Posted November 17, 2013
Here is a review I just wrote but which was too long (GOG, how about telling people by how much their review is too long?)
Personally I bought Eador-MotBW mostly for the multiplayer part, which is sadly completely broken.
First: you need a key for each player, even if you are (basically) playing on a LAN. That's the standard way to do it nowadays, but in the case of Eador it honestly doesn't make any sense. You can play a hotseat game, AND you don't need the key to play the single player game ... so why do I need two keys to play a private LOCAL multiplayer game over two computers ?
Speaking of weird limitations, the developers think it's funny, wise or just particularly witty to link the options for private, non-(online)-ranked multiplayer games to the single player campaign. This means that there is no option to freely set the amounts of points each player can distribute among their units in a multiplayer game. There are two options, one "classic", which apparently amount to "random", and one "advanced" which is linked to where you are in the single player campaign. This means that you have either a very low number of points and slots (1000 points, 3 tier-1 creatures slots, no other tier available) in classic, OR that each player in a LAN game will have to play the campaign through to have access to everything, or at least that each player must be approximately at the same place in the campaign to keep it even. Please insert an expletive of your choice here.
Oh, btw. You can only play battles multiplayer, not campaigns (but in my case that would be completely fine)
Anyway, considering that I was not able to play for more than 1 round (2, if you count the "place your units" round) during my 4 tries, the key thing and the bad design choices are really the least of my problems. After one round, both players get the message that they have to wait for their opponent to finish his turn, and that's it. ctrl+alt+del, and then kill the game, because there is no way to exit. (yes, I posted this in the official forums too)
tldr: Avoid this game until everything is patched up (note the optimism ...), In its current state and especially for THIS price ($20), the money is not worth it *at all*
Personally I bought Eador-MotBW mostly for the multiplayer part, which is sadly completely broken.
First: you need a key for each player, even if you are (basically) playing on a LAN. That's the standard way to do it nowadays, but in the case of Eador it honestly doesn't make any sense. You can play a hotseat game, AND you don't need the key to play the single player game ... so why do I need two keys to play a private LOCAL multiplayer game over two computers ?
Speaking of weird limitations, the developers think it's funny, wise or just particularly witty to link the options for private, non-(online)-ranked multiplayer games to the single player campaign. This means that there is no option to freely set the amounts of points each player can distribute among their units in a multiplayer game. There are two options, one "classic", which apparently amount to "random", and one "advanced" which is linked to where you are in the single player campaign. This means that you have either a very low number of points and slots (1000 points, 3 tier-1 creatures slots, no other tier available) in classic, OR that each player in a LAN game will have to play the campaign through to have access to everything, or at least that each player must be approximately at the same place in the campaign to keep it even. Please insert an expletive of your choice here.
Oh, btw. You can only play battles multiplayer, not campaigns (but in my case that would be completely fine)
Anyway, considering that I was not able to play for more than 1 round (2, if you count the "place your units" round) during my 4 tries, the key thing and the bad design choices are really the least of my problems. After one round, both players get the message that they have to wait for their opponent to finish his turn, and that's it. ctrl+alt+del, and then kill the game, because there is no way to exit. (yes, I posted this in the official forums too)
tldr: Avoid this game until everything is patched up (note the optimism ...), In its current state and especially for THIS price ($20), the money is not worth it *at all*