was curious about it. And then completely forgot about it.
The game had some seriously impressive texturing and modeling, especially in that intro cinematic. I saw a lot of articles from during the game's pre-production hyping that up
I think I might be one of the few people on earth who had some pre-release hype for this game. My friends and I played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Age of Mythology from 2003 to 2006, and we all bought the game roughly around release. Turns out my laptop who could run 2002 games fine couldn't handle the game, so I played the game mostly at my friends house using his dad's pc. When I finally got a real desktop pc in 2008, I finally played the campaign the whole way through (I believe I had to buy the special edition because my first game got the disk scratched). The special edition was interesting (not in a good way). The manual was bound together wrong, with pages missing and other duplicated. The game had 3 additional campaign missions that were way harder and had less voiceover, in retrospect you could clearly see the financial porblems after release.
I think there was actually a lot of hype for the game. I don't remember seeing any of it so I don't have any personal anecdotes but I did find a ton of articles / forum discussions online from 2005 hyping the game up
@@thomasvleminckx they pretty much capitalised on the indigenous people of paraworld, they were like the American colonisers enslaving the inhabitants and destructing their ecosystem
Oh! That's Richard Epcar! Voice of Bato from Ghost in the Shell, Ace from the Nonary Games and Ansem from Kingdom Hearts. Always love when he shows up, one of my favorite VA's
Instantly recognizable! Some really notable people did the English voices for the game. My favorite being Neil Kaplan as the narrator / Mentor. For some reason he sounds a whole lot like the narrator for How It's Made
@@jauwn I really miss a lot of these late 90s/mid 2000s voice actors. One of my all time favorites is Mona Marshall who did the voice of Izzy in Digimon (happy 25th birthday), Kite in dot.hack (RIP) and Junior in XenoSaga (which Richard Epcar is also in as Ziggy). I know it's probably just nostalgia but I miss when games used mostly anime voice actors. I literally cannot play XenoBlade Chronicles because of the British voice actors (and that's coming from someone who is British)
I'm glad this game is getting a bit more attention because for freaking years I felt like I was the only one who even knew of it and wondered if I hadn't dreamt it all up or something. Never forgot the badass pulp-style movie soundtrack either.
I want to see one of these endings where the bad guy jumps into the lava in the end with their cocky speech but then starts screaming with anguish and horror as they realize lava is FUCKING PAINFUL
24:30 minor correction: shift-queueing villager actions in AOE was not in the original release. It was added in DE alongside a bunch of other QoL features
Yeah someone else said that. But apparently you actually CAN shift queue in paraworld, it’s just Ctrl, and it is never explained or listed in the controls 😂
I always thought a remake of this game would make for a rather solid game in the current day, if you flesh out the story and polish up everything, you honestly have a very grasping theme: Cool asf dinosaur combat
That's Richard Epcar as the voice actor for Cole. He's a fairly prolific voice actor, and the voice he's using here is very similar to his role as Daisuke Jigen in Lupin the third.
The paraworld OST is a gem. It has those orchestral Jurassic World'ish vibes. And the menu theme is an absolute BANGER I will not tolerate slander against my boi 😠
@@jauwnLooking at it from the eyes of a grown man, It's silly and funny. But from the eyes of a 10 yo/early teen, Dinosaurs fighting vikings was unironically epic and cool, so the soundtrack was a good fit in that context. But, fair enough. I can see your point about the vibe missmatch between game and music.
The music is a real banger. So epic it slaps even harder in the cutscenes xD One of my greatest childhood games. Music always brings me back and now I want to listen to it for hours straight again 🥲
Wow, what a shocker to see anyone cover this! My mom bought me a boxed copy of this from Big Lots years ago (I'm sure it was super cheap) and I didn't get super far as a kid but I loved dinosaurs and it always stuck with me
Glorious algorithm, thank you for sending me to this "childhood gem" - I'll never forget seeing this game box sitting on the discount shelf and whipping open the cover to see... age of empires but with dinosaurs. I, of course, was sold immediately, although the game proved too difficult for me to beat until I revisited it when I was older. I went and played it again with my own old CD key more recently and had a blast. The multiplayer isn't half bad, either. I really miss these kinds of creative RTS games - derivative in a few obvious ways for the sake of genre convention, sure, but there was a lot of heart to this game.
