What I'm playing lately: Fallen Enchantress

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately playing Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, a revised version of Stardock's earlier Elemental: War of Magic. If you ever played the old game Master of Magic, this is as close as I've seen any game come to it. Think of a Civ-type explore/expand/exploit/exterminate game set in a fantasy/RPG universe. The strategic map is turn-based, and when you go to combat, you swtich to another screen where each unit takes a turn based on their initiative level. As you resesarch more advanced tech, you gain bonuses such as increased production or more tax income.

What I like about the game is that they really ramped up the RPG part, so your heroes are very important to the game. They level up as they gain experience, and you can equip them with weapons, armor, mounts and magical items. I also like that you can customize both your starting race and your hero. So, for example, I created a race called The Summoners, and a hero called Summoneer, and picked starting traits to boost my ability to summon fire and earth elementals and to generate the mana needed to cast those spells. I created another race called the The Poisoners, gave them the ability to recruit spiders and an option to apply poison to all their units' weapons, and then gave my hero a collar that allows her to tame any beast she meets in combat. In the first few turns, she tamed a couple of large cave bears (who, when they attack, keep attacking until the enemy manages to dodge) and a big nasty spider.

What I don't like about it is that the AI can be very nasty, and appears to be able to create cities more quickly than you can. If I am not in a good solid position, with a few cities and some resources in my area, within the first 15 turns or so, I'll exit out and start a new game. Otherwise, I'll be 100+ turns in and suddenly discover another race that has 3 times the number of cities that I do.

It's on sale now on Steam for $27.

-- Sun Mar 31, 2013 5:50 pm --

Yep, still playing this great game. In fact, I'm beta-testing an expansion (Legendary Heroes) that puts even more emphasis on the role-playing elements.

I found a great after action report that gives you a very good idea of the depth of play: http://forums.stardock.com/434960" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;