Island Dog Island Dog

Game Informer Reviews Fallen Enchantress–8.25 Score!

▼

Game Informer Reviews Fallen Enchantress–8.25 Score!

from JoeUser Forums

Game Informer has their review of Fallen Enchantress up, and gives it a rating of 8.25!

“It’s the closest anyone has come to producing the game I’ve been dreaming about since I was an adolescent with visions of wizards carving fantastical empires out of a hostile world.”

Full review here.

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/elemental_fallen_enchantress/b/pc/archive/2012/10/25/elemental-fallen-enchantress-review.aspx

46,188 views 32 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Grizzyloins, reply 26

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 12And of course the "stack of doom" issue (or, the AI's inability to build them) is what really keeps the tactical battles from being "half the coin" of the game. The AI is quite something to behold - better than any other strategy game - but it spreads its most powerful stuff out too much. As long as the single winning strategy is to build a singular "strongest" army, the AI should be doing that. Either the game, or the AI, needs to change.

Larger maps would fix this I"m thinkin, it's good to have a 'stack of doom' but in a large enough world, one isn't enough (64 bit?!?)

AI will just have a more spread out set of weaker armies, and the player will have multiple stacks of doom (as is the case in my current game where I'm fending off Gilden with one SoD and Yithril with another).

I think nerfing roads would be a huge start... but the AI has always prioritized quantity over quality, which is just bad.

Although it does make for fun feelings of power when you defeat hordes and hordes and hordes and hordes and hordes and hordes and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes  and hordes of bad guys.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

 

Quoting Martimus, reply 23
I dont think you need to change the game to get rid of the option for a stack of doom, since there are countless strategies that could be deployed to counter such a tactic. You could work units behind such a stack and take the under defended cities behind that stack. You could create muktiple smaller stacks to destroy the trade routes and to take any outposts, use spells that do damage to stacks on the strategic map, use spells to hinder that stack from even moving while you attack with multiple stacks. I far prefer the AI to take some of these tactics than to get rid of the Blitzkrieg option.

Quoting Grizzyloins, reply 26
Larger maps would fix this I"m thinkin, it's good to have a 'stack of doom' but in a large enough world, one isn't enough (64 bit?!?)

The problem here is that Stacks of Doom don't need those resources. Once a stack gets tough enough it can't be worn down, and will have tons of high level units with absurd hitpoints. Destroy all the undefended cities you want it won't stop a stack from laying waste to all your cities, and then turning back to retake all their stuff. Stacks also aren't that large, they are simply super high quality and level. Thus having a stack won't mean you don't have defenses anyway. 

It exactly like he said in the review, quality beats quantity to a ridiculous degree still. Get some high armor units and get them a few levels and they can wade through endless amounts of the units the AI designs. Getting stronger and stronger as they go. Not that the AI doesn't have some high quality units it's just they tend not to level them well or mass them in one spot to counter your stack. I can think of 3 things to help with this. Firstly, make the AI better at judging the strength of stacks and recognizing when it needs to form it's own super stack by putting all it's tough units and champions in one group. Secondly, reduce the leveling speed of units. This way you won't be getting level 10 squads with +20 hp per man. Lastly, reduce the scaling on weapons and armor. Either by just increasing the attack values on lower level weapons a bit and reducing the values on higher level armor, or tweaking the entire system so armor is less effective in general.

DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top


doesn't seem like stacks of doom wouldn't be a problem at all if the ai uses overland spells, 2nd lvl water mage gets freeze which holds an entire army still for two turns - I believe just this one spell could end a stack of doom style opponent pretty easily -

or if the ai used stacks of doom, I think a human player could/would take them more easily in alot of cases

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting pomalley, reply 25



Quoting Napean,
reply 21

Quoting DsRaider, reply 9I dislike his comments on the writing. I read a lot of fantasy and play a lot of games and found the writing to be better then average, although some of his other criticisms about balance were accurate.

Completely agree.  No, the writing is not at the level of LeGuin (THE best fantasy writer ever, bar none), but it's comparable to what you get from fantasy writers nowadays.


I may have said this in another thread, but IMHO fantasy writing is, in general, not very good. So saying that FE has writing quality on the level of that of most fantasy writing is not exactly a compliment. But I fully admit to being a snob.

That said, it certainly doesn't detract from the game in a broader sense. I don't play games for the writing.

Ok the problem facing a lot if not all fantasy writers is the fact that everything has already been done before, so they are stuck with taking themes that have been used since man started writing and making it new enough to be interesting, while avoiding too many cliches or being too similar to a story already written. And thats a very hard thing to do. Even Disney has issues with that, as evidence, the shitty sequels they release of their classics. Coming up with a truly new idea and implimenting it is not easy.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Grizzyloins, reply 28

doesn't seem like stacks of doom wouldn't be a problem at all if the ai uses overland spells, 2nd lvl water mage gets freeze which holds an entire army still for two turns - I believe just this one spell could end a stack of doom style opponent pretty easily -

or if the ai used stacks of doom, I think a human player could/would take them more easily in alot of cases

 

this is a good point. Although the freeze spell has a 5 turn cooldown, there's another similar tremor spell in earth.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Polistes, reply 30
Ok the problem facing a lot if not all fantasy writers is the fact that everything has already been done before, so they are stuck with taking themes that have been used since man started writing and making it new enough to be interesting, while avoiding too many cliches or being too similar to a story already written. And thats a very hard thing to do. Even Disney has issues with that, as evidence, the shitty sequels they release of their classics. Coming up with a truly new idea and implimenting it is not easy.

Completely agree. There's a case to be made for that being true in every genre. I certainly didn't mean to imply it was easy--part of the reason we love Tolkein is that he took (quite literally) ancient themes and did it very well.

Still, that's a separate issue from the _writing_ quality, by which I mean word choice, sentence construction, paragraph style, and so on. IMHO, that is what's not so great about most fantasy writing (and, probably, most writing). Again, I fully admit to being a snob. And, again, more to the point, it doesn't matter so much for games. I just don't read it again after the first time. ;-)

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Napean, reply 21
No, the writing is not at the level of LeGuin (THE best fantasy writer ever, bar none), but it's comparable to what you get from fantasy writers nowadays.

Eh, that may have been true when there weren't many widely published fantasy writers. I like her, but Robin Hobbs (whose characters are superb) and the new Patrick Rothfuss (who has such a way with words!) impress me far more. LeGuin's style feels a little dated. Then again, I'm also the guy who'll say that Martin's later books are mind-numbingly boring and highly overrated, a statement which usually gets me figuratively stoned.  :)