Really interesting video again! I love people talking about (obscure -ish) video games, especially if it's in a way that someone who doesn't know anything about the game can still follow along. While I found this channel for the Crypto/NFT content, I can only take so much of that crap (NFT, not ur videos) so these deep dives are very welcome. And yeah, German games kinda seem to be ... special usually. I don't know why. I'm pretty sure there are also tons of "english" (ie language of the country) games that are... interesting. But somehow these german games are wild (and these videos def unlock some memories of weird games i played as a kid). (also thank u for adding the video to the all-videos-playlist already!)
I love an RTS with building animations. I think Dawn of War was my first game with those. Loved seeing how each faction got things done, like the grots swimming through the pile of guns that served as the Ork research building.
I think it failed because it came out in the wrong time. PC gaming was in decline, consoles became much more popular and there was a huge pirating scene. Today with the existence of steam, it might have been a success.
I remember playing this game the year I graduated High School. I remember it being both fun and unlike any other RTS I'd played to date. Tried to look it up again for nostalgia sake awhile back, and couldn't find it anywhere, so thank you for this. Personally, I play most games for the setting and storyline. It not having a bunch of new and/or original aspects to its gameplay loop is seldom if ever enough to ruin the experience for me. Also, if you don't consume literally every single game in a genre, sometimes the lack of originality isn't even a factor for me. Paraworld's visuals and the presence of dinosaurs was enough to capture my interest. With Rise of Legends the DaVinci aesthetic. With Empire Earth, the fact that I could build mechs and larp as the prophet Elijah. Most of the time, when I watch videos like this and people cite an issue that a lot of people might have with the game, it's news to me. Maybe I'm different from a lot of other players out there though...?
Though I was never able to play Paraworld ever, I have always watched it as a kid and it was my literal dream to play it. Well, until now I still didn't get to play it, but obviously I get 3am flashbacks. I was so addicted to Paraworld while not being able to play it, I imagined playing it on a literal piece of paper in a drawing book. Looking back at it now, it still won't get out of my head. Since then I have never heard of that game for a long long time, but thanks AI I was finally able to find the forgotten game in my heart.
Such an amazing trip down nostalgia lane. This was by far and away my favourite game for many, many years. For a kid in its early teens and really into dinosaurs, with a love for strategy games, but limited access to them, this was basically crack. Just hearing some of the lines or parts of the OST feels amazing. Speaking of, I get the point on the OST, but I have to disagree. Looking at the individual tracks, it's really cool to see that some of the themes have different versions for each faction, using slightly different instruments and changing other elements, depending on what faction you play. I feel it makes them more immersive and it also gives an uncanny ability to evoke associations with a specific player facton, enemy faction or campaign map, just based on what song you're hearing. Anyway, me coping aside, great video that paints an accurate picture of this hidden gem.
Seeing the credits really made me sad, seeing those kind of credits in obsecure games hurt because these are their hopes and dreams that most will never see. But great video, I really like your obsecure game reviews. They don’t feel too forced with the comedy, someone mentioned that you are like mandalore gaming but I disagree, a lot of video game reviewers try too hard to set up jokes that end up flat. I really hope you stay the same Jauwn!
Thanks for the kind words! I do strive to be careful with my comedy in these videos. I think it’s needed to “keep your attention”, but it should be used sparingly as not everyone is going to find you funny and when it’s not funny it’s just annoying
I think if you wanted to analyze decline of RTS games, I think more important factor would be them appealing entirely to hardcore esports players rather than regular gamers, so when they were replaced by MOBAs in esports circles the genre simply collapsed. At this point Pikmin is the only major high-profile RTS series still alive and they're thoroughly designed as "casual gamers' RTS". The niche for RTS games definitely still exists, it's just indie devs don't have resources to fill it, and major studios are interested only in chasing trends.
One of my first and favorite video games ever. Whenever my friends and I weren't playing WoW, we would play against each other on this. So many memories are coming back.
It feels so stange, I played this game as a kid, I know I played it a lot but I have little to no memmory about it. Thanks, I almost forgot this game exists, and gave me a weard kind of nostaligka
Early 2000s RTS games have a special place in my heart. One that I still think about a lot is Warlords Battlecry 3, which worked with what little it had and managed to create a singleplayer campaign that could easily rival contenders like DoW Dark Crusade.
