Legends of Eisenwald ?

Does anyone have any thoughts on this game? What other games (past and present) does it compare to? Does this game come highly recommended?

Thanks!

Link to game here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/24…_of_Eisenwald/

I was wanting some opinions before I thought about buying it

Very, very good game recommended to me on my "recommend me a game" thread/

It has the look of King's Bounty in gameplay but is much more story and character bound.

Its about historical as a historical fantasy can get with a few great liberties to keep it fun and not a historical slog fest. You really feel like you are caught in the intrigues of Medieval Germany.

Thanks Lucky Day.

More questions: How sandboxy is it? Can you capture towns, castles, etc? Or anything like that?

Excellent game, my favorite RPG of that year (2015 was it?) But then I'm a sucker for tactical combat RPGs.
Basically the game is a series of maps or 'chapters', in each map you recruit some mercenaries for your party, these mercenaries level up and can become specialized classes each with different abilities. You can capture towns and castles and then you can rest there, recruit people and buy stuff there, etc. It's only for that map though, next map you start from scratch (and a different map) except for the levels you acquired and you get to keep some items from before if I remember correctly.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Similar to games like Disciples 2 and HOMM, there may be points farther into the game where you lose it all, troops, gold, inventory. All those things you worked so hard for. This is part of the game, not a bug. And you wont know when…. Be warned.

Just so you know.

I didn't buy it because it looked suspicious and boring, but I'll trust wolfling and buy it later today - as his other recommendations so far didn't disappoint. I mean… So far didn't need to be exterminated.

Originally Posted by joxer
… So far didn't need to be exterminated.

This.

pibbur

Just a question, is there a reason which is part of the story to start over from scratch at each map?
I was quite interested when I read all the comments you did. It made me remember the gameplay of Horned Rat where you manage your own mercenary company. But, losing artificially, at each map, your army would be immersion breaking for me.

Originally Posted by Aerth
Just a question, is there a reason which is part of the story to start over from scratch at each map?
I was quite interested when I read all the comments you did. It made me remember the gameplay of Horned Rat where you manage your own mercenary company. But, losing artificially, at each map, your army would be immersion breaking for me.

Story-wise, they are mercenaries, so they do not travel the world with you I believe.
The story does not re-start each map, simply the army you spend building up is no longer there.

I bought it just because if what the developers were trying to do. Game was overall ok.
Not disappointed.

Originally Posted by Aerth
Just a question, is there a reason which is part of the story to start over from scratch at each map?
I was quite interested when I read all the comments you did. It made me remember the gameplay of Horned Rat where you manage your own mercenary company. But, losing artificially, at each map, your army would be immersion breaking for me.

Yes there's usually some reason like "they remained behind to guard your castle" or whatever, but the real reason of course is gameplay, so each map is a challenge and so they can predict more or less how difficult it'd be, otherwise if you came in with a party full of max level mercenaries you'd waltz through the map all the way to the boss. To me it was actually part of the appeal.

To be honest the thing that annoyed me the most was the anti Semitic aspects of the game.

There was little reason for them.

Other than that the game was fun.
Not the best game ever but some interesting elements. I played it for around 15 hours I think.


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Bought and started Eisenwald. Of course I picked the third class (whatnot mage) written - ment for advanced players. And that hero is pretty much useless - does low damage and only in adjacent hexagons, means I'll probably restart and take one of the other two.

UI is unbelievably clunky. Instead of fighting against trashmobs, it feels like I'm fighting against UI.
Sorry but although I didn't get past the first map, my suggestion is not to buy this game unless it's on some huge discount.

Originally Posted by Pladio
To be honest the thing that annoyed me the most was the anti Semitic aspects of the game.

I really don't understand this criticism.
This setting is heavily inspired by the german middle ages. They even used one or two old german legends (changed a bit of course). I have to say I have never played a game with a more realistic medieval setting (minus the fantastic elements and some other things). Characters in the game think like actual medieval persons not like a modern person send back in times like its the case in most modern media.
Of course some of the characters say antisemtic things, antisemtism was really big in the middle ages in germany and other parts of europe.
I like that they didn't do a lot of anachronistic things, i was really immersed.

The storytelling is great in this game. This alone makes it worth to play this game.

Originally Posted by Khayyin
I really don't understand this criticism.
This setting is heavily inspired by the german middle ages. They even used one or two old german legends (changed a bit of course). I have to say I have never played a game with a more realistic medieval setting (minus the fantastic elements and some other things). Characters in the game think like actual medieval persons not like a modern person send back in times like its the case in most modern media.
Of course some of the characters say antisemtic things, antisemtism was really big in the middle ages in germany and other parts of europe.
I like that they didn't do a lot of anachronistic things, i was really immersed.

The storytelling is great in this game. This alone makes it worth to play this game.

They could have easily made it about some fantasy thing.

But it's not, the references are so strongly anti Semitic that it's too difficult to ignore. It's not like they talk about Jesus all the time either. They're not being realistic on that, so why have Simon the Levy moneylender or whatever. The references were very directly attributed to Jews.

They could have said the annoying moneylender or this family called Bush. But no, this seemed very deliberate to me….

If they wanted to be realistic in this aspect, I would have expected many more prayers to come about too in the name of Jesus.


