A comment about the reviews for these add-ons: because they are specialized and limited DLC that pertains directly to the main Elven Legacy game, I will not spend too much time rehashing the core game in terms of how it works and plays and what it looks like. If you are interested in those things head back to my original review of the game. What I will do is address the changes the add-on makes to the core game, and also the elements of the add-on itself.

As the last add-on, Magic naturally deals with the final chapters in the story. The end of the Siege expansion opened up a wave of demonic energy that is sweeping the land and having a terrible impact on the world and is driving the Arcane Masters insane. The Holy Inquisition intervenes in order to stop the spread of darkness and madness.

Elven Legacy: Magic features a single campaign with 15 missions focused around a single hero class: the mage. The focus is around a single new hero: the Archmage supreme Alfred Brennock. There are also two returning heroes, so that you once again have three playable heroes. But the real story here is Brennock, who gets armed with some powerful new skills, spells and runes.

The game really caters to those who love playing a mage – the game introduces powerful new spells and summons that are also nicely complemented with stunning visual effects that are truly massive in scope. The scope of the world is every bit as huge as in Siege, as you are trying to save the entire world from sweeping forces of darkness.

Elven Legacy: Magic unsurprisingly continues the trend of not having any voice acting. At this point it is no big deal, and remains a fair trade-off to get such a large expansion with such a breadth of content for such a great price. The graphics and controls remain largely untouched from Siege. Once again, this add-on depicts some truly epic battles that nearly stress the engine to its breaking point, but again I found that it was more satisfying than frustrating.

The difficulty level of Siege was punishing, and with Magic we see that the lull in difficulty in Ranger was a momentary lapse, never to be seen again. If you haven’t discovered it by now, it is really important to do as well as possible in missions, which typically means repeating them for better results. However, for many folks (certainly for someone like me who likes strategy games but is no grognard!) it often means repeating missions just to survive and THEN repeating more to get the Gold victory!

More than ever, getting those Gold victories will reward you in the end. The completist in me just wanted every possible mission, but what I got in the end was a bonus mission that tied together everything from the series going all the way back to Fantasy Wars! What a great way to end the series!

That said, Elven Legacy: Magic changes nothing about the things that will make you love or hate the series. It is a great value, but really depends on you having played the original game and both add-ons, and benefits even more if you also played Fantasy Wars. Like the previous expansions, if you already enjoy the original game you’ll love this third and final add-on too!

Pros:
+ Solid turn-based combat system
+ Great value for the price
+ Decreased difficulty
+ Decent story
+ Solid graphics
+ Possibility to win … but still lose

Cons:
– No voice acting
– Poor translations cause occasional confusion
– Time limits can STILL be frustrating

Game Info:
Platform: PC
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: 1C:Ino-Co
Release Date: 12/1/09
Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
ESRB Rating: Teen
Players: 1-4
Source: Review code provided by publisher

Through the holiday season, Paradox Interactive will be releasing monthly expansion packs for its turned-based strategy RPG Elven Legacy, a DLC trilogy altogether amounting to 50 additional campaign missions and other new content for a total of $30.

The three expansions include Ranger, Siege and Magic. Ranger is first up in the trilogy, scheduled for release on October 20th and set to include 16 new campaign missions, two new heroes, and new artifacts and spells. Siege will come next on November 17th bearing 19 new campaign missions, unlockable bonus missions, three new heroes, and two armies. Then the trilogy will come to a close on December 1st with the release of Magic, which will come with 15 more campaign missions (and a hidden bonus mission), one new hero along with the return of some familiar heroic faces, new spells and artifacts, and “additional tactical possibilities” … whatever that means.

The Elven Legacy Trilogy will be released across all major digital download portals at $9.99 apiece. Direct2Drive also currently has the full base Elven Legacy available for only $5 as part of its 5th Anniversary celebration, so now’s the time to get it if you haven’t already.

Turn-based games such as Elven Legacy are seldom known for their strong stories, but we do get a reasonable premise: the Elves are a peace-loving group who are willing to live and share with all others peacefully, but the greedy humans are forever pursuing the magical secrets of long life and other wonders. One day a traitorous elf gives all of the elves’ secrets to a human who runs off, leading to a cataclysm in which the Elves survive only due to an intercession by the dragons. All of this is told through an opening set of scenes, and you are left in control of Lord Sagittel, a veteran of centuries of battles against humans, who has to pair up with another elf named Gylven to hunt down the human mage at the center of the whole mess.

The story unfolds in between battles as is typical with games in this genre: you get some banter at the beginning and end of each mission, but most exposition happens in between missions and comes in the form of cutscenes. You choose missions from a map based on your pursuit of the human mage. Often you have a single linear choice, but other times you can actually choose from more than one path of pursuit. At times you can choose between a longer path that offers you some advantages or a shorter path where you will be at a disadvantage. Your choices impact the likelihood of winning a mission, and also impact whether or not you can finish the game and capture the human mage.