Oh my god this game was my childhood! As a kid I would stare at the disk cover for hours, and I definitely based my whole personality from Ada Loven❤ Thank you for covering this game, I am so excited to watch!
Jauwn, i just want to say. I really enjoy these videos of yours, where you go in-depth and make a long-form video on some obscure ass game. Keep up the great work
This game is such a hidden gem, I loved when I was a child. Other super underrated RTS from that time is Impossible Creatures by Relic, never saw anyone talking about it.
Finally some recognition for this gem. BTW each faction has different tier 1 types. Norsemen have warriors as tier 1, nomads have spearmen (or rather spearwomen) and the Dragon Clan has archers as their tier 1. And there's a highlight option for units so that you can see them through trees or behind buildings. Overall good video, even with the mistakes
Hello friend. New subscriber here. Love Paraworld as a kid!!! I would like to bring up Impossible Creatures. A neat RTS from 2003 which is very unique that you combined your mutant animal army from list of animals, mix matching your abilities to counter your enemy. Its fast, innovative, and its on Steam with working online matches and dedicated community adding new animals, strategies, and held little tournaments here and there.. Would love of you highlight some love to this as well. Thats Impossible Creatures. Thanks!
That smart worker system immediately made me recall it being a thing in Rise of Nations, glad it got used in other games in that 2000's era - its always nice to see good ideas propagate across the genre.
i still remember in 2007 going with my dad to a store where you could lend games and movies and finding this gem i bought it after trying it and its still the best RTS game for me personally im checking every few years if there would even be a hint for a paraworld 2 release but i guess it will sadly never happen
Thanks for watching! Have you ever played ParaWorld? Was this a "childhood gem" of yours? Let me know what obscure early 2000s game I should play next!
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Hey Jauwn, I do have a very obscure German game from my childhood, but I am not sure it'd be up your alley: Desperabis.
It was released in 2000, but not commercially, no, this is a freeware first person action adventure created by one or two guys on a custom engine - for MS-DOS. It was the type of game you'd find on those CDs that came with gaming magazines around that time. As far as late 90s/early 2000s freeware games went this one had a lot content for such a small team.
I last tried to play it ages ago, but DosBox never wants to use the right speed. There are videos of someone playing it normally however so it should be possible. Also: there is no English translation.
Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see someone shine a light on games that kinda came and went or where never really noticed at all!
Less obscure, but my absolute favorite childhood game was Heroes of might and magic 2
While you are on a sort of streak looking at german RTS games, I’ll pitch in both the settlers series as well as SpellForce (the latter being a true childhood classic of mine)
Edit: I’ll also add Earth 2160, the factions in that one were super cool back in the day
I personally recommend Goblin Commander : Unleash the Horde! It's a fairly obscure console action/RTS hybrid with a lot of jank, but also a lot of charm :)
Paraworld looks like a game I'd have loved back in the day. Gives me real Age of Mythology vibes.
And Startopia would be my suggestion. Or Republic The Revolution (A political/revolution sim set in a post USSR hellhole from the makers of Evil Genius). Still never seen anyone cover that game.
I feel bad for SEK, I didn't even know their games existed until now but they all seem so cool and original and it feels like they deserved more praise.
Diggles deserves no praise, but the concept maybe did.
RTS games have gravitated from "some of the greater games there are available" to "at least it's not Warcraft 3: Reforged"
There's a really cool indie RTS that came out recently I like called Against the Storm, but other than that I really have only been playing Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft 2. D.O.R.F looks awesome too but that's not out yet
@@jauwnI forget the name but there's one being developed currently that looks like a spiritual successor to Command and Conquer. Ok, looked it up it's Tempest Rising. Looks pretty cool.
@@jauwn I came to comment about DORF.
Hey, Sins 2 is finally a thing!
@@2stroke438 yeah DORF is also on my wishlist, looks sick
Bro, i have waited 20 years for someone to mention paraworld to me. This game was my life for a summer and I regret nothing.
"Moooooooove it!"
You German?
