Etherlords

As it is case with some originals overshadowed by their sequels (take Baldur's Gate 2 for example), Etherlords is pretty average game. Due to weird design of turns (your heroes move at the end of a turn, not during it) and castle 'sieges', missions are often series of silly chases who will get to enemy's castle first and start chipping it turn after turn. Which is both boring and cheap, yet necessary strategy. Factions are unbalanced big time - Chaots will aggro rush you with rats, pumping them and pinging your hero with spells, but as Vital, you will have to upgrade our deck to fliers and ramp spells as soon as possible. Too many times you will have to fight with enemy hero who has much better deck and higher hp, what's worse - many times there is no way but to soak damage and painfully wait to draw better cards, as it is case with Kinects. Overall, battles are either banale affair of stomping on some low level enemy, or game of ehxaustion. The lack of second cast/end phase/instant spells takes any chance from battles to have a depth and more strategic layer. It's just a damage race. tl;dr Just play Etherlords 2 which is much better game, without weird turn system and much more interesting campaign.

The deck duel is quite fun, and the early levels are nice to get a feel for the game. Then you have 10-15 turns before you die in later levels, against vastly superior enemies. I like finding combinations of cards to cast to thwart a computer player. The decks of 15 cards provide less lumpy experiences, but you can still load 5 cards or so of the same type (expensive!). Hero levels matter - they decide life points and how much mana you have each turn. And the play can be balanced since the 4 schools of magic aren't allowed to mix - so combinations can't be made across schools. Losing comes too quickly to the maps. Several maps had enemies rushing my castle by turn 10, and dealing it 20% damage per turn. You can lose within 20 minutes, easily, when his 27 life hero fights your 10 life hero - and has powerful spells and more mana to cast them. The early game is definitely an ideal experience, but the levels turn horrible. I have to average them out for a 3-star review. You'll be happier if you stop when the game gets painful!

I seem to remember that the campaign in this first game is very frustrating and unfun. The mechanics stayed pretty much the same in the second game, but that one I actually finished, so there.

Played this originally back when it was new, I was never into any card games other than pokemon, and even that I never really played it, just collected the cards. Etherlords is a lot of fun even if you're not familiar with the physical card games it's heavily inspired by, it's something of a light turn based strategy with some RPG elements and a heavy emphasis on the combat system. You can see the card game influences on the mechanics, but you don't really need to know anything about card games to figure out how to play and do well. The lore and atmosphere of the universe is really enjoyable and well presented, like a lot of RTS games from this era, and it has a banger soundtrack that I still listen to after ripping it out of the CD version of the game.

If you ever enjoyed a "Magic" like card game or any turn based strategy game: this might be a nice thing to try. Like in Heroes of Might and Magic you conquer resources and territory, but the fights are like Magic. summon minions and resources to attack your enemy and defeat his heroes. Graphics were fine, music also. I loved playing it allthough I never got that far - i simply sucked at managing my troops ;) First time I heard the name "Nival" - the company that rescued (imho) the HoMM series with part 5 later.