The elements of Anteria
It may seem a bit strange, as the new production from Blue Byte has come a long way and it certainly wasn't paved with roses. Champions of Anteria started out as the next entry in the aforementioned Settlers franchise, subtitled Kingdoms of Anteria. Not everything worked out with the project, however - the title was cancelled and what was left of it was used to make Champions, a game which, in terms of gameplay, lands far off the classic strategic premise focused on development of a settlement. First and foremost, this game is an RPG, and the elements characteristic of Settlers-like games are featured only as a supplement.
The main axis of the game revolves around the heroes; for each skirmish we can choose as few as three of them, each representing one of the elements. We plan our actions on a straighforward world map that clearly shows the extent of our influence in the world of Anteria. The player's task is to conquer subsequent lands, taking over more and more territory - we achieve this through a variety of missions and - mainly - clashes with enemy forces. Our main objective is to capture the capital of a given region, but before we can do that, it will be necessary not only to gain authority over individual provinces, but also to keep them in our possession - from time to time our opponents will try to recapture their former properties, launching attacks on our defensive positions or fortifications. Nothing can be taken for granted in the world of Champions of Anteria - hegemony must be constantly reaffirmed in combat.
In the presented demo version we conquered subsequent lands by completing various missions. One of them had our heroes escorting a caravan carrying goods and supplies necessary to establish a new settlement on foreign land, while in some other case we were made responsible for rebuilding some watchtowers and - consequently - taking control of the land. This impression of variety, however, doesn't change the fact that it all boils down to battles with regularly emerging groups of opponents representing different elements and level of advancement; and the former turns out to be extremely important when it comes to this game. The susceptibility of a unit to fire, water or any other given element significantly alters the power of the attack we can deliver. Furthermore, there are also some special abilities that, under certain conditions, can incapacitate a unit in combat, making it completely useless and doomed to certain death.
