Legends of Eisenwald

If you are a fan of role playing, it is a decent game. However, if you value immersive tactical combat, you might want to stay away from this. The combat mechanics are extremely limited. You don't have many options besides clicking on who to attack next. There is no tactical repositioning, flanking, you can't even freely move around on the tactical map. Therefroe combat gets boring and repetitive very soon.

I wasn't expecting this game to be as fast paced and fun as it is! There's a surprising amount of customization here, like hiring mercenaries to fill out your team, outfitting every soldier you have, listening to rumors for side quests, wandering NPC groups you can attack or interact with, and different events happening according to the time of day. The real selling point here is the tactical combat which has a major distinction: you cannot move without attacking or using an ability. This is not X-Com where you spend half or time in cover. You move to attack or use a special ability or an item and then the enemy moves. If they attack you chances are you will attack them so battles feel dynamic even though they are turn-based. Everyone levels up into different roles and appearances too so you feel a great sense of progression. The only reason this isn't top tier is a lack of voice acting which wouldn't be terrible if it wasn't for some typos in the script. It's not a deal breaker, it's just obvious this translation is not the original language. Also there's a weird flickering of the shadows even at the highest graphical settings. But other than these niggling issues it's an addictive adventure! High medieval atmosphere. A living world to explore. Castles to conquer. Armies to outfit and raise. A fine experience.

Somewhere between the faux horror-noir (it's art) of Disciples and the heady (heh) thrills of Battle Brothers lies the forests and pastures of Eisenwald, not far from Belarus. Ostensibly a tactical romp, there is the small matter of a -very- limited customisation for your character, one of three playable.: Your standard Charlemagne-ey Knight, a Priest-Mage character and a tom-boy Baroness. During the many tactical scraps, Eisenwald eschews the usual allotment of points per character and instead decides that there is no movement points, per se, instead we're offers some kind of a movement is attack rule-set, which in no way detracts from the over-all fightin' experience of putting people in their proper feudal place. However, when your Baroness is not scrapping it out in the beaches and in the fields, she is engaged upon a plot-line which is actually nicely put together or standing a round or two of lager for her Germanic entourage in the local jolly-house. I'm loving this game at the moment and as an extra special bonus, we are able to delve into the files and edit various epithets for various characters, such as "the Wise", "the Arrow" to replacements far more rude and alarming, depending upon your own levels of juvenility. Lovely. All in all a great first outing from the developers of Eisenwald. Recommended!

I was really excited about the story-rich RPG, low-fantasy concept. I played it in early access then again a year or so after release. It was fun for about 5 hours but then you realize the story is linear, there are no "real" choices, not even in combat which LOOKS like a cool chess game at first but you cannot move your characters or even pass on your turn if you want to keep a soldier out of harm's way so it feels more like a clickable auto-resolve. The developers claim you have strategic options in troop placement but putting your healers and archers in the front line is suicide so you don't have any real choices when it comes to troop placement either. Battles were more economic calculations than edge-of-your-seat action - I was just trying to pick battles where I could win enough loot to cover the cost of healing wounds. Other than grinding to upgrade equipment and level up the squad the player has little to do except read volumes of text about a more or less coherent story line with generic plot twists. Still I enjoyed playing it for about 5 hours, then it got boring but I slogged through it to see where the story would go. Once you finish a map, you lose the troops so you have to grind a new squad up to par to finish the next story. Then lose your squad again and grind your way through a new map aware you are wasting your time. Three maps was all I could do before hating the game. I started out really excited about the game then ended up angry at the developers - if only there were some decent modding tools it might be salvageable but there aren't. If you want to give it a try, buy it when it's on sale.

PRO The game is very nice: a great story with a suggestive setting and a very nice atmosphere. The combat system is original and interesting: based more on placement than movement, it is more reminiscent of chess than tactical video games. The evolution of the main character and followers is articulated and deep: an unbalanced party can hardly finish a mission. CONS The save system is completely broken: most of the time it is impossible to load a save, even saving often you cannot have usable saves.