Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes Review

Elemental: War of Magic seems a long time ago. The 2010 turn-based fantasy game from Stardock came with a lot of expectations, most of which were soundly dashed due to a tremendous number of design flaws and bugs. The developer has been making amends, however. First came the generous announcement of two stand-alone expansions that would be given away to buyers of the original Elemental. Second came the news that these expansions were actually very good. What started with 2012's surprisingly strong Fallen Enchantress has been continued with Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, a follow-up that refines just about every aspect of its predecessor to create an impressive 4X strategy game.

Battles have much more tactical depth now, thanks to changes to factions, weapons, and map design.

With all that said, don't expect to see a total reinvention of the wheel. The game utilizes stock-standard 4X mechanics ported to a fantasy setting. You're still out to build an empire, throwing down the cities and outposts needed to lay claim to wilderness that includes both resource points (the usual metal, food, and the like) and magical shards that increase spellcasting power. Creating your kingdom is done through both peaceful and militaristic endeavors. You push the boundaries of your land by founding new settlements and erecting new buildings fueled by research from a hefty trio of tech trees. You can also crank out small-scale numbers of troops (they sort of sit in the middle ground between parties of adventurers and armies) and conquer enemy strongholds through battles on tactical chesslike maps.

The gameplay doesn't wander far from the template established in Elemental and firmed up in Fallen Enchantress. It has evolved in some fairly significant ways, but these aren't the sorts of improvements that slap you in the face--these are the sorts of improvements that creep up on you and increase your level of satisfaction with the game over many hours of play. It's only after you've gotten a good dozen or more hours in that you can sit back and take stock of just how much this new game ups the ante on its predecessor.

Core empire-building gameplay still relies on the great 'Tolkien Does Civilization' concept that powered Fallen Enchantress.

What's more, all of the changes work together to improve matches across the board. Building your kingdom has a more realistic progression, starting with quests. Those random adventures where you clear out monster lairs and help strangers now serve a purpose beyond simply providing gold and loot. Now you score fame points for each successful expedition, which then results in attracting a champion to your service. You always get to choose between two such heroes with differing skill sets, so you are guaranteed to come away with a follower that fits into your style of play. Champions now also level up, with access to traits that allow them to buff attacks, heal, perform magical attacks, and so forth. This establishes a risk-reward system that gives your heroic endeavors real meaning and removes the random champion aspect of the previous game that made the concept feel a bit gimmicky.

More options are available for empire building, as well. Matches can be tweaked in new ways before beginning play. The production pace can be cranked up if you want a faster game, or if you want to play on the new massive map size without giving over a solid week of your life to a single campaign. Cities can now be set to automatically produce core resources on their own. Just click a button if you want to turn a town into an engine that cranks out wealth, research, growth, or magic. This moves the game even farther away from micromanagement and allows you to nicely deal with midgame shortages of gold that so often afflict you when you're rapidly expanding.

They only come out at night. Or during the day.

It isn't all easy, though. The number of cities that you control affects unrest now, so the bigger the kingdom, the higher the chance that the peasants will revolt. This system is a good idea overall, because it adds more challenge to the later stages of campaigns when you've gotten past midgame growing pains. But the mechanic can also seem a bit arbitrary, foisting an artificial problem onto a prosperous land for no apparent reason other than to emphasize the point that you are never too big to fail.