Game:

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes (2013)

Duration: 2:35

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3

"Draginol"? Really? Could be worse, I suppose. "You, like this mysterious, transcendal figure, Frogboy ..."

This was my best campaign score so far. However, I have little idea of how campaign scores are calculated so it feels a little arbitrary. Time is certainly a major factor -- the faster victory is achieved, the bigger the score -- but what else is taken into account? Type of victory? Number of cities? Gold and mana reserves? Military size? Fame?

This wasn't a very satisfying victory. The AI factions keep surrendering far too quickly in version 1.5. Gilden had four cities remaining while both Capitar and Pariden had seven. Stardock is clearly trying to fix the late game slog but it feels like the developer has got it slightly wrong because right now the AI is more inclined to surrender than accept a peace treaty.

I hope Stardock doesn't abandon this game to concentrate on Galactic Civilization III because this could be a great game with some balance passes and tweaking.

Take Champions, for example. These hero units have a choice of five paths: Assassin, Commander, Defender, Mage and Warrior. Ideally, those ought to be five equally viable choices. In reality, it's two great choices (Mage and Commander) and three subpar ones. Mages have great tactical and strategic flexibility with spells while Commanders improve the efficacy and accelerate the leveling of their entire stack. These two paths provide tangible benefits even at low levels whereas you have to babysit Champions from the other paths for a long time before they make a difference.

On top of that, XP distribution discourages having too many Champions in a single stack and wage costs discourage having a stack for each Champion. What ends up happening in most campaigns is you'll have your Sovereign and your first Champion being highly developed with the other Champions relegated to secondary duties (e.g. reducing unrest in cities or capturing enemy outposts). Midgame onwards, I'd rather be offered a trained unit like the Knights of Asok than a Champion when reaching Fame milestones.

The Champion trait trees could use some reworking as well. Here's a quote from Stardock CEO Brad "Draginol" Wardell about the shortcomings of Galactic Civilization II's tech tree: "Lasers II is better than Lasers I. Really? Is that it? Why even HAVE Lasers II? Why call it that? It's just so lazy." Meanwhile, in Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, there's Lethal I, Lethal II, Lethal III, Endurance I, Endurance II, Endurance III ...

Stardock is certainly eager to provide players with interesting decisions to make but five mediocre choices are not better than two great ones.

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