Ino-co are currently at work on finishing Majesty 2, but it’s not all they’ve been up to. They’ve released a sequel to the generically-named yet lovely turn-based strategy game Fantasy Wars. And now they’ve only gone and released a bally 700Mb demo, containing the tutorial and the first campaign mission. And you can get it from here. Or even here. Or here. I had a play of some Beta code a few months ago, and it doesn’t seem to have lost any of the Fantasy Battle charm, despite the fact it’s about Elves. I hate Elves. If it takes your fancy, you can buy here. And you’ll find an official game-o-play video and a user-made game-o-play video below…
Bloody elves.
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Computer games may not *need* hexes, but they can still serve a purpose. They help structure the battles and make them more predictable. On a hex grid, I know exactly how many enemies can melee my ranged units at a time. I know how many turns it’ll take me to get from A to B. None of that is obvious without such a simplified grid.
Hexes also make it a lot easier to give terrain bonuses, for hills and forests and whatnot. And since in Elven Legacy, there can only be one land unit per tile, it adds an element of strategy. The hexes make it much more clear what’s going on, as opposed to just a mass of unit scrambling around on the map. For turn based tactical level games, tiles just make sense. Besides, it also makes it easier to create new maps, since everything has to be modular to some extent to fit the tiles. It doesn’t have to be that way, Combat Mission and Silent Storm are two I can think of that don’t follow that norm.
But if you really want something to complain about, complain about the terrible tutorial. Making me watch a video, really? Why can’t you walk me through inside the interface?
About tiles and Elven Legacy / Fantasy Wars :
There is a cover system : tiles have bonuses depending on their types, and archers cover adjacent units.
We could do the game without hexes. It would have to be like with hexes, but you cannot see them. Oh wait, i’m quite sure you can disable the grid in the options… so easy !
I found Fantasy Wars far better than King’s Bounty.
The best thing about elves is Elven Accuracy in 4th edition. Nothing is better than discarding a natural 1 and getting a critical on the retry. Suck it, dwarf-lovers.
Re: hexes versus plain coordinates on the ground…
It’s not PC, and it’s not really wargaming either, but I think the Nippon Ichi line of tactical RPGs highlights the pitfalls of avoiding grids / hexes in turn-based strategy.
Most people I know who played Disgaea (grid-based) loved it dearly, while Phantom Brave (their first gridless attempt) was much less well-liked overall. That was in part due to the weak story, etc., but the gridless system became very muddy — you tended to just throw everything you had in a big mob and hope for the best, since it was hard to get exact distances right.
Makai Kingdom (also gridless) solved some of those issues, but it wasn’t until their return to grid-based gameplay in Disgaea 2 that they really had a winning formula again (IMO).
I still play the re-release of Disgaea on PSP to this day, whereas I don’t recall ever finishing PB or MK.
As for raising the notion of gridlessness in the Combat Mission game series … Having played “Combat Mission: Shock Force” (CM:SF), I have to say, I don’t really consider it a TBS game. Maybe the others were different, but it was basically an RTS, and the “turn-based” mode just divvied the real-time into minute-long chunks during which you couldn’t issue commands. That’s not a TBS game, that’s just an RTS game with turn-based orders.
Combat in CM:SF occurs entirely based on when the unit AI spots something or feels it has a clear shot on the target you assigned, like any other RTS. That sort of real-time combat is more suited for gridlessness, but says nothing about the suitability of gridlessness for TBS games.
Grids and hexes might make things easier for the computer to deal with, but it follows that they’re also easier for humans to deal with — and since we’re the ones that are supposed to come up with strategy, I think a little grid abstraction for the sake of tactical thinking is a good tradeoff.
I don’t understand the elf hate. Weren’t the Nazis bad because they were wrong? I thought that was the whole problem with them. I mean, if they were right, wouldn’t they be…right?
And elves are wrong too. I fail to see the problem. :D
@jalf: I was referring in particular to Kieron’s statement that Elves are just Nazis that happen to be right.
EDIT: Going back, it seems what he said is that they’re Aryans who happen to be right about being better than everyone else. Which doesn’t really make them Nazis, since I don’t remember Elves using that as justification for genocide.
Well, technically, I’m pretty sure the genocide bit is optional. A nazi is just someone who feels Aryans are superior, isn’t it?
Elves are Hippy Nazis. Also: often commies. And Torrys.
They’re basically everything an American has to swear to hate as part of becoming a citizen. Most other countries don’t like at least two out of four of the rest, so that explains everyone hating them.
All the download links point to the same place. Maybe this was intentional and I’m just dense, but it’s available at Steam, too (the demo and the full game)! And presumably other places.
@Wisq:
You’re right about Combat Mission not being turn based so much as it is a pausable RTS, or Real Time Tactical game, anyway. All the other follow the same basic formula, the developer call it a WEGO system, as opposed to the IGO-UGO, since the combat takes place simultaneously. So thanks for clearing it up, I knew there wasn’t something quite right about calling CM a RTS.