FE: Legendary Heroes Gets An 8.5 from Game Informer!

from JoeUser Forums

gameinformer_site-logo_betaFallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes gets an 8.5 from Game Informer in their review that was posted today.

“Stardock has finally delivered on the promise that Elemental once held, back in the halcyon days of 2009. You don't have to be any kind of strategy savant to appreciate what this exceptional release has to offer. “

Full interview at Game Informer.

31,346 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

This is more like it! I think this is an 8.5+ game. Definitely. Logged 31 hours so far. No interest in stopping!!

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Great review. I love how despite the volume of complaints in the review there is still an excellent score and positive tone throughout. Sounds like many fans here!

That is how I feel about the game, there is ample room for improvement in many of the areas listed and more, but there is no other game in this genre that is even close to this good. That is why I hope they go all in for another expansion, this game has sweep-everyone-off-their-feet potential so close to the surface, but people get stuck on some complaints, and it is too easy to miss how awesome the whole is. This game is a few fun-tweaks and some expansion material from being big-time blockbuster, which is probably only possible for a TBS game that is also an rpg hybrid.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Metacritic is only showing 4 reviews and averaging at 77% I believe this game is a solid 8.5-9

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

There is a bad review from a site I never heard of.  I read it and it pretty much says "I hate sandbox games".  It's a poorly done review.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 4

There is a bad review from a site I never heard of.  I read it and it pretty much says "I hate sandbox games".  It's a poorly done review.

That is no joke. In the comments the reviewer said he felt an average game should be 5 instead of 7, which goes against game-buyer expectations. People see a 5 and they think game disaster, because that is how every other review site reviews games. He also stated he hasn't played many TBS games and apparently didn't play this one much (there is practically no substance to his criticisms).

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

It looks like that site is going to do a new review, an editor wasn't happy with it either and the comments show a lot of unhappy people with it.  

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Unfortunately, metacritic only ever records the first value assigned to a product by the reviewer. They ignore any changes.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you all; I meant to write something up a couple of days ago, but the conversation with other editors went on longer than expected. Volunteer work, different timezones, etc etc. These things are not solely my decision, but happily I was able to show people what the issue was.

I personally will be re-reviewing the game. This review will stay up, because nobody likes it when things disappear miraculously from the internet. Please keep in mind that 1. I am busy with other reviews and non-volunteer work and 2. as most of you have pointed out, this is a 4X game that requires a lot of time and detail to properly review. It’ll happen, though, and hopefully soon.

That's the last comment on the review's thread (most of them are people who are pissed).  So I'd expect that number to at least shrug up to a 7 whenever this guy's review comes in (if ever).  Basically, it looks like this site made the mistake of pairing an RPG reviewer with a TBS game.  The predictable result was that the reviewer had little frame of reference and ended up completely befuddled by the game.

Also from the review...

Move a second unit and now both of them attack in tandem, using up the first unit’s turn only. Order a soldier to attack an enemy and everyone beside that enemy will attack.

new players do not understand how the swarm mechanic works.  They see the animation and assume that all the surrounding units all get an attack, rather than that the attacking unit gets a slight buff.

Whoever you have doing your press packets needs to get in touch with reviewers and make it clear how swarm works.  It is a cool mechanic and you're right to highlight it.  (Rushing in with your most powerful units is now a great way to die, mobbing one unit to get the swarm bonus means putting your units in places they will be swarmed themselves, wolves, with their bonus to swarm, are really awesome in packs but weak individually...)  But if the reviewers don't describe it properly it makes it sound cheesy and lame.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 7
Unfortunately, metacritic only ever records the first value assigned to a product by the reviewer. They ignore any changes.

It's true.  http://kotaku.com/5960657/metacritic-refuses-to-pull-negative-review-that-gamespot-admits-was-factually-inaccurate

So why hasn't the review been replaced? I asked Metacritic head Marc Doyle, who told me that they have a one-shot policy for all reviews and all gaming outlets. (Kotaku is not listed on Metacritic, as we do not use review scores.)

"Yes, the critics we track know—and I spoke to the GameSpot team about this this week - that we only accept the first review and first score published for a given game," Doyle told me in an e-mail. "I'm explicit about this policy with every new publication we agree to track. It's a critic-protection measure, instituted in 2003 after I found that many publications had been pressured to raise review scores (or de-publish reviews) to satisfy outside influences. Our policy acted as a disincentive for these outside forces to apply that type of inappropriate pressure."


The saving grace here is that Metacritic obviously gives very little weight to that site's reviews.  I'm imagining that most gaming sites are giving their reviewers a little extra time to publish since it's a sandbox turn-based TBS.  In a week, the MC score will be 85 and this review will be buried and forgotten.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I had read that Metacritc weighted the scores by the prestige of the review outlet, but apparently Thunderbolt may be on par with IGN, because (88+87+80+50)/4 = 76.25 which is roughly the 77 posted. But it could also just mean that Thunderbolt is on par with the other two places, and IGN's 80 didn't move it much from the overall average. I would hope for the latter, because it is crazy that a volunteer outfit has the same weight as a premeir gaming website.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I hope they make a full on expansion for this game with more of everything.  As long as they continue to improve the AI and add more content I think this will be a classic.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ioticus, reply 11

I hope they make a full on expansion for this game with more of everything.  As long as they continue to improve the AI and add more content I think this will be a classic.

 

I totally agree with you!

 

I give LH a 8.5 also. Since it's release I have been very impressed with it and I am looking forward to some exciting DLC's in the future!