Review: Elemental Fallen Enchantress

[Green1]

Just like a little kid, I enjoy bringing out different playsets every now and then. The latest game I have gotten a hold of is Fallen Enchantress by Stardock. If you are not familiar, these are the guys that made the Galactic Civilizations 4x series of games.

A little history is needed first. A long while back, Stardock put out it's first attempt called Elemental: War of Magic. For those who are fans of the fantasy and magic genre it was to be the spiritual succesor of classics like Master of Magic and the Age of Wonders series. However it turned out to be a catastrophe. Not nearly like the Atari 2600 E.T. disaster of ancient video game history, but very close. The game crashed constantly and was very bland from reports. The CEO of the company had to issue out public apologies. He ended up laying off a lot of employees. On top of that, he vowed to make another attempt and would give all purchasers of the original Elemental the next game free.

Fallen Enchantress is that next attempt. The CEO hired Kael, the infamous modder behind the Civ 4 Fall from Heaven mod to help him as lead design. He built a new staff and started over with an unprecedented long no-NDA open beta. At long last, the game is here.

COMBAT SYSTEM 6/10

The combat is a tactical map. The reason it 6 of 10 is because the tactical map does not match the rich complexity of the stategic map or the units. There is no line of sight. Terrain has little effect. Instead of going a Final Fantasy Tactics or Age of Wonders route it is very simular to Heroes of Might and Magic. I prefer very detailed tactical maps with lots of creative ways to do things other than units have at it. Not a big fan of HoMM tactics battle sytems.

MAP 9/10

The strategic map is deep with quests, monster lairs, resources, etc. Oh, mindworms or Civ barbarians do not have anything on some of the wondering monsters. One interesting concept I like is that there are only certain places you can build cities. You have to scout the wilderness for build sites, so ICS does not exist here. You also have somthing called an outpost if you do see some resource out there that's land will not support a city you can build.

UNITS 10/10
You have deep customization of everything. Very detailed unit workshop. Hell, you can even post units to Facebook! I love unit workshops. Where it really shines is heroes and your main unit called a soveriegn. Countless traits and abilities can be added as you level up. In a very unique twist, if you still have a city and a hero dies, it show back up at the nearested city permanently crippled with a negative trait!

FACTIONS 6/10

Nothing memorable like Miriam of the Believers or Motezuma of the Civ series. The factions do have vastly different playstyles. But, nothing that really grabbed me.

AI 9/10

I played on Challenging. AI is brutal. This AI also adapts as you play. It learns from you and uses unit builds and strategies against you that you did previous games. Maybe I am a machosist, but I want a good AI and Fallen Enchantress Delivers. A lot of "oh [poop]" moments! What a concept.. adaptive AI! They say next patch they are making it even more hardcore.


OVERALL 7/10

Decent. If you are not into fantasy, you will not like it. But, I would suggest giving it a spin if just for the awesome unit customization. Sad they did not go with better models for tactics. Still, I would count it as a recovery for Stardock after a poor first attempt. However, it is not quite good enough yet to beat the classics yet.

[Green1]

Guys, this game is giving me a bad case of OMT. It is brutal, but a masterpiece. Kudo's to Kael off CFC for fixing this game. Once they get the Kuquat engine to support line of site and let them do AoW style tactical battles, Stardock will have another cult classic.

Which brings me back to SMAX. If Master of Magic and Age of Wonders gets a"spiritual" successor, why cant we?

[Unorthodox]

Final Fantasy Tactics

Poor example of that style, IMO. 

I'll have to poke around for a demo to see if it'll run on this laptop. 

[Green1]

Final Fantasy Tactics

Poor example of that style, IMO. 

I'll have to poke around for a demo to see if it'll run on this laptop. 

I was using FFT as comparison to the tactics portion of Fallen Enchantress. FE is actually three parts : the 4x, the RPG/ character development, and the tactics battles.

Final fantasy Tactics overland was linear and sucked - but the line of sight, character customization, attention to elevation and line of site for tactical was ahead of it's time. Few other games can match it. However, Fallen Enchantress with it's traits and workshop blow the customization out of the water. But, the complexity of the tactical maps leave some to be desired for those who have played games with decent tactics systems and pnp Dungeons and Dragons with minis (particularly 3.5 or 4th edition).

I was using FFT when talking about only one part of Fallen Enchantress. MoM, AoW and such are much more representative of the whole.

Believe me, on Stardock forums they are giving them hell on that. So much so, I think Kael is going to have to put in deeper tactical level stuff next expansion. Other than that, the game is a real gem.

