A mix of King's Bounty and Disciples set in (more or less) medieval Germany.
The first impression can be somewhat off-putting, because the graphics and animations look simple and feel outdated for at least 5 years. Nevertheless, once you get past it and get into your first quests, the engine doesn't really matter anymore. After the tutorial map the story picks up quickly and the first full size campaign map is very entertaining.
If you enjoyed Disciples, HOMM or King's Bounty, and you don't mind simpler graphics, I would definitely recommend this game.
Bonus points for including an excellent Belarusian translation!
You got a hero that runs around, fights and accumulates gold, gear and experience. The hero is persistent throughout the campaign. The game is similar in vein to king's bounty(except it is not artificially stretched out like king's bounty where you are burned out at the end) and Disciples 1-2 with medieval and dark setting. The quests are really well done, they are stitched into main story with 30% sidequests where you can get great treasure. For the price, totally worth it.
In no way, shape, or form is this game to be considered an RPG. It has precisely zero RPG elements and the story is one of you being railroaded through a series of different maps. Claiming that it is an RPG, rather than a squad level simulator demonstrates considerable dishonesty on the part of the developers.
There doesn't appear to be a manual for this game and so I am still at a loss for how many of the skills actually play out. What, for example is the advantage of a knight going two handed vs horse mounted? Also, I had to watch a third party you-tube video in order to learn how to run the Mystic character, because it turns out that he can't move and that his initial attack requires that he be standing right next to an enemy. So until he levels up the skill, he needs to be on the front line with the melee fighters and you need to organise the fight so that the enemy comes to him. Folks, this is why we have manuals!
There is also very little information on the internet as to how to build characters, or what skills mean in practice, so you are largely left on your own to figure out how the game works.
The game is also incredibly buggy and on average, I've experienced a crash every 3-4 hours of game play.
LoE itself quickly turns into a boring grind fest. Earned XP is pitiful and force you to spend hours wandering around the map, waiting for weaker enemies to re-spawn in order to level up your army to the point where you can even begin to consider doing the actual mission quests.
Add to this the fact that you can't carry over your army from one scenario to the next and you end up having to grind every map, to build your forces anew.
I don't consider grinding to be a form of gameplay. Grinding is what developers get you to do because they lack the inspiration and wit to come up with a meaningful game design and suitable quests to take you through the whole game.
The squad level combat is good, but not enough to salvage the game from lazy developers.
I backed this game just after its Kickstarter. Let's make long story short: this game is just addictive. Excellent lore, where some of the medieval legends might actually be true, satisfying battles (despite some debatable mechanics when it comes to moving units on the battlefield), well written and designed campains and maps, beautiful graphics (that are not AAA, but are much better than what i expected at first), good immersion... I spent several blank nights each time i tried a new beta version. And now, it's at last out. Worth trying it, definitely. This game deserves much more than its poor press coverage.
So I bought this during Gog's summer sale. I have played it for a few hours, and it's very linear. There's not really any true choices to make that I've found so far. I certainly wouldn't call it an rpg, maybe a fantasy strategy game. The story itself is well written, if a bit cliched. However, my real problem comes from the game engine itself. After playing this for a while (about six hours all together), now it refuses to start, and tells me my computer has been on too long and needs to be shutdown. Um, what? No. From what I've been able to glean from developer's comments, they made the game engine for 32 bit systems, and after a while the game will crash your system or something, and forcing you to shut your pc down all the way, then reboot it is their solution. If I had known this before buying I wouldn't have made the purchase.
