Fantasy Wars - Review @ GameZone

[magerette]

Fantasy Wars, from 1C/Ino-Co is looking a lot more like a straight fantasy strategy title, despite the developer's claims to RPG elements, but as we've been covering it, here is the latest review at GameZone, which gives the game a 7.5 overall score.
The strategy elements:

Still, what Fantasy Wars offers is a solid-looking game that can’t help but draw parallels to chess. How? Well, the mapboard for the campaigns is cut up into hexagons. Each of the army pieces has movement limitations and attacking ranges. The turn each player takes is comprised of moving a piece and then attacking any opposition in range. Of course, the more units you have the more attacking power you have.

Defense is nice, but the game seems to revolve around strategic movement and offense, rather than fortifying positions and defending. Each segment of the campaign is goal driven. You move your army across the mapboard, defeating enemies (and yes, some are hidden until you happen up on them, but for the most part you will see the enemy as you get in range and can decide the best course of action), capturing or liberating towns (important in that you can gain gold which translates into being able to add to your army), until you get to the main objective.​

And what might be considered the RPG elements:​

There are no uber units that give one side or another a decided advantage. What does help, though, is that as you fight you gain experience, which is applied to all the surviving units. Skills are rewarded and fall into two categories – active and passive. (Active are the skills you have to trigger in the game while passive are skills that are always turned on.) Skills can apply terrain bonuses...​

Conclusion:​

While the combat elements of this title feel a little antiquated, Fantasy Wars still manages to be challenging with little room for error. Because it is turn based, you can consider a course of action, but bad choice are often gobbled up by the AI, especially if you are trying to get top scores for the mission level. The game is easy to jump into and play, so it should appeal to newcomers to the genre. While not a high-end turn-based game, Fantasy Wars is a decent title.​

More information.

 

[skavenhorde]

I just got this game yesterday. I like it but these time limit rewards are annoying. The time limits vary depending on the battle but they are all very short. Like 8 turns for gold plus 4 for silver plus ??? for bronze. What this does is make each scenario very short. I was expecting bigger maps and longer campaigns but so for I've played 3 battles. 1st took 8 turns for the gold, then 2nd 10 and third 10. It all seems a bit rushed to me. Anyways I hope the battles become longer the farther I get into the game.

 

[magerette]

That kind of duplicates my experience with the demo--very short, very pushed feeling in some ways, yet I thought the game had some potential. I wonder if they're aiming at shorter play sessions for gamers whose playtime is limited? In the old days, a single campaign in a game like this could take weeks.

 

[VPeric]

I've been playing it too, and I'm fairly satisfied. The turn limits are short, but that's because the maps are small too (20x20, I believe?). I believe their role model was Fantasy General (wikipedia); I haven't played it, but people say it's almost an exact clone.

Anyway, if it's longer you want, you could play Battle for Wesnoth - it has certain similarities, though it also features economics/recruitment making it that much more complicated. I actually prefer Fantasy Wars somewhat, mostly because of that simplification - while I do enjoy economy management, in these games it kinda detracts from the main focus: tactics.

 

[zakhal]

The turn limits are nothing new. They were in the original series too. Instead of bronze, silver and gold they were called major victory, decisive victory and sofort. Major victory (=Silver) was usually enough to "win" in the original game. Decisive victory (=Gold) was just a bonus.