@@kallmannkallmann nope
I had this game too I enjoyed it during my summer to
I'm sure you've grappled with what to do once NFT games stop being interesting to talk about, and I think you've definitely found your stride with these deep-dive essays on obscure foreign games. The amount of work you put in is impressive. Thank you for the great entertainment Jauwnathan
ParaWorld was a great title.
I remember game journals back then lamenting that the game as prone to fail because the RTS genre was as good as dead back then.
If I am correct, it was the most expensive german videogame back then.
Yes you are correct, it was the most expensive game ever made in Germany at the time, costing 8 million Euro!
And meanwhile we pay Til Schweiger with way more tax money to make his... "movies". :) @@jauwn
@@cbhldewait does he actually get our hard earned money? I don't want my tax euros be spent on trash movies
Yes, he does. "Filmförderung" take a look at Google. :) @@MarcoMaurice
@@cbhlde but with his movies he's usually able to pay the money back.
Everyone's playing PalWorld but my boy Jauwn is playing ParaWorld 😂
Wait, I thought this was what everyone was talking about?
@@jauwn Thanks for the reply mate, I found your channel not long ago and I'm glad the algorithm pushed me some quality for once. Cheers !
I got this game, so far the tutorial is a bit slow, can be managed a bit.
ohh, THAT'S the joke!@@jauwn
If you're on a "weird RTS with innovative stuff that is actually just okay overall" streak, I would LOVE to see a video on LEGO Rock Raiders (or its fan remake, Manic Miners)
that game was my childhood :)
That's a very confusing title because I'd immediately think it was a remake/sequel for Manic Minor on the ZX Spectrum, rather than having any connections with the Lego game
Man, what a blast from the past. I thought I misread the title and thumbnail first, but no, it was actually ParaWorld. One of my most beloved games of all time because of how unique it was and sadly still is. We need more dinosaurs! (And bring back Dino Crisis, Capcom!) Also, even as a German myself I never realized it was actually developed here until the studio had announced their closure back then, shattering all my hopes of a sequel to it.
It cannot be understated how high quality these review videos are. It’s remarkable for these videos to be this good given Jauwn hasn’t even been making them for too long. They remind me of Mandalore Gaming videos.
thank you :)
@@tsartomato That's kinda just how a lot of old games are.
@@tsartomato It might not all be his footage. It was just for the intro clips idk I don't think it's a big deal.
Ah the classic 00's dilemma... Blond hot girl with exposed mid drift, or exotic hot girl with exposed mid drift.
Midriff
a dilemma I miss having
@4nn4h but mid drift is way funnier
The funny part of this is that, at least in real world fashion, crop tops are just as popular again as they were during that time
@@jakel2837 -my knowledge of fashion terms showing, lol-
Totally intentional malapropism on my part.
Basing this on info from another review.
The unit management system was so good apperantly that the founder of the ESL (a german gaming Esport organization) left a quote on it stating that they knew what makes a EXCELLENT Esports title "The creators of ParaWorld have understood what ingredients you need for an excellent eSports-title"
Also there are apperantly still people that play it, you just gotta search for them, a video creator by the name Doped Bones did a review where he coverd the game and talked about the mod side of it and included instructions how to help play the Multiplayer if someone here would be interested.
With that said im glad to see this game has some attention thrown its way, speaking as someone who had a poster of this game hang on his wall for at least a decade with that Glorious Trex hanging above my bed.
Thanks for covering it.
Paraworld was one of my favorite games growing up in Germany. This video is unlocking a lot of memories
24:50 Actually you can queue construction and attack targets by using CTRL instead of Shift and you can even combine them. Just throwing it out here.
dude WHAT?!?! I tried so many times to figure it out, I even read the whole manual looking for that and swear I couldn't find anything explaining how to do it. I guess i gotta re-do the video now lol
@@jauwn Glad I could help even if I am a beginner at this game.
I loved this game as a kid! I think my dad got it for me out of the Best Buy bargain bin and I got way more than his money’s worth out of it.
I still have this game. Haven't tried playing it in a really long time, but the CD sits in my collection. I remember it being a good game.
Nitpick: seventy year old bones aren’t fossils, they’re just bones. Fossils are bones that have been fossilised - replaced with stone.
The gay might have called them fossils
@@AlexOlsenpangwhat
@@gord3588 maybe he meant game?
