The game page says its Strategy, but the screenshots look a lot like RPG.
I am not really a strategy player, but if there are enough RPG elements I might give it a try
(and by RPG I mean western RPGs).

It's very weak on RPG elements (you have a choice in what skills to assign to a few heroes, and get a few choices in which campaign branches to take, but that's about the extent of the RPG elements). It's also very heavy on strategy. Highly recommended for any TBS fans, probably not recommended if you normally don't care for strategy games.

if you like lords of magic you will like this too, graphics are not the best but it is more easy to play than lords of magic, this is a great game! i would say this is the about on the same level of addiction as weed. As for RPG elemets of this game like stated above it pretty much has none is is more of a stategy game than anything else, none the less fantastic game and cant wait for the next titles to come out Bring it OONNN

Yeah, AoW is definitely very much a strategy game (an excellent one).

Have you tried King's Bounty: The Legend? That one looks like Heroes of Might and Magic on the surface, but it's really a hack-and-slasher, heavily focused on questing, killing monsters and character advancement, with tactical combat and some light strategic elements.

If you're in the mood to beat on monsters and level up for a while, I highly recommend King's Bounty, but if you're looking for something with more depth or story, it probably won't satisfy you.

Well thanks for the feedback, i think I'll pass on this one.

I think it would help if you define what you think of when you hear the term RPG. Different people think different things, because CRPGs are different than pen and paper games, and so on.

I'm fan of both strategy and many flavors of RPGs, but I'd hesitate to say it was strongly either. The strategy elements aren't very grognardy, the RPG elements aren't terribly story driven when you're actually playing the game, but I still feel like there's enough customization to make it feel like I'm building my own character as I progress. I also grow attached to certain units, because individual units can gain experience too, although no one but heroes can actually equip the items you find in dungeon raids.

Well when I hear the term RPG, I don't think so much about character stats and collecting loot, or hack and slash, but more about depth and story. The realms of Arcana series or Planescape Torment are the perfect RPGs.

Ah, OK. In that case I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like the game on that level, then.

DSA DM? You mean Das Schwarze Auge? What language did you play it in? I liked that system, at least the one I played in Realms of Arkania, with its negative attributes and weird spells. What edition did you DM, if that's what you're talking about?

Yes, I was raised in Germany and for many years I was Dungeon Master of the Realms of Arkania System, untill the year 2000 when I moved to Spain (and thus ended my roleplaying carrer). I don't know what edition it was, back then we never refered to it as editions, must have been the 2nd or 3rd.

It was really an awesome time, the world was so huge (what you see in these games is really just a small fraction in comparison) and well defined, it was really immersive. The setting was middle age with magic, but more towards the end of the middle age. You could feel that the world was constantly changing. You had constantly the feeling that they where about to discover gunpowder maybe in a few decades. There was this legend of this new world in the west past the ocean about to be discovered. But before anyway could venture into this new world the Orcish War broke out. Of course this is the war you see in the games, but again just a small fraction and it looks like you won over them. Eventually the Orcs take over most of the northlands and threaten to enslave the human civilazation and huge battles with sieges begin. And after that it got even more epic with an ancient evil almost destroying all of humanity.

You had the Thorwalians in the North (which are basically Vikings), that you see in the games, but there where so many different cultures that you could choose from. Every single one had an extensive backstory, religion and idiosyncrasies. And there weren't only traditional Tolkien folks. There were for example cultures reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights or of south american cultures in their heyday.

You really could use every single talent you have in the game at one point and there weren't any dump stats. There were a lot more magic spells than in the game and you had thick books explaining them in detail. You also had thick books explaining every plant and animal in detail. But the best thing was you didn't have to know anything about that. You could start slow with just the basic stats and spells, and if you wanted to get a deeper feeling you could explore more and more, and if you were DM you could slowly introduce the richness of the world to your players.

There were so many epic campaings I didn't get to play/direct, only read, because I moved. I could go on and on about the world and the gods, and the big villains, or why I felt it was way supperior to D&D, but I already wrote too much in here. If you want to know more, feel free to ask.

"You really could use every single talent you have in the game at one point and there weren't any dump stats. There were a lot more magic spells than in the game and you had thick books explaining them in detail. You also had think books explaining every plant and animal in detail. But the best think was you didn't have to know anything about that. You could start slow with just the basic stats and spells, and if you wanted to get a deeper feeling you could explore more and more, and if you were DM you could slowly introduce the richness of the world to your players."

That sounds like the hallmark of a good system, where you don't need a lot to get moving but it's there if you want it. I think a lot of newer pen and paper systems are desperate to keep players so they try to make things less than universal, convince you you need every little tidbit in order to run it. The ones that last build up trust over years, though; a product avalanche only comes after you have demand, it isn't used to create demand. The older systems were helped along by the good will that DnD created, but during the crashes and silly controversy this was sort of severed. Now DnD is still on top but strongly altered, and a few independent groups are making their mark (like that cool transhumanist game Eclipse Phase that won all those design awards recently), but I feel like it's due for another crash, unfortunately, unless there's a shift in attitude.

I'd say and ask more but I don't want to hijack this post. It's too bad we can't send private messages.

Of course it wasn't flawless. Like the combat system. It was SLOOOW. And you see that in the videogames too:
I attack, you parry. You attack, I parry. I attack again, but my damage was low and your armor is high enough to not get ANY damage. So you attack again, and I parry. And so on and so on. But you try to hide that fact as much as possible being DM by telling exactly whats going on and also by telling what's going on outside of battle while you are in it.
Important battles like the end of a campaing could last for hours and hours.
I personally found the combat system boring most of the time (especially if there was no magic involved), but some of my players seem to like the game BECAUSE of it.

Check out here!

There are some RPGs that actually make combat pretty quick and brutal, and I tend to like those better (probably because heroic battles are fun, but forcing players to figure things out and avoid combat when possible makes for more varied gameplay). There's still a place for hack and slash, but yeah, I remember there being a lot of parry results in Arkania. I think I'd have optimized that game differently if I'd start it again (I still have the disc around here somewhere).

A good GM/DM helps make the game seamless and tailor-made for the players. What you did was what the better ones do, making dramatic moments feel dramatic in ways that numbers can't. Like once I got a simple critical result and turned it into one of the enemies getting sick and collapsing. Much more memorable :)

Oh yes, the criticals, my favorites, because then you could come up with lots and lots of very horrible but epic ways to make the oponent die. Like decapitation, or him tumbling and falling onto a spiked wall. There were also the negative criticals where you could have the player accidentally poke his own eye or something (not that I'd do that one much, you don't want blind PC's most of the time).