This game is a remake of Eador Genesis. It has fancier graphics, a few new enemies and rules, but it is also just somehow worse than the previous entry in the series. Eador is a game that takes a long time to play, and it is a game that benefits from the player being able to get a lot of information at a glance, without having to spend valuable seconds trying to figure out what something is. Eador Genesis had this down perfectly. Play a few shards, and you know what that enemy in front of you is and what it can do. But with Broken World, it's not so easy. With the 3D graphics, it can be difficult to make out what an enemy is, what a building is, whether a province is plains or hills, what the building in your capital are - etc. It's a chore. Maybe I need to get my eyes checked but this game is just bloody draining to play. The worst offender of this is the capital screen. The building construction interface has been scrunched down into a tiny corner of the screen. Genesis had an interface that was quite good, and pretty much any change that has been made in this version of the game is a change for the worse. If you need the fancy graphics than by all means, play this version. But if you can take em or leave em, just stick with Genesis.
First I'll mention the graphics. I gotta say that artwork like this in games just doesn't age. At all. After all these years it still looks fantastic. The character art and the scenery is stunning, with a style focusing heavily on thick black shadows. These stylish isometric maps do lead so some readability problems however; it is sometimes hard to tell where you can move, or where you can see. This, combined with the game's difficult line-of-sight system make it hard to tell whether you are safe or not. But the game's biggest flaw is the controls. The game uses tank controls - you must turn your character and then inch them forward one or two squares per move, and they get three moves per turn in most situations. This makes basic movement tedious, and leads to me making mistakes as I navigate my characters around the map. Controls aside, the game's combat system is pretty good, albeit a little basic. Basic moving and attacking with interesting character skills thrown in. Speaking of the characters, they're just great. I'd watch a cartoon show about them, no question. Their art and voice acting very well done. The characters themselves don't add much to the plot, but they are fun to play with, and sometimes give you moments of emergent storytelling ("Bear," a hulking shotgun toting bruiser, might go berzerk and clear the map for you, for example.) The skills they gain as they level up are totally game-changing. They have unique art for different situations, great animation, and tons of well done voice lines. I'd watch a tv show about them any day, really. As for the plot, well, I hope you like reading. This is Tom Clancy stuff, delivered in walls upon walls of text. Its worth reading, but with the skill shown in the art and animation, a little more would be nice. Soundtrack is top notch, though. If you can stomach rough parts, Shadow Watch can be a great time. If QOL features and streamlined controls are a must, leave this one in the shadows.
