Fantasy Wars

This is an interesting combo of the combat of Civilization with the unit management of Heroes of Might and Magic with some Warhammer tossed in for good measure. I was expecting a fantasy style base building RTS at first blush but I noticed this was all turn-based and that sealed the deal. I love tactical turn based games if they're done right, and this is one of the most comprehensive experiences in one package. Apart from some wonky English translation, the game runs great, looks great (much better than Warcraft 3) sounds great with full voice acting in the campaigns performed with appropriate enthusiasm. If you zoom far out you can see your units represented by single animated placeholders like the troops in Crusader Kings games, but uniquely zooming in allows you to not only see exactly how many of each unit type you have but watch them fight other clusters of units in elaborate battles. It's turn based with RNG elements, but it mostly comes down to positioning, gauging the enemy, and making sure you do things like avoiding enemy archers who can fire into melee combat in range of their weapons getting in free hits, or maneuvering the enemy so they fall victim to the same ambushes. Wizards and heroes rule the field and they like regular units level up with experience in combat and can acquire unique perks based on race and profession. You can rest units to recover their remaining health, but you need to replenish your ranks with volunteers using recaptured towns and castles. You can use gold you collect to buy units from towns and such up to a level cap which increases with each town you liberate so your forces are always growing, falling back to regroup, and looking for things to interact with in each map. Very fun, very entertaining! I heard not so good things about the sequel but I had to pick it up too since I enjoyed this one so much.

Nice game. Storyline is fun. Graphics are awsome considering the year it was relesed. Fun to play.

Poor implementation. Difficulty is imbalanced, if you don't play the game like it was designed by developers (i.e. collecting all artifacts, leveling up all squads up to 5th level and having optimal squad composition along the way). Still, the game was funny to play, thus I think it deserves at least 3 stars.

When there are 3 difficulty levels, one being "easy", you should be able to play the game without having too much trouble, but that is not the case.

Brutally tough and strategy game with very good AI. Missed this gem when it originally came out.