I should have also mentioned the game is insanely moddable. They are starting to do crazy things over there.

I am fixing to have to step down in difficulty, though. The adaptive AI is literally stomping me and countering stuff I won with last game.

[Unorthodox]

I understood what you were saying about one element, I was just saying that FFT, while perhaps the best known, is a rather poor example of that particular style of tactical combat gameplay. 

FFT is hardly unique, even in it's time.  It's predecessor, Tactics Ogre, is superior in a number of ways for example, but is rather poorly known in the states.  There were a number of similar tactical combat games around the same time as well.  FFT was typically the most shallow with the smallest squad/map size.  I've often wondered why more of that style game didn't get made however. 

[Rymdolov]

I've never played FFT, but I've heard that it's battle concept is similar to that of Shining Force, my favourite game for the Genesis/Mega Drive console. Have you played SF and if so, is it true that it resembles FFT?

[Green1]

Never played Shining Force, as I did not own a Genesis. In fact, I went through a "dark ages' when I did not game at all between the Commodore 64 and Pentiums. I did not do any consoles or computers after the C64 till the SNES and PS1. Those were very trying times and I was very broke.

I am sure I missed a few gems. I am also sure I missed quite a few dogs. And, oh my god.. How many hundreds of platformers that all looked alike they made back then! At least I got to play Doom. I am glad they upped 4x from the SSI offerings and early Civ I, though, by the time I got back in.

@Uno: Tactics Ogre, I vaguely heard of. I have been hunting for tactics/character building type games. Hell, I even lurked around Temple of the Roguelike hoping to find a tactics squad based roguelike open source. But, you are right. Not a lot of good mini-based tactics wargames out there.

[Buster's Uncle]

Shoot, Green, you're pretty much my age after all, if not a little older.

OT, but I really enjoyed the original Duke Nukem - only it took way too much disk space for a game you could beat in a long afternoon.

[Green1]

Shoot, Green, you're pretty much my age after all, if not a little older.

OT, but I really enjoyed the original Duke Nukem - only it took way too much disk space for a game you could beat in a long afternoon.

42. Playing DnD since 2e. Playtesting 5th (or DnD next or whatever they want to call it now) Grew up with an Atari 2600 joystick in my hand and remember when Sears sold a 2600 knock off. Stepped up to a C64 and thought I had become a god programming junk on Graphics Basic that took up everything except 20 k... which was A LOT!

[Buster's Uncle]

My dad wouldn't touch a console, but I talked him into a RadioShack TRS80 color computer, and thought I'd finally fooled the man about something for a few years while I played Chess and an Asteroids rip-off - then I ended up computer-literate (all three of us kids did), and don't know how I'd have made it through college without something to write my papers on.  The argument that got him to buy it?  "Daddy, it's educational" and doggon if it wasn't, after all.   Best 300 bucks he ever spent. 


I didn't think I was a great programmer, but I sure spent a lot of time debugging Mylochka's BASIC programs...

[Green1]

Trash-80...lol. You should have gotten a Commodore. They kept support for that system well into the days of the 286s. You could even go on BBSs with it until everything started going towards 80 column boards and made everything unreadable. Had to finally sell mine at behest of a pissed ex-wife in '91 to pay rent. Feel sorry for the guy that purchased it. Commodore went belly up right after and the guy was very computer illiterate.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, bite me.  The Coco had a slot in the side for games, and RadioShack sold games.  That's all I cared about when I couldn't get an Atari.  My Coco still works, BTW, and so do the crappy old games.  You think your C64 does?

[Green1]

It did when I last saw it, which was 2 years back. We had found each other on facebook and let each other meet kids we had from different marriages. The disk drive went out. The ex wife's family ended up back in possession of it when the guy died and somehow the guy's ex wife ordered a new C64 1541 C drive for it when the one I sold to him broke. I could not get it back.

This is before me and my daughter had to exit due to the first ex returning to her bitchy ways.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, I got to play an Asteroids rip-off and many other games we acquired, which was the whole original point.  You'll have to talk to my dad's ghost about the relative merits of various losers in the PC wars.  He won't care, but tell him I say hi, Mom isn't dating, and we miss him.

Mylochka owns one of those Timex Sinclair TIwhatevers that nobody anywhere could ever program.  Go laugh at her.

[Buster's Uncle]

It was the TS1000, rumored to be the worst computer of all time, IIRC - Stonehenge was too bulky and underpowered, but easier to program.