These improve over time, and are boosted by any equipment they carry, and make a big, obvious difference to who should be doing what, especially fighting. Each has basic stats for fortitude, politics, wisdom, and charisma, which make them more effective at relevant tasks. Everyone will be doing the same things - bulking up defences, undermining enemy ones, driving up town prosperity, training soldiers, and a few others - but you can only do one action for every character you have, and those characters vary wildly in their abilities. The other reason is where the differences between factions come in. Those evil bastards to the Southwest keep trying to invade, how dare they? What kind of monstrous backstabbing scum would try to conquer me when I'm busy trying to righteously conquer someone else? This is partly because of the natural military strategy game dynamic where we develop relationships with AI sides based on how a campaign goes. But that's alright, because by then you'll have formed your own grudges and impressions of your rivals. Although these are a nice touch (my undead faction leader was out to get revenge on Death itself for overlooking her, which is metal as hell), they make little difference and you'll forget your faction's story long before your game's over.
There’s a tonne of character text but it keeps out of the way if you don’t ask for it. Each also get a unique story to set things up. You really ought to just pick whoever you like the look of, since there's really no way to tell how anyone will play until you try them. With some caveats, I recommend enabling both of these, simply because they make things more interesting in the long run, but they could also be frustrating depending on what happens in your game. The biggest ones are whether alignment restricts what factions a character can work for, and whether AI factions can poach your characters. Each faction has a lot of text that you won't read, half a dozen named characters, and a lot of confusing icons that you don't need to worry about yet.Įvery faction plays essentially the same way, with the only huge difference being dependent on what setup options you choose. You pick a faction from a fantasy map that very vaguely resembles China (in the same way that 90% of Anglo fantasy maps are basically Western Europe, and probably the Middle East where the Dark Evil Evil Dark Monster Doomdark is). So maybe it's complicated, but simple to actually play? Hmm.Īlright, let's describe it. On your first ten turns you're doing the same actions as in your 200th, and its battles in particular are largely hands off. But over time its subtler details become more apparent, and your choices start to feel more multifaceted.Īnd yet, it remains at heart the same throughout. That's partly because it's easy to play it too passively, or get stuck in attritional stand offs, and partly because of the need for a bit too much repetition. There was a period of disappointment, even, when it seemed like there wasn't much to it at all. Before starting a game, it gives an impression of being a complex grand strategy that's something like a fantasy Total War with a D&D alignment system and a distinctly East Asian focus on characters and dialogue. I still don't know whether to describe The Heroic Legend Of Eagarlnia as "complicated" or "simple". This is The Rally Point, a regular column where the inimitable Sin Vega delves deep into strategy gaming.