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Been awhile since I played the base game but here's the review I posted on Steam back in Sept. 2015:

At first, I wasn't too sure about the combat system. It seemed too simplistic (i.e., there weren't going to be enough tactical options). however, I ended up liking it a lot and found the beauty in it's simplicity. It's quite different from any other turn-based strategy game I ever played; sometimes your options are limited but that just has to be taken into account when planning your strategy (the worst thing is when you are forced to knowingly send one of your soldiers into a vicious counter-attack).

Unfortunately, you will sometimes have to endure walls of text. And let me be clear I have no problem reading text in my RPGs. When it's well-written, I like it just fine. But some of the many legends in Legend in Eisenwald (usually encountered as rumors in taverns) are… shall we say, needlessly verbose. They just go on and on and on. And while they are usually somewhat interesting and may even play an important part in the main story, I feel that many of them could be cut in half without losing anything substantial.

Some other things I wasn't crazy about:

*At the end of most chapters, you say goodbye to most, if not all of your soldiers and their gear.. That means all of the units that you worked to build into powerful army will be gone and you'll have to pretty much start over building your army in the next chapter.. leveling up peasants and buying basic equipment.

I understand that this probably done for game balance reasons (and in particular, to give you incentive to conquer enemy castles, which allows you to hire additional units)…. nevertheless, its very irritating to lose all your veteran soldiers and their gear, and the game usually gives very weak rationale for this (e.g., someone tells you that a large force will attract too much attention so you can only take two units… But then as soon as you get the next chapter, you'll likely recruit more troops ASAP). I would've preferred if the game was balanced to take more of my units with me… You spend a lot of time rebuilding your army in each chapter, and while that can be fun for awhile, it inevitably feels like busy work.

*Moving across some areas in the game can be pretty painful… I constantly experienced misclicking as it's seldom clear where you can and can't go on each area… Lots of twists and turns. It would have been nice if you could double click on a point on the map and have it plot a course to the destination… Instead, you have to actually see the place you want to go to, and since your field of view is so small, you will have to constantly rotate the camera to try to see whatever town or building you're trying to get to.

*There were a few instances where enemies respawned. I could understand if they were vampires or something, but no, there in one chapter I remember regular enemies coming back to life and retaking the castle.

*There were some instances in the game where my character makes some morally questionable choices that I would not have liked to do… There's perhaps a couple times in the game when you can make a choice, but for the most part your character is going to complete their quest by any means necessary. It's a bit frustrating in a role-playing game when things like this are decided for you… In the final chapter in particular, it seems my character acts based on a decision I made several chapters ago..

The final chapter dragged on a bit as you have to clear a bunch of castles, but I found the battles to all be rather easy (except the final battle which had an insanely powerful enemy).

Other than that, I really liked the game overall and would recommend giving it a shot if you want to try something different. The music is fantastic and the combat / character class progression system is simple, yet effective.

I also remember the Iron Road DLC being good. I haven't really played enough of Blood of November to notice what changes / improvements were made.

*Moving across some areas in the game can be pretty painful… I constantly experienced misclicking

This. It's outright horrible and the main reason why I can't recommend buying this game at full price.
You have to put up a bit of masochistic attitude or will uninstall the game rather fast.

Originally Posted by Pladio
They could have easily made it about some fantasy thing.

But it's not, the references are so strongly anti Semitic that it's too difficult to ignore. It's not like they talk about Jesus all the time either. They're not being realistic on that, so why have Simon the Levy moneylender or whatever. The references were very directly attributed to Jews.

They could have said the annoying moneylender or this family called Bush. But no, this seemed very deliberate to me….

If they wanted to be realistic in this aspect, I would have expected many more prayers to come about too in the name of Jesus.


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The Jews were the only group of people allowed to lend money in the middle ages, because of the prohibition of interest for christians from the catholic church/bible/old testament. This is one of the causes of one of the antisemitic stereotypes. And perfectly historical.
And they show the catholic church in this game how it was in the middle ages, with all the negative aspects. And a lot more prominently. There is no whitewashing in this game. A big positive from me.

If you don't like a historical setting, then this is not the game for you.

Originally Posted by Khayyin
The Jews were the only group of people allowed to lend money in the middle ages, because of the prohibition of interest for christians from the catholic church/bible/old testament. This is one of the causes of one of the antisemitic stereotypes. And perfectly historical.
And they show the catholic church in this game how it was in the middle ages, with all the negative aspects. And a lot more prominently. There is no whitewashing in this game. A big positive from me.

If you don't like a historical setting, then this is not the game for you.

It's a fantasy game with ghosts and magical items. It is not perfectly historical.

I perfectly enjoy historical settings, but this is also a fantasy game… no need and no added value from doing it the way they did other than potentially reinforce stereotypes.



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I bet you really hated Watto in SW: The Phantom Menace.

Tongue-in-cheek but hopefully an explanation Khayyin can understand. This is massively exaggerated, but it sells the point:

I want more games where Americans kill tons of Germans. It's historical after all and we're very good at it. I don't see a problem with playing games where it's perfectly fine to pick on this lesser country.

Or how about an alternate history game where the Jews murder, rape, and kill millions of helpless Germans? That'd be great! Does anyone see a problem with that?

A German that loves a historical game that promotes ant-Semitism is the height of poor taste.

Crpgnutberg or CrpgnutStein.