It's becoming harder to find a period in history that hasn't been plundered for the latest real-time strategy game, and thankfully developers World Forge shied away from obvious targets like WWII and the Roman Empire.

Instead The Golden Horde is set in the early Middle Ages (i.e. the beginning of the thirteenth century) when the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan took on the armies of Crusaders and Russians. In the campaign mode you can choose any of the three foes to fight for or against, or go online and play in multiplayer mode.

The interface is immediately recognisable, with a mini-map displayed bottom-left (with the usual Fog of War), troop details in the centre and an order menu bottom-right. Resource gathering is restricted to wood and metal mining, while building construction is divided into two types: standard (which includes training, producing units and heroes, and weapon production) and special (fortifications, traps, walls and vehicles).

Heroes are used for capturing objects like villages and stables. There's an additional RPG element to the game whereby all units gain experience after a fight and then can have a measure of skill upgrading. However, heroes are the only units where you have a choice about which skill to choose: either strategic (giving global bonuses), tactical (giving bonuses to nearby units) or combat (improving individual fighting ability). Horses and weapons can also be captured from the enemy and used by your forces.

If none of this sounds hugely enthralling, that's because this looks and plays like a bargain basement strategy game. The graphics are embarrassingly basic, the weapon equipping system is cumbersome and the RPG aspect seems like an after-thought.

What is disappointing is that some thought has obviously gone into trying to bring in some form of innovation, but it's as though the developers ran out of steam. For instance, the weather is used to influence actions, like wind altering the flight of arrows, rain reducing visibility and snow slowing progress. These do have minor effects on your planning, but apart from the odd occasion when you lure enemy units to fall through thin ice on a lake, the ‘rogue' weather is largely irrelevant.

Add to this annoyingly repetitive voice-over exclamations and a general lack of imagination in missions and it's hard to see where the enthusiasm to press on to the end is going to come from.

Less of a golden horde than a golden opportunity missed to make something of a fascinating period in European history. What's emerged is a leaden, predictable RTS/RPG hybrid that's desperately short of ideas.