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Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes

Started by Repentia, September 14, 2013, 08:23:00 AM

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Repentia

Have you ever been playing a Sid Meier game and thought "You know, this turn-based combat system is better than the last Sid Meier game I played, but still sucks, aaaararagghh!"? Yeah?

Well, the people who made Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes clearly did, and then did something about it. This is a beautiful, turn based rpg/civ-lite strategy/medieval fantasy themed epic quest. And I mean epic.

There is a real sense that your Heroes are having an adventure throughout, no little achievement in what is essentially a city-simulator. You are presented with all manner of bizarre and often amusing post-battle choices that result in waifs and strays joining your party. I accidentally adopted the zombie Mr Butcher the other day, who then ploughed into a wall of spears in the very next battle.

Cities are easy to manage from a very simple interface, but production, growth, citizen co-operation, and all manner of odd factors need to be balanced in a way that essentially stalls production outside of draconian measures/coercive religions/outright bribery. You will come to resent your populace for several hours at the start of a game, as all good administrators do. You build outposts which expand your zone of control, research tech that lets you exploit natural resources, and then eventually build new cities. It's intuitive, although the eye-watering delay in the building queue over a 1g tax raise will make you gibber the first few times you play.

Meanwhile your heroes move around the map looking for trouble, essentially. Stuff to steal, monster to duff up, quests to go on, and once they feel a bit cocky, Epic Quests to attempt (and fail comically). The graphics are lush, the maps huge. Combat zooms into tiles, and you duke it out in often cleverly designed arena-like areas, where if you get good at spotting advantages in the landscape, you can do all sorts of mischief using really low-level troops. I should also point out the AI even on "easy" pretty much knows most of these tricks inside and out, and will put up quite a bit of resistance.




So far, so what? It's just another fantasy game. At this level, yes. A fun hack'n'slash civ-like with lots of upgrades and skill tress etc.

Yeah. Leave it there. Because if you ever click on any of the "customize" buttons, you won't be doing much else for the rest of the week. Damn nearly everything and anything is fully customizable, it's insane.

So, it's a turn-based, rpg hack'em'up with city management and empire building rolled into one, and everything can be customized (everything!). I was surprised at how much fun I was having just going about the map duffing up spiders and bears, let alone accidentally declaring war on the AI and then subsequently fighting my way from one side of its territory to the other. Once you find the speed of the gameplay, the game world gels together really well, it's a really fun way to sink endless hours.