Ever wished you could edit the game mechanics when they don't make sense? Turn-based skirmish games are my favorite, but this game is frustrating. Pros: Good interface No glitches Runs in 1080p on my AMD FX6300 w/GeForce GT710 on Ubuntu 22.04. Cons: Interface - You can zoom out to see an entire room, but each turn the game zooms in close . Limited Maps - Each dungeon is rooms 4 people wide linked by 2 people wide halls. Space Hulk anyone? Why can't the game engine handle more open maps? Difficulty - Enemy strategy is undeveloped. Each enemy runs to a random player in its range. If it blocks another enemy it doesn't care. You can't move after your first melee attack, so you get stuck after killing the lone baddie that reached your dude. Instead of strategy, the devs kneecapped the player. Your characters miss often. The Ogre's Head Crusher skill fails until you're down to the last Rat Ogre. Prayers are mostly ignored. Winds of Magic disappear for 2 turns when a boss appears. It's not random. Higher enemies beat down any of your dudes in 1 turn. Only the Ogre's "Head Crusher" skill can do that to an enemy boss. Players can use all melee, ranged, & magic each turn, even if in melee. Magic users cast any spells they want if they have points. Archmage has either offense or defense magic each turn. Feels like a handicap to cover for no strategy. XP upgrades random. My War Priest is a fighter with low health; Shadow Warrior has more health than Trollslayer. XP goes to dude that makes killing blow or magic users healing others. Have to plan who gets XP for each kill. Bad spawning - Enemies spawn in melee, mixed right in with the fight. Just cleared a room? Enemies spawn behind you, requiring backtrack. Ranged & magic users spawn as far back as they can with line-of-sight, often rooms ago. Bosses can spawn in consecutive turns, overwhelming you. Mismatched enemy types often show up in the middle of a fight, but only fight you. It doesn't feel coherent.
I'm not a fan of fast-paced shoot-em up any more, but this is simple fun. I like how even though I fail pretty regularly, I keep racking up upgrades. So far I've beaten the Overseer 1.0, but the difficulty definitely ramped up after that.
I'll start with saying I bought the Steam version a couple years ago because I couldn't wait for it to arrive on GOG. I was also a Mordheim player sixteen years ago and love the smaller warband tabletop style. The good: The game really captures the Mordheim setting. The skirmishes are great fun. Unlike the tabletop game, the movement system allows you to optimize your moves. This is a blessing when the computer naturally optimizes its moves according to its AI. The permanent pos/neg traits from exp and wounds! The bad: Plan on repeating the plot scenarios a few times before you get through them, all the while your warband will be taking permanent damage and you'll have to step back and fight a few skirmishes to earn cash and rebuild. True to the Mordheim rules, different weapons are strictly regulated to only certain character types. It's really frustrating to buy a cool weapon and then realize none of your characters can use it. The AI opponents get stuck on terrain. The RNG has been called out here by others, and I have to say I've been a victim as well. Don't talk about it, though, or others will tell you you're a whiner and that's just how the dice roll. I took the time to build a spreadsheet and download each game log to track anomalies. The game definitely cheats on rolls. It was so bad I could reliably predict a hit/miss and tweak strategy to account for it. After the second plot-driven scenario your warband (and the enemies') grow to the point that every battle is a two-hour affair. Ugh. I don't have the time. Tips: Never go one on one with an enemy. Always arrange your attacks so that you're three-on-one and the enemy is jammed up on his own troops. Get the DLC. It's a shame that it's essentially just a data-lock on warbands that already exist. You'll fight against them, but you can't play them until you pay. I really wish the developers would have added more warbands. I loved all the alternative warbands, Orcs/Goblins, Pirates, Slann (lizardmen), etc.
The premise of the game is good, but the combat is crippled by rigid ranges and poor rules. Each of your four character types has a different range, either 1, 1 or 2, 3 , or 4 tiles away, if I remember right. Your character can only attack opponents the correct number of spaces away. It's more of a puzzle than combat. Characters in combat only get one shot on their turn, but if attacked by opponents in the correct range, they get a counter-attack against each attack. Attacking the last of an opponent's combatants with all your troops, only to have three of them injured in return before the shooter is down really hurts - and when you're down on one troop type due to injuries, you have to sub in an additional character of another troop type, which opens you up to this. (I was attacking a trencher with two trenchers and a frontliner). When you finish the game with one faction, it says you're 1/4 the way done and you restart with another faction, but everything's the same. The missions are the same. The additional fighters you pick up are the same. I lost interest before I finished with the second faction. There's nothing compelling to keep you interested.
Pleasantly fun and simple. Don't look for deep strategy or tactical advantage. The obstacles on the dinky battlefields are there just to restrict your movement and have no effect on ranged attacks. Pay attention to which of your troop types have the best attacks and defense versus which opponents and the game will be relatively easy. It took me a couple afternoons to work my way through the game to the end on the medium difficulty.
The gameplay is simple, the tactics aren't difficult to master, but I played it through in an afternoon. Braveland Pirate is significantly longer. Don't look for deep strategy. The obstacles on the battlefield are merely obstacles to movement and don't have any effect as far as cover.
If, like me, you have a short attention span and limited time for reading, here's my synopsis: Excellent leisurely-paced strategy game with beta quality. My wife doesn't play video games, but she was fascinated by the battles. They are spectacular and amazing! The funny thing is, you don't have a hand in the battle, it's simply a long-paced verification of your skill in building spacecraft and your strategies in employing them. Except for the battles, it all moves at your pace. The game loads and exits pretty quickly, so you can tinker your craft for a few minutes while you're waiting for your teenagers to get out of the bathroom. The long part of the game is the battles. You can speed the game up to 4x, but some battles will still take half an hour. The game also tends to crash during battles. Sometimes you can tweak your battle plan to avoid a crash, but you shouldn't have to. But, oh! The battles are fantastic, if only a spectator event. I find myself mousing over every ship as the battle commences, watching the combat wash over ships and erode shields, armor, and hulls. I cheer on my ships and lust after the shockwaves that cause chain reactions of ship destruction. I gleefully watch swarms of enemy fighters and gunships disappear as my fighters and gunships chew them up. I worry as the opposing lines of cruisers batter each other in an effort to take control of the front line as the dreadnoughts move in to assert dominance. Unfortunately there are controls that aren't explained in the game. There are text entry problems in the menus. There is a custom battle menu that's not very intuitive - I haven't got it to work yet. I love this game, but I also hope for an update that ends the crashing. I play on Ubuntu Linux 14.04.
Like first person action and turn-based strategy? Like medieval settings with sandbox-freedom? SHAZAM! Here's your game. I've been playing a couple days now and I'm addicted. I bought it on sale, but it's worth the normal price. My likes? - Sword fighting and archery are intuitive, but still challenging. - Travelling from city to city trading to build enough cash to begin hiring fighters. If you run out of cash you can take part in arena fights. - Recruiting a band of 50+ horsemen and stomping opposing armies of 60-100 footmen. - Working your way up to being a vassal to a king and laying siege to opposing castles. - Getting hunted down to the village you own and annihilated by an army of 200+ led by five lords you each already defeated individually. My dislikes? - Getting hunted down to the village you own and annihilated by an army of 200+ led by five lords you each already defeated. None of the lords in my kingdom tried to stop them or help me. - Slowing to a crawl while climbing a hill. My horse can climb a sheer cliff, but it'll take a long while. - Accidentally clicking on something other than my target when trying to catch bandits or a liege lord on the map. - Trying to get involved in a battle, but you can't reach the enemy for the huge pile of your own horse-mounted troops who can't hit the broad side of a barn with a sword.
