Herzog Zwei - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

Herzog Zwei was not a huge commercial success, due to its lack of marketing, relatively early release on the Genesis platform, and non-arcade genre on what was considered an arcade game console. Upon its 1990 release in North America, Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the game a rating of 4.25 out of 10, based on four individual reviewer scores of 4, 6, 4, and 3. The game received some of the lowest scores the magazine had ever handed out to a Genesis game.

The game's reception in Europe was generally more positive. In the United Kingdom, Warren Lapworth reviewed the game in the March 1990 issue of The Games Machine magazine, giving the game a 75% score. He described it as an "unusual product" and stated that, "Whether it's intended to get strategists to consider buying the console or to broaden the horizons of trigger-happy lunatics, I don't know. Either way, it's quite refreshing and can be quite addictive in two-player mode, fierce rivalry developing between friends." In the April 1990 issue of Computer and Video Games, reviewer Paul Glancey gave the game an 82% score. He described it as "a game of conquest between two commanders in real time" and stated that what "sets it apart from other strategy games is that everything happens in real time. Both players are in action simultaneously and there are no pauses while decisions are taken so you have to think on the move or die." He noted that the command icons are "fairly easy to grasp" and concluded that it is a game that helps establish the Mega Drive as a "real" computer rather than "a machine for immobilised arcade players." In France, the game was reviewed in the November 1990 issue of the Joystick magazine, where reviewer JM Destroy gave the game a 78% score. The game was particularly well received in Germany, where it was known as Herzog 2, with Power Play magazine giving it an 80% score in its April 1990 issue, while Play Time gave it an 85% score in its June 1991 issue.

Long after its release, the game gained a cult following and achieved popularity. David Filip of Allgame gave the game a score of 4 out of 5 stars, describing it as "one of the first" and "one of the best" strategy video games on home consoles and as "a fine cure for those days when you want a different kind of RTS to control." Daniel Thomas of Sega-16 gave it a score of 10 out of 10 in 2004, describing it as "very probably the finest videogame you've never played" and as the Genesis console's "finest hour." Lawrence Wright of Insomnia gave the game a score of 5 out of 5 stars in 2008. GameSpot users have given Herzog Zwei an average score of 8.8 out of 10 as of 2009.

It is often found on several "best of..." lists of video games, owing to its precedence in the real-time strategy genre, as well to the increasing understanding of finer points of its mechanics. It was featured in the "Top 100 Games Ever" list of Electronic Gaming Monthly, in the November 1997 issue which ranked it at #43, and in the January 2002 issue which ranked it #52. The February 1999 issue of Next Generation ranked it at #39 in its list of 50 best games of all time. It has also been featured in IGN's "Top 100 Games of All Time", in the 2003 list which ranked it at #62, and in the 2005 list which ranked it #95. In 2003, GameSpy listed the game as one of the 25 most underrated games of all time. 1UP.com included the game in its "Essential 50" list of "The Most Important Games Ever Made".