That is correct – it is possible to eventually control the entire world but fail to capture the mage and therefore fail at your task. This ties into the overall sense of success and failure throughout the game. At the end of each stage you get a rating – this is fairly typical in a strategy-RPG game, but in Elven Legacy it has broader implications than in most other games. I have read rants by folks about this, but really, it is so thoroughly integrated into the game I cannot see the point of the complaints. The bottom line is this – you need to complete your missions quickly and efficiently. If you do so you are rewarded with bonus missions, if not you are penalized by not only missing out on added content but also suffering potential loss of the main game. Unlike Fantasy Wars which had four shorter campaigns, Elven Legacy has a three longer ones, making your choices even more important.

I will not say it isn’t frustrating – seeing that you only have a certain amount of turns left to achieve Gold victory is highly unsettling and led me to replay many missions more than once to get Gold status and unlock everything. But the practice leads you to make better decisions and become more efficient in unit selection and mission execution… and in a strategy game that is what it is all about! You are intended by the structure to be pursuing a foe, so time should matter, as should your ability to quickly eliminate enemies.

Combat is not trivial, and will take some time to become competent. Fortunately the game helps you out with context sensitive information about terrain and enemies and fortifications. You can better estimate what you are up against as you begin each turn by simply mousing over areas near your troops. Sometimes the most difficult choice is who to bring into battle – you will always have more units than open slots, and you will seldom know the full extent of the enemy forces until you are well underway. Generally a well balanced force will be your best bet, but whenever you have some foresight into what you might face – undead, ranged fighters, mages, whatever – it is best to prepare accordingly.

One nice thing is that all of your units gain experience from all combat, meaning that your choices will be purely strategic. This is a great way to balance the other trade-offs you’ll make along the way. Rather than constantly ensuring units see combat time to keep experience on par, you can focus on meeting the challenge ahead of you. That is important enough in a normal strategy game, but where you know you are tightly turn-limited it is critical.

As you progress through the campaign your units will gain enough experience to acquire new skills. There are a ton of available skills, making this a great way to broaden the capabilities of your units and build an even more diverse fighting force. In addition to skills you can gather artifacts during missions that will grant the unit that finds it some form of enhancement. These can make units radically more powerful, but of course a magic power artifact in the hands of a focused melee warrior is wasted, and on more than a rare occasion one of your lesser troops will gain the artifact instead of one of your veterans or leaders. Sadly there is no way to trade artifacts.

Technically the game is solid but not stunning in any way. The graphics are nicely detailed for all of the environments and each of the characters has a distinct look and feel. The landscapes don’t have the same bright and saturated look as King’s Bounty, but they are still vivid and feature that wonderfully out of proportion feel as many games of the genre. Combat plays out on the hex grid accompanied by wonderfully rendered and detailed animations that are a blast to watch. The voice acting is acceptable but not a star feature of the game – the translations are actually pretty good even if most of the acting falls fairly flat. Also, there is precious little audio in the game: you get some environmental sounds and some battle sounds and sound effects, but there is generally not a lot going on in terms of audio. This is particularly disappointing in contrast with the excellent battle animations.

Unless you are a hardcore fan of turn-based strategy games, there is a good chance you’ll find Elven Legacy very frustrating. And the reasons for that are actually something I hold in high regard – it is a game that knows what it wants to be and pursues that aim throughout with consistency. The game is turn-based, slow-paced, yet with an implied time-limit that rewards you for fast and efficient action. It isn’t the best turn-based strategy game in recent memory – but then most games in any genre pale when compared to the excellent King’s Bounty. But it is a solid game that I thoroughly enjoyed. Fortunately there is a demo available, and I strongly suggest you download the demo if you are even mildly interested and give it a try. By the end of the demo you will have a clear indication of whether or not you’ll like the full game. For me, I enjoyed it enough to launch into its’ predecessor Fantasy Wars right after finishing the main quest.

Pros:
+ Solid turn-based combat system
+ Nothing else really matters, but …
+ Decent story
+ Solid graphics
+ Possibility to win … but still lose

Cons:
– Limited info for each mission
– Time limits can be frustrating
– Yet sameness creeps into missions

Game Info:
Platform: PC
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: 1С:Ino-Co
Release Date: 4/7/09
Genre: Turn-based Strategy
ESRB Rating: Teen
Players: 1-4

But that’s not all. The GamersGate ‘Game of the Weekend’ is Kaos Studio’s FPS Frontlines: Fuel of War, which has been marked down 50% to $14.99 for this weekend only. And then next week from April 6-13, Dark Horizon and Tarr Chronicles will both be available for only $2.99. But unfortunately neither game is probably worth paying even that dirt cheap of a price to play. At least I’ve only ever heard bad things about both of them.

Ever heard of Elven Legacy before? Me neither, until now that is with Paradox Interactive releasing a whole mess of screenshots and concept art for the fantasy-themed turn-based strategy game coming to retail and GamersGate early next year from Russian dev studio Ino-Co. Don’t know much about Elven Legacy, but any game with the descriptors “fantasy” and “turn-based” attached to it is enough to pique my interest.