Dhruin
SasqWatch
Courtesy of GameBanshee comes notice of the first two Fantasy Wars: Elven Legacy Reviews. First up, Boomtown is critical of the lack of innovation, although there's no real criticism of the actual turn-based combat gameplay. The score is 6/10 and here's an early snip:
On the other hand, Hooked Gamers liked the story, praises the UI and awards 8/10:No new ground has been forged in terms of story here, with the same tired old fantasy clichés intact. The campaign story focuses on a company of elven warriors lead by Lord Saggitel as they cross a continent in pursuit of a mage possessing powerful forbidden magic. The plot seems entirely superfluous to the gameplay and isn't helped by poor writing and voice acting. In addition, each mission seemed to consist of “kill this commander, capture this town” objectives that deviate little as you advance in chapters. Progress through the game's story offers you some flexibility via a branching mission tree which permanently locks out missions that you avoid, but this has little effect on your long term goal.
More information.All in all, my honest impression is that Elven Legacy is little more than a re-wrapped Fantasy Wars with new units, new storyline and improved graphics. There is nothing wrong with that, however, as the game offers solid, good fun for any fan of strategy in a fantasy setting. Still, it might have been interesting to see some more ambition from the developers: bigger maps, larger armies, supply routes etc. that would take the game more towards being a real strategy game. The main story is there merely to bind the individual battle maps together and offers little in the way of true penmanship. Above all, I would have liked to see more choices left to the player. Being able to just choose blindly between two optional routes on the main map from one encounter to the next is not really giving the player any choice.