@@brayonyx14 that would make sense lol
That timing is impeccable.
I just finished a 4 day 100% playthrough of the campaign on hard difficulty yesterday, and have been giving Mirage mod a shot now that CEP mod has been discontinued for about 10 years already, been playing around with the map editor again, took me right back to my childhood. It is a very janky rts compared to the likes of SC2 but still holds a special place in my heart til this day.
"Sees the SEAS attempting to seize the seas" made this whole thing worth it, incredible
SeeS
20:49
I do like the OG style of the Jauwn vidoes but Im also enjoying the newer game reviewers/video essay videos! Keep it up!
Gotta branch out, ya know. NFT games won't be around forever (plus they're getting old)
@@jauwnI mean you branched out right, doing obscure retro games.
@@Radnugget More specifically, obscure retro PC games. There are way more of them than console games, and the vast majority of them have been forgotten. It's nice to see another channel cover games that people most likely have never seen or heard of before.
@@percher4824 yep, PC games is my niche. I never had a console growing up until the PS2 and my dad had a “gaming” PC in the late 90s early 2000s when I was young so I really only knew PC gaming
From what I know, the expantion works only in german and polish, but there is a dedicated community on discord keeping the game alive, both with multiplayer and patches, of which I'm a proud member. This is still one of my favourite games of all time, even after playing over 1000 games from different genres. This game may be a relic forgotten by most, but it still lives on in it's full glory with us, the players
idk how you showed up in my recommended but dont ever leave
RTS games went from one of my most played, most beloved game genres to the one I straight up won't play anymore because I've had more than enough of them for the rest of my life. I wish I'd played this one back in the day though, it looks like fun
Yeah, like I said in the video, the strict adherence to the "RTS formula" means that basically every variation of the genre had already been done by 2010. Plus with how complicated they are to make, it seems that most devs moved their resources to other more popular genres
@@jauwnThe future of RTS is in hybrids.
Either grand scale like TW, or small scale combined with tower defense and meta progression as Rogue-like.
I stopped playing them because they didn't evolved. I wish the 90's mindset would be still here where developers would care less about money and more about creating something what doesn't exist yet.
1:14 Ironically, if one goes by the proper meaning of strategy, Hearts of Iron is the only real-time strategy game on this chart, all the others would be real-time tactics games, but the genre has a broken name, so I agree that it does not really fit in there.
Exactly, RTS to me really basically means “command and conquer inspired”. I guess that’s why they had to invent “grand strategy” to mean that those games are the true strategy game, or whatever 😂
@@jauwn Yeah, makes perfect sense.
Grand strategy is the layer above strategy, so it is also correct or actually more correct for Hearts of Iron.
From smallest (time/space) to largest it is: tactics, operations, strategy & grand strategy. Hearts of Iron IV, basically covers all 4, since one also shuffles around single divisions.
i liked the "i fucking love dinosaurs" turning into "i love fucking dinosaurs"
You’re the first to notice that
I remember reading an article about this game with pretty impressive screenshots of dino textures. If I remember correctly they were amazed at bump mapping on each unit (that was before normal mapping was a thing). I was curious about it. And then completely forgot about it.
The game had some seriously impressive texturing and modeling, especially in that intro cinematic. I saw a lot of articles from during the game's pre-production hyping that up
I think I might be one of the few people on earth who had some pre-release hype for this game. My friends and I played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Age of Mythology from 2003 to 2006, and we all bought the game roughly around release. Turns out my laptop who could run 2002 games fine couldn't handle the game, so I played the game mostly at my friends house using his dad's pc.
When I finally got a real desktop pc in 2008, I finally played the campaign the whole way through (I believe I had to buy the special edition because my first game got the disk scratched). The special edition was interesting (not in a good way). The manual was bound together wrong, with pages missing and other duplicated. The game had 3 additional campaign missions that were way harder and had less voiceover, in retrospect you could clearly see the financial porblems after release.
I think there was actually a lot of hype for the game. I don't remember seeing any of it so I don't have any personal anecdotes but I did find a ton of articles / forum discussions online from 2005 hyping the game up
So nice to see some one play this game. I still have the box copy of it and it holds a place in my heart.
The soundtrack slander is insane here.
