Posted June 16, 2010
Fantasy Wars is a 2007 clone of the all classic Fantasy General - the rules are basically the same (units move on hexagone, each unit have one move and one attack, or one attack and one move, and different style of fighting like melee, range or skirmish, each unit having their own special characterics, like bonus depending on the terrain, or move-attack-move pattern, or range attack, ...).
Yet, the world of Fantasy Wars is seriously dumbed down compared to Fantasy General. The races are stereotypes and not very numerous either : the "neutral" humans vs the evil orcs and the do-gooders Elves and Dwarves, allied for the occasion. The story is utterly boring - that's the only thing I remember about it.
IA is poor. While it knows how to gang up on your isolated unit, it has no vision beyond one turn. Also, most groups of enemy units in scenarios are set not to move until you get close to them - there are very few "defend" objectives in the game. So the strategic IA is virtually non-existent, the IA do not regroup it's force, do no retreat when outnumbered (but automatically retreats its very damaged units) ; thus most of the times you will outnumber locally the enemy (even though the IA will start with about twice your units on the whole map) and quickly smash it, the difficulty of the game being into smashing it quickly enough and without losses, given the rather stringent time limit.
Other points : Interface is really good, game graphics are nice, but not really cute or imaginative, difficulty is not a problem given you can choose three levels of difficulty and then you can achieve three levels of success depending on how fast you were ; add to this secondary objectives. I finished the 2nd and 3rd campaign the first time I played in (self imposed) iron mode and normal difficulty without too much problems.
Yet, the world of Fantasy Wars is seriously dumbed down compared to Fantasy General. The races are stereotypes and not very numerous either : the "neutral" humans vs the evil orcs and the do-gooders Elves and Dwarves, allied for the occasion. The story is utterly boring - that's the only thing I remember about it.
IA is poor. While it knows how to gang up on your isolated unit, it has no vision beyond one turn. Also, most groups of enemy units in scenarios are set not to move until you get close to them - there are very few "defend" objectives in the game. So the strategic IA is virtually non-existent, the IA do not regroup it's force, do no retreat when outnumbered (but automatically retreats its very damaged units) ; thus most of the times you will outnumber locally the enemy (even though the IA will start with about twice your units on the whole map) and quickly smash it, the difficulty of the game being into smashing it quickly enough and without losses, given the rather stringent time limit.
Other points : Interface is really good, game graphics are nice, but not really cute or imaginative, difficulty is not a problem given you can choose three levels of difficulty and then you can achieve three levels of success depending on how fast you were ; add to this secondary objectives. I finished the 2nd and 3rd campaign the first time I played in (self imposed) iron mode and normal difficulty without too much problems.