Fantasy Wars - Review @ 2404.org

2404 has posted their review of the fantasy strategy/RPG-ish title from Ino-Co, Fantasy Wars, this one with a positive slant and a final score of 7/10 :

Despite my lack of experience with the turn-based genre, the gameplay was exactly what I had anticipated. The only difference between this and other games in the genre is the inclusion of a couple of role-playing elements… In addition to experience, the other main role-playing elements in Fantasy Wars are the unit skills and abilities. As your units are gaining experience they’ll gain new abilities…

For this reviewer the main drawback of the game, other than its generic storyline, is the difficulty level, and the conclusion is the game is not for everybody:

Fantasy Wars is an addicting strategy game that I enjoyed playing once I found the cheat codes. It suffers from being too difficult and very generic – practically replicating a storyline from The Lord of the Rings. As far as replay value goes, there are three full campaigns, which would take many hours to complete, and there is also a multiplayer component. If you’re up for a big challenge and really enjoy the TBS genre, then I would definitely recommend Fantasy Wars to you. For the average strategy fan, however, I urge to exercise caution.

More information.

Seeing as this is turn-based strategy and not twitch action, would it not be so that the reviewer just applied the wrong strategy to his game, finding it too difficult? I am not familiar with the game, nor am I a huge turn-based strategy fan, but I can imagine that difficulty in such a game is something you'd want to have because figuring out a winning strategy is the core gameplay.

A good strategy game, of course, would have enough depth and flexibility that it'd allow the player to find new and clever solutions to his situation. If that is the case with Fantasy Wars (and it looks like it is), it being too easy would sort of ruin the whole point.

It actually is fairly difficult - not impossible, of course, but it does tend to frustrate sometimes. I know I've had to take plenty of breaks because of the difficulty (then again, I'm hardly an expert Panzer/Fantasy General player, and those guys will feel right at home with this).

Fantasy General was hard. D*MN hard. Unfortunately some of that hardness was because you had to play some missions many times to figure out the right course to take. Some people thought that was great and while I liked FG I never finished it because I grew tried of having to redo areas to learn what the paths were that would lead to success. Is Fantasy Wars like that?

BTW, this bugs me in RPGs, too. If you don't know what's coming you often get toasted by certain encounters and have to reply sections.

Fantasy Wars was the first positive game surprise I had in years.
It is challenging, but as soon as you start keeping your units alive it becomes manageable. The main difficulty lies in fulfilling the missions fast enough to get bonus rewards.
You might find that your losses are too high and want to reload but there is no trial and error gameplay involved. I managed to finish the game without cheats, so it is far from unbeatable. But I am part of a gaming generation that didn't expect to be able to play through every game. Playing through a challenging game is much more rewarding than through some kind of interactive movie where the only challenge is to have the patience to slug through the bad storyline.
The only problem I saw in FW was that it becomes annoying when your units reach maximum advancement…
I can also find no resemblance to the Lord of the Rings storyline (apart from orcs invading).

I'd give it an 8/10. But then I'd give an average game a 5/10, so my 8 corresponds to an 11/10 in modern reviewer scales…

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
Is Fantasy Wars like that?

As Shannow said, you'll probably want to replay a mission to minimize your losses (and consequently maximize your chances for winning the next). Still, it's manageable - I very much doubt you'll have to replay a single mission more than once; coupled with breaks it makes for an enjoyable experience. I'm still playing, in any case.

Originally Posted by Shannow
But I am part of a gaming generation that didn't expect to be able to play through every game. Playing through a challenging game is much more rewarding than through some kind of interactive movie where the only challenge is to have the patience to slug through the bad storyline.

I'll assume that isn't some sort of backhanded insult. I was not complaining about Fantasy General being challenging you will notice but that if you didn't know that X was going to happen in mission Y then you'd lose (or be so crippled at to not be able to beat the next mission). So you'd have to replay fully knowing that X was going to happen.

You can apply the "patience" argument the other way too. I find games much more rewarding where the challenge isn't just having the patience to replay every part until you have the whole sequence memorized. Or worse yet, replay until you get lucky and take minimal losses due to random factors.

Addictive not addicting.

Fantasy General is one of my very favorite games of all time; it joins a tiny list of non-RPG's I have greatly enjoyed. I tried the Fantasy Wars demo several months ago and was put off a bit by the jazzed up graphics, FG had such a simple interface that it never got in the way for me but jazzed up graphics just didn't seem to fit well.

That said, I was still going to purchase Fantasy Wars at some point but by now I have seen so many negative reviews — not just negative scores but descriptions of the game which make me not want it — that I doubt I will get Fantasy Wars unless it's at some point in an extreme bargain bin. I have seen people comment that it is enjoyable but it's in the vast minority from what I've seen and for a game which is an updated remake of a game I have played and played and played (FG) I just don't think I want to get FW.

Despite my lack of experience with the turn-based genre

These reviews are ridiculous. "I dont play sports games or have any experience with them but I think they are too boring and too hard to play so Ill just give them 50-70%." The last review I read gave the game bad score and called it a realtime strategy.

Pelit mag gave the game 88% by a famous veteran reviewer of over 30 years experience. It also got lots of good reviews in russia. And lots of people are praising the game on the boards.

But if you dont like the demo dont buy it. I absolute loved the demo and like the new looks. The generals series is alive again with fantasy wars and commander in europe.

Originally Posted by zakhal
These reviews are ridiculous. "I dont play sports games or have any experience with them but I think they are too boring and too hard to play so Ill just give them 50-70%." The last review I read gave the game bad score and called it a realtime strategy.

It’s very common to see RPG/TBS reviews commencing along the lines of "I don’t like/normally play this type of game", which translates as "I don’t have a clue how to review this, nor should I, but I’ll take the commission anyway". Basically these sorts of reviews are an exercise in futility: hardcore twitch gamers reviewing non-twitch games for a twitch audience.

I have just been playing the DEmo.

The game is - in the demo - a bit too hard for my taste, even on "easy" setting.

Which means that I won't buy it, if the difficulty remains the same.

Okay, reaching the first town (all these German sounding names ???) called Freiburg (which really does exist !) wasn't that difficult,

But after that, the amount of enemies was just too high and they seemingly could regain health which my own troops strangely couldn't.

Also, I learned far too late that a) units could have upgrades, and b) there was a restriction ofer the number of units one could have in the game, which means that i bought more than I could place.

All in all I think that the game is relatively nice, but i didn't like the demo that much. Not to mention the rather comic-like colours.

I think the demo atleast the last mission is *meant* to be hard. They made it hard so players have somthing to do while waiting to get the game. I ordered the game instantly after playing the demo. Perhaps not the best choice for demo though and I did mention it on the official forums.

BTW fantasy general was hard too imho. I never completed it fully (I lost too much troops before the last battle) allthough I had much fun playing it.

Well, my playing style is rather unusual: I try to keep as many troops as possible - life is just too valuable for me to be just "thrown away" in a battle.

This is difficult, though, and requires a quite defensive playing style.

i hear ya Alrik, that's exactly how I play. It just doesnt feel like I truly win if Ive lost my force ten times over. It takes far more skill, and is far more gratifying to play well and kick ass throughout w/ a reasonable force, with minimal or better yet NO losses.

It can be brutal in strategy to play like that tho, especially if there's no type of healing or repair available!