Why the fuck would the "heroes' want to leave the Parawolrd when they're fucking immortal there???
haha, exactly the story does not make much sense if you think too critically
Indoor plumbing?? ...ladies????
and why are the "bad" guys "bad" for wanting the benefits of no longer aging + wanting to do science in peace?
@@thomasvleminckx something something world domination
@@thomasvleminckx they pretty much capitalised on the indigenous people of paraworld, they were like the American colonisers enslaving the inhabitants and destructing their ecosystem
Oh! That's Richard Epcar! Voice of Bato from Ghost in the Shell, Ace from the Nonary Games and Ansem from Kingdom Hearts.
Always love when he shows up, one of my favorite VA's
Instantly recognizable! Some really notable people did the English voices for the game. My favorite being Neil Kaplan as the narrator / Mentor. For some reason he sounds a whole lot like the narrator for How It's Made
@@jauwn I really miss a lot of these late 90s/mid 2000s voice actors.
One of my all time favorites is Mona Marshall who did the voice of Izzy in Digimon (happy 25th birthday), Kite in dot.hack (RIP) and Junior in XenoSaga (which Richard Epcar is also in as Ziggy).
I know it's probably just nostalgia but I miss when games used mostly anime voice actors.
I literally cannot play XenoBlade Chronicles because of the British voice actors (and that's coming from someone who is British)
45:07 "The 12th chapter, Sea Battles, sees the SEAS attempting to seize the seas" freaking brilliant.
I'm glad this game is getting a bit more attention because for freaking years I felt like I was the only one who even knew of it and wondered if I hadn't dreamt it all up or something.
Never forgot the badass pulp-style movie soundtrack either.
I love your deep dives into obscure, old, games.
The art style is so beautiful, I really love the colors.
I want to see one of these endings where the bad guy jumps into the lava in the end with their cocky speech but then starts screaming with anguish and horror as they realize lava is FUCKING PAINFUL
24:30 minor correction: shift-queueing villager actions in AOE was not in the original release. It was added in DE alongside a bunch of other QoL features
Yeah someone else said that. But apparently you actually CAN shift queue in paraworld, it’s just Ctrl, and it is never explained or listed in the controls 😂
Man the intro sequence hits hard
thanks bro its one of my favorite
This is my childhood game 10/10 wrote a massive fan fiction over it too when I was 12
Haha that's awesome
Honestly this game was so charming
I always thought a remake of this game would make for a rather solid game in the current day, if you flesh out the story and polish up everything, you honestly have a very grasping theme: Cool asf dinosaur combat
That's Richard Epcar as the voice actor for Cole. He's a fairly prolific voice actor, and the voice he's using here is very similar to his role as Daisuke Jigen in Lupin the third.
These retro game deep dives are great! Keep'em coming!
The paraworld OST is a gem.
It has those orchestral Jurassic World'ish vibes.
And the menu theme is an absolute BANGER
I will not tolerate slander against my boi 😠
Haha it’s a good soundtrack I just think it’s way too epic for how silly the game is
@@jauwnLooking at it from the eyes of a grown man, It's silly and funny.
But from the eyes of a 10 yo/early teen, Dinosaurs fighting vikings was unironically epic and cool, so the soundtrack was a good fit in that context.
But, fair enough.
I can see your point about the vibe missmatch between game and music.
Yep it's genuinely one of my favorite OST of all times. This game had a big production even with music.
The music is a real banger. So epic it slaps even harder in the cutscenes xD
One of my greatest childhood games. Music always brings me back and now I want to listen to it for hours straight again 🥲
Wow, what a shocker to see anyone cover this! My mom bought me a boxed copy of this from Big Lots years ago (I'm sure it was super cheap) and I didn't get super far as a kid but I loved dinosaurs and it always stuck with me
You put a lot of effort into your videos and it shows. Thanks.
These kind of videos are my favorite from you
Glorious algorithm, thank you for sending me to this "childhood gem" - I'll never forget seeing this game box sitting on the discount shelf and whipping open the cover to see... age of empires but with dinosaurs. I, of course, was sold immediately, although the game proved too difficult for me to beat until I revisited it when I was older. I went and played it again with my own old CD key more recently and had a blast. The multiplayer isn't half bad, either. I really miss these kinds of creative RTS games - derivative in a few obvious ways for the sake of genre convention, sure, but there was a lot of heart to this game.
