@ARTHANASIOS

You got any idea how many form opinions on games after wathcing trailers, demos and such..?   Just watching Gametrailers.com for an example.

If you don't care AT ALL about graphics then you are quite unique.

So you don't care at all whether a game has a cartoony or a realistic graphicsstyle?   (WarCraft III vs Company of Heroes as example).

Enough of this. I don't solely judge games based of graphics. But when they're bad and completely outdated like TA:K, then it's a big factor.

I don't know if it's the same people designing the graphics as programming the gameplay mechanics but I doubt it....

And give me sources of your claim that "usually the games with better gameplay are the less goodlooking ones".

I can't??   So I can't deduce that the loading onto a ship mechanic is unintuitive and unnecessarily cumbersome??

OR that arrows from archers are very hard to see..?

And I see that you don't have an argument for the shitty green/brown landgraphics.

Games with good gameplay might have good graphics - but there an awful lot of games with good graphics that don't have good gameplay.

@Campaigner: First of all, I would like to congratulate you for not judging games completely from the graphics. However, I would also like to "flame" you for judging games mostly because of their graphics.

 I have plenty of games to mention that have poor graphics yet awesome gameplay, and I could start from the good old age of text adventures and the various DOS-era games. Do the games pong, pacman, breakout, tron ring a bell to you? Well, these games were the beginning for many things and they are still very enjoyable videogames, despite their truly pixeled graphics. And yes, I don't give a thit about the graphical difference between Warcraft 3 and Company of Heroes, despite the fact I would personally choose COH any day, because I prefer its gameplay than Warcraft III gameplay. I also prefer Warcraft 2 gameplay than Warcraft 3, despite its much-much worse graphics, because it had a true rts feeling while Warcraft 3 seems more like an RPG to me with all these heroes and items you can purchase (just my humble opinion).

 Finally, people shouldn't make their minds based on vids. I don't care if they do, I really believe they shouldn't. By the way, I am NOT the exception of not judging games beacuse of their graphics, since there are a lot of "pixel-lovers" (like me!) who love old-retro games more than the modern ones.

Play TA:Kingdoms for a lot of hours and days, take a look to its manual, enjoy the cosmology and the storyline as well as its gameplay, listen to ist atmospheric music and at last judge its graphics in comparison with other RTS games of its era and you will see this game is not thit at all. Of course, this is true for almost every good, old, forgotten, underestimated game...

Graphics of some 3D games didn't age very well. Especially the games which came out when 3D technology was in early stage of development. I didn't play TA:K, but TA looks awful for me (I played it, but I could tell this from some gameplay videos).

Graphics of most of the 2D games, on the other hand, aged nicely. I still love Warcraft II graphical style for instance.

HOMM II is another game whose graphics have aged very well.   Although I don't think HOMM III's graphics have aged nearly as well.

I agree about HOMM II: I loved it's graphics and I still do. HOMM III doesn't have all that charm, but I still like it.

Have you seen/played Age of Wonders 1? Music and graphics made me buy this game some time ago (I didn't play it when it came out, in 1999).

@Gandhialf: Buying a game just because of its graphics/music isn't a very clever thing to do. On the other hand, buying a game because you like its gameplay is the best investment you have ever done! But why should I care? People like you will be the losers if keep judging the book by its cover and not by its content.

Graphics who age well, graphics who age bad, who cares? THE THING THAT NEVER AGES IS THE GAMEPLAY, PERIOD!

1. I've never said I bought the game only because of graphics and music.

2. For me graphics, sound and music are important parts of the gameplay. I guess you will never understand this. Graphics is not like a book's cover. CD/DVD box is.

3. Not everyone doesn't mind graphics in games. Quite the opposite. But there are games without or almost without graphics: roguelike games, Dwarf Fortress, MUD games. Maybe you should interest in those.

4. But stop telling people they are losers because they have different tastes than you. It's very silly, you know.

@Gandhialf: You are the one who says you have bought Age of Wonders 1 because of music and graphics, not me. As for text-based games or games with letters for heroes, monsters, objects etc. like Rogue, yes, I am interested in them as well as playing DOS-games. About the sound/music/graphics I agree they add to the experience, but no, excuse me, their importance is dimunitive in comparison with the gameplay experience. The graphics & music are there to make you feel the game's cosmology and to support the gameplay.

However, I am sorry for involving you in my "flame war" with Campaigner. As for telling peoples what to think, I am soory again, however everyone has to admit that the most important element of a game is its gameplay. Gameplay is the "heart" of it and the "brain" of every game. Graphics, music etc. are also "organs" of the game's "living organism", but less important ones.

I will try to avoid "flame wars" in the future...

By saying "music and graphics made me buy this game" I meant that quality of graphics and music convinced me to buy the game. I didn't mean that they where the only factors I took into account. I would never buy a beautiful but unplayable game. And I would never buy AoW if it was ugly.

For me climate is essential part of gameplay experience. Graphics, sound and music build the climate (also others factors, like writing and plot if it's an RPG). I understand that for you they're secondary. As you see it's very subjective.

ps I don't want to suggest that games with ASCII "graphics", and no sound or music don't have any climate. It's obviously not true. But they are very unique types of games where imagination plays a huge part. Big brown "O" moving towards "@" (me) is a symbol of an ogre, not a picture of it. But some ugly lump of polygons in game from, say, 1995 was to be a picture of an ogre not a symbol of it. I can't use my imagination to "unsee" it.

ps 2 I choose to take part in this little flame war. It's not your fault

Graphics are always worse looking than reality itself. Because of that, you always have to use your imagination in order to make a gaming experience alive. Better graphics help the imagination, but you always have to enchant them with it. An Ogre may be an "O" or a 32x32 pixeled image or a super detailed 3D model, but it will be always worse than the image of your imagination. A human soldier may be an "H", a very pixeled 2D image or an awesome model in COH, but they all look like thit in comparison with a real-life soldier. If you see a 1995 pixeled pixture of something, you don't have to "unsee" it, but you must enchant it with your brain's imagination, as well as the "O"-typed Ogre.

No matter how good (or bad) the graphics, sound and music are, if your imagination is good you can enchant them and make them as good as a real-life experience. Pen and paper RPG's (D&D for example) work with the same way. However, if a gameplay is not of your taste or not good at all, you can't imagine a good gameplay, no matter how great your imagination is, no matter if the game you play is a videogame, boardgame or pen&paper RPG. That's my opinion and I think most of the hardcore gamers agree with me and not with you. But even if all other gamers disagree and flame me, I think I won't change my mind since I play all kinds of games for a very-very long time and my opinion is not biased.