Elven Legacy, a turn-based strategy game developed by Russian company 1C and published by Paradox Interactive was released April 7. Having seen the trailer and heard it was a good game, I shot at the chance to review it. I popped the disc in, installed it and started playing.
The game launched, and I was met with an opening cinematic. The animations in this intro were sure signs that this was an indy game. The graphics were fine, but there were no transfer animations. Characters snapped to their default animations, giving for an ugly feel. I generally don’t like intros; they’re usually superfluous, and as such, I skipped it, wanting to try out the main game.
I started the first (and only, unfortunately) campaign, only to be met with something I had not experienced before. I lost on normal mode! The mission was simple. I had to destroy a wall by having Sagittel stand on a certain spot for a few turns, thus activating a magic spell. However, there are ranged machines behind the wall that attempt to kill Sagittel. I had to play this mission three times before I won.
The rest of the game is even harder: In one mission, I was told to beat an orc shaman into submission. Having lost everyone but Sagittel, I succeeded in killing everyone except the shaman. I was happy — until I realized that he could heal. In fact, he could heal faster than I could kill him! I had to restart the mission and desperately try to have at least another unit with me.
The game is played on a hexadecimal grid. Each unit can move a certain amount of spaces and attack. Units can also rest to heal but cannot do anything else that turn. Most units are composed of a number of smaller units, all attacking independently when fighting. The lower the group’s health, the less units they have and the weaker they are.
When you start a mission, you choose what units you are going to use. You then place them in a few starting tiles that are highlighted on the map. What saddens me is that you have to hire new units — and ones that die are gone forever. Units can, however, level up; if a hero levels up, that means they gain a new stat ability. Unfortunately, there’s not much more to it. As far as I know, units do not upgrade as they level.
The plot of Elven Legacy is simple. The elves are attempting to restore the elven empire to its full glory. This obviously includes senseless slaughter of humans. Why not? I thought the plot was boring, and I soon played simply for the gameplay. Unfortunately, even that quickly gets repetitive.
After doing a few levels of single player, I decided to play some multiplayer. Unfortunately, it appears to be broken. There are absolutely no multiplayer games to be found. I clicked “refresh” to no avail. This disappoints me — either it’s a specific bug to me, or they simply did not test this aspect before launch, which is extremely unlikely. It also disappoints me because I am unable to either play or review this specific aspect of the game.
This review is shorter than most due to the inability to review multiplayer. If you enjoy real-time strategy games that lack much plot and are basically the same in the end, you could try Elven Legacy. Otherwise, forget it.