Subbed after reading the video title - this is the kind of content I need in my life
Really interesting video again! I love people talking about (obscure -ish) video games, especially if it's in a way that someone who doesn't know anything about the game can still follow along.
While I found this channel for the Crypto/NFT content, I can only take so much of that crap (NFT, not ur videos) so these deep dives are very welcome.
And yeah, German games kinda seem to be ... special usually. I don't know why. I'm pretty sure there are also tons of "english" (ie language of the country) games that are... interesting. But somehow these german games are wild (and these videos def unlock some memories of weird games i played as a kid).
(also thank u for adding the video to the all-videos-playlist already!)
Damn, Frank Reynolds really does turn up in the damndest places...
Yoooo 0:40 Machines: Wired for War from Akklaim. I loved that game as a kid!
OH SHIT, another Jauwn video. Enjoying the content my dude, even if it isn't shitting on NFT "games".
I liked the dreamscape remix in intro
Loved the YTP-like edits in this video. If you ever released a YTP I would eat that shit up
great video!
love you deep diving into old wonderfull games.
These retrospectives have been really cool! I'm glad you branched out.
I love an RTS with building animations. I think Dawn of War was my first game with those. Loved seeing how each faction got things done, like the grots swimming through the pile of guns that served as the Ork research building.
More obscure RTS games please!
I think it failed because it came out in the wrong time. PC gaming was in decline, consoles became much more popular and there was a huge pirating scene. Today with the existence of steam, it might have been a success.
I remember playing this game the year I graduated High School. I remember it being both fun and unlike any other RTS I'd played to date. Tried to look it up again for nostalgia sake awhile back, and couldn't find it anywhere, so thank you for this.
Personally, I play most games for the setting and storyline. It not having a bunch of new and/or original aspects to its gameplay loop is seldom if ever enough to ruin the experience for me. Also, if you don't consume literally every single game in a genre, sometimes the lack of originality isn't even a factor for me. Paraworld's visuals and the presence of dinosaurs was enough to capture my interest. With Rise of Legends the DaVinci aesthetic. With Empire Earth, the fact that I could build mechs and larp as the prophet Elijah. Most of the time, when I watch videos like this and people cite an issue that a lot of people might have with the game, it's news to me. Maybe I'm different from a lot of other players out there though...?
The deep dive I didn't know I needed.
16:12 getting Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 vibes from this
Though I was never able to play Paraworld ever, I have always watched it as a kid and it was my literal dream to play it. Well, until now I still didn't get to play it, but obviously I get 3am flashbacks. I was so addicted to Paraworld while not being able to play it, I imagined playing it on a literal piece of paper in a drawing book. Looking back at it now, it still won't get out of my head. Since then I have never heard of that game for a long long time, but thanks AI I was finally able to find the forgotten game in my heart.
Such an amazing trip down nostalgia lane. This was by far and away my favourite game for many, many years. For a kid in its early teens and really into dinosaurs, with a love for strategy games, but limited access to them, this was basically crack. Just hearing some of the lines or parts of the OST feels amazing. Speaking of, I get the point on the OST, but I have to disagree. Looking at the individual tracks, it's really cool to see that some of the themes have different versions for each faction, using slightly different instruments and changing other elements, depending on what faction you play. I feel it makes them more immersive and it also gives an uncanny ability to evoke associations with a specific player facton, enemy faction or campaign map, just based on what song you're hearing. Anyway, me coping aside, great video that paints an accurate picture of this hidden gem.
Maybe the real Palworld was the Paraworlds we made along the way
A gem of my childhood, I wish it was more popular
Reeeally enjoyed that game back in the day. Thanks for covering it.
Seeing the credits really made me sad, seeing those kind of credits in obsecure games hurt because these are their hopes and dreams that most will never see.
But great video, I really like your obsecure game reviews. They don’t feel too forced with the comedy, someone mentioned that you are like mandalore gaming but I disagree, a lot of video game reviewers try too hard to set up jokes that end up flat. I really hope you stay the same Jauwn!
