Legends of Eisenwald - Review @ Tech-Gaming

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Goncalo Tordo (Tech-Gaming) has reviewed Legends of Eisenwald. A snippet:
At times, cosmetic themes and backdrops become so ingrained in a genre that even small variations are enough to set new entries apart from competitors. High-fantasy is perhaps the most common example, being often associated with RPGs and strategy games with integrated role-playing mechanics. In this regard, Legends of Eisenwald follows the age-old mantra that less is more. While its competitors provide increasingly elaborate spells, fantastical army units and unit designs, Legends of Eisenwald is content with stepping back and providing a visually grounded approach. Ironically, this makes it arguably more original than its peers.

This isn’t to say Legends of Eisenwald aims for realism, quite the contrary as it instead provides a low-fantasy world for players to explore. Magic exists but it’s based around antiquated superstition and how it would have influenced the world had it been real. Gamers will not face off against elves, orcs or lizardmen, but might instead meet a witch apt in sorcery or seek a priests offering divine protection. These themes are tied via a believable, medieval world closely mirroring Central and Eastern European feudal societies.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, Legends of Eisenwald is an RPG first and a strategy game second. Focus is placed solely on the main player character with no additional armies or heroes to tab into. Moreover, there are no randomly generated maps to engage in as you would expect to find in titles like Age of Wonders 3. Rather, players are given a campaign and two additional scenarios to choose from and must follow their stories to completion. Granted, players are often given dialog prompts to choose from, but they provide little variation. Worse still, the main plotline is often static, offering few if any meaningful branching paths. […]
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More information.
 
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Right now I'm playing Legends too and I like the low-fantasy approach as well.
 
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Does it have spells and spell classes?
 
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Looks nice. It is sitting in my library, never tried the early access. Will wait just a little bit for the regular patches and then I will start!
 
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Oh, troops. That means its not a crpg; at least in my book. You can't role-play nameless troops.
 
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You can level up your troops (decide their career path) - and you roleplay your own character.
 
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I've played it about an hour and seems alot like Disciples 3 (from the gameplay standpoint), so I'd also say its an SRPG. You have a little more freedom with roleplaying than say in Heroes 6 or Disciples, but not enough to make it a classic CRPG.
 
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crpgnut said:
Oh, troops. That means its not a crpg; at least in my book. You can't role-play nameless troops.
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Troops is really relative. Yes, they are nameless ones. But you only have one or two hand full of them. So I'd say it's not too far away from something like hirelings in Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: OS. It's not like you are moving around "stacks" of units like in HOMM
 
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Kordanor said:
Troops is really relative. Yes, they are nameless ones. But you only have one or two hand full of them. So I'd say it's not too far away from something like hirelings in Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: OS. It's not like you are moving around "stacks" of units like in HOMM
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I don't see how you can compare it to POE or DOS. Its much closer to Blackguards 2 or Lords of Xulima, which were more CRPGs than SRPGS, but still tended in that direction. I'd say the comparison to Blackguards 2's nameless mercenaries is pretty close. You can equip these guys and choose one of two paths for them to specialize them in. Your character has their own skill tree, but its much more reminicent of SRPG skill tree (like King Arther, King's Bounty or Disciples) than an rpg tree. If you don't like games like King's Bounty, Jagged Alliance, or Disciples, or even Blackguards or Lords of Xulima, you should probably avoid this game. If you do like those types of games, what I've played so far looks good.
 
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I enjoyed Xulima, but the rest aren't my thing either ;)
 
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So it seems you can't select the difficulty level yet?

Also Aterdux, I have installed the game on my 2560 x 1440 desktop too, which has higher DPI enabled, and yet I was able to pick the native resolution.

These issues don't bother me too much though, I know a great game is awaiting me.
 
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Kordanor said:
Troops is really relative. Yes, they are nameless ones. But you only have one or two hand full of them. So I'd say it's not too far away from something like hirelings in Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: OS. It's not like you are moving around "stacks" of units like in HOMM
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Troops are not nameless! Moreover, with personalization option turned on they have their own stats and you can choose when hiring them.
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
So it seems you can't select the difficulty level yet?

Also Aterdux, I have installed the game on my 2560 x 1440 desktop too, which has higher DPI enabled, and yet I was able to pick the native resolution.

These issues don't bother me too much though, I know a great game is awaiting me.
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You can select difficulty. Just turn off the tutorial in the game options.
 
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Are the troops really nameless? I've hired a couple of peasants yesterday and each one had a name like Luis or Stefan.

Well, LoE looks like Disciples 2 to me. I have fun with it so far.
 
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Lev said:
Are the troops really nameless? I've hired a couple of peasants yesterday and each one had a name like Luis or Stefan.

Well, LoE looks like Disciples 2 to me. I have fun with it so far.
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My point exactly, troops have names.

Disciples 2 is a big compliment, thank you!
 
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With "nameless" I meant that they don't have a story Background or anything similar. Just like in the 2 games I compared it with...
 
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