t’s not terribly surprising when another me-too RTS comes out these days; the genre is one of the few remaining bastions of PC gaming, and as such it sees a lot of releases. Seven Kingdoms: Conquest, however, buries its few novel ideas under such a fetid layer of unplayable garbage that it’s a wonder it is being released at all.

On the surface, it sounds somewhat interesting. Warring demon and human empires do RTS battle, fighting over cities and trying to claim the power of the demon stones that are scattered across the land. Suck enough juice out of these magical rocks and you can unleash massive supernatural barrages to supplement your troops in the field. Unfortunately, convincing your army to carry out your commands is like trying to get a Japanophile to agree that Shenmue isn’t all that special.

It’s simply unacceptable for a retail game to have a major component of gameplay be as broken as Seven Kingdoms’ pathfinding and unit AI. Troops will literally walk 30 yards at right angles to a move order you give them…across open ground. Telling wounded units to retreat requires that you set their AI stance to “passive,” unless you want them to stop after two steps to re-engage the enemy despite a direct order.

An embarrassingly small amount of content (the “campaigns” are a mere dozen or so glorified skirmish maps) means you won’t spend much time with Seven Kingdoms even if you do buy it – but I’d suggest the obvious solution of avoiding this like a bipolar ex instead.