Thanks for the kind words! I do strive to be careful with my comedy in these videos. I think it’s needed to “keep your attention”, but it should be used sparingly as not everyone is going to find you funny and when it’s not funny it’s just annoying
I did not expect a Word-mixing UA-cam Poop in this game review xD
I think if you wanted to analyze decline of RTS games, I think more important factor would be them appealing entirely to hardcore esports players rather than regular gamers, so when they were replaced by MOBAs in esports circles the genre simply collapsed.
At this point Pikmin is the only major high-profile RTS series still alive and they're thoroughly designed as "casual gamers' RTS".
The niche for RTS games definitely still exists, it's just indie devs don't have resources to fill it, and major studios are interested only in chasing trends.
Always fun to find a video and go "Hey, I had that game! I forgot about it, but I remember now!"
One of my first and favorite video games ever. Whenever my friends and I weren't playing WoW, we would play against each other on this. So many memories are coming back.
It feels so stange, I played this game as a kid, I know I played it a lot but I have little to no memmory about it. Thanks, I almost forgot this game exists, and gave me a weard kind of nostaligka
Early 2000s RTS games have a special place in my heart. One that I still think about a lot is Warlords Battlecry 3, which worked with what little it had and managed to create a singleplayer campaign that could easily rival contenders like DoW Dark Crusade.
I got this game on the free DVD of a PC magazine (yes an actually printed one) and spent a summer vacation going jurassic. Good times.
"The 3rd best German Game of 2006" is such a good video title, lol
I’m loving the older game series!
Something about this game gives me major Impossible Creatures vibes
Now THAT was a strange fever dream of a game
I'm not really into these kinda games, but looks kinda cool. Ich werd es mal ausprobieren, danke Mr. Jauwn.
Pretty crazy that Richard Epcar voiced Cole before becoming the voice of Joesph Joestar. That dude is an awesome va.
Gives me lots of Impossible Creatures vibes from the cutscene and setting.
I've only watched a few minutes but I can already sense that this is going to be good content!
JAUWN UPLOAD
Oh my god this game was my childhood! As a kid I would stare at the disk cover for hours, and I definitely based my whole personality from Ada Loven❤ Thank you for covering this game, I am so excited to watch!
Jauwn, i just want to say. I really enjoy these videos of yours, where you go in-depth and make a long-form video on some obscure ass game. Keep up the great work
This game is such a hidden gem, I loved when I was a child. Other super underrated RTS from that time is Impossible Creatures by Relic, never saw anyone talking about it.
The transition from "I FUCKING LOVE DINOSAURS" to "I LOVE FUCKING DINOSAURS" in the intro was a piece of art.
came for the crypto scams, stayed for the game reviews!
I just love your videos. They're like therapy for me
Finally some recognition for this gem.
BTW each faction has different tier 1 types. Norsemen have warriors as tier 1, nomads have spearmen (or rather spearwomen) and the Dragon Clan has archers as their tier 1. And there's a highlight option for units so that you can see them through trees or behind buildings. Overall good video, even with the mistakes
Why does the intro look like Strange Brigade totally ripped off the cutscene? haha
Hello friend. New subscriber here. Love Paraworld as a kid!!!
I would like to bring up Impossible Creatures. A neat RTS from 2003 which is very unique that you combined your mutant animal army from list of animals, mix matching your abilities to counter your enemy. Its fast, innovative, and its on Steam with working online matches and dedicated community adding new animals, strategies, and held little tournaments here and there.. Would love of you highlight some love to this as well. Thats Impossible Creatures. Thanks!
A lot of people have requested it - I probably will play it next!
That smart worker system immediately made me recall it being a thing in Rise of Nations, glad it got used in other games in that 2000's era - its always nice to see good ideas propagate across the genre.
A Jaun video about a retro game I've never heard? Sign me up!
Music at 7:58 sounds just like a mosquito in my left ear for like a second or two! 😅
Yeah that old school compressed and weirdly panned music makes the saxophone sound horrible. At least it gets your attention though!
i still remember in 2007 going with my dad to a store where you could lend games and movies and finding this gem i bought it after trying it and its still the best RTS game for me personally
im checking every few years if there would even be a hint for a paraworld 2 release but i guess it will sadly never happen
For another obscure RTS game, Metal Fatigue might also be up your alley.
thank you papa jauwn for making more obscure video game essays
It s on my wishlist
I will play it on my older quad core pc ❤