Legends of Eisenwald review

At times, cosmetic themes and backdrops become so ingrained in a genre that even small variations are enough to set new entries apart from competitors. High-fantasy is perhaps the most common example, being often associated with RPGs and strategy games with integrated role-playing mechanics. In this regard, Legends of Eisenwald follows the age-old mantra that less is more. While its competitors provide increasingly elaborate spells, fantastical army units and unit designs, Legends of Eisenwald is content with stepping back and providing a visually grounded approach. Ironically, this makes it arguably more original than its peers.

This isn’t to say Legends of Eisenwald aims for realism, quite the contrary as it instead provides a low-fantasy world for players to explore. Magic exists but it’s based around antiquated superstition and how it would have influenced the world had it been real. Gamers will not face off against elves, orcs or lizardmen, but might instead meet a witch apt in sorcery or seek a priests offering divine protection. These themes are tied via a believable, medieval world closely mirroring Central and Eastern European feudal societies.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, Legends of Eisenwald is an RPG first and a strategy game second. Focus is placed solely on the main player character with no additional armies or heroes to tab into. Moreover, there are no randomly generated maps to engage in as you would expect to find in titles like Age of Wonders 3. Rather, players are given a campaign and two additional scenarios to choose from and must follow their stories to completion. Granted, players are often given dialog prompts to choose from, but they provide little variation. Worse still, the main plotline is often static, offering few if any meaningful branching paths.

Cities, castles and other keeps may be taken and be garrisoned with troops, but these locations can only be accessed, taxed or otherwise interacted when the main character is physically present. This is where the reduced attention to grand strategy rears its faults as players are expected to walk back and forth between their domain to claim taxes or recruit new soldiers. It’s not long before this becomes a tedious chore.

Keeping in tone with its streamlined strategy elements are the low unit caps. Initially, players may only carry a handful of soldiers in their army and are required to capture castles to increase this limit. Even so, your main army will always be limited to a maximum of 12 fighters. Of course, attacking said castles is hardly a simple task. When capturing fortified positions your army will suffer automatic damage before the battle even begins. This issue may be reduced by carrying a larger army as the health penalty is then shared between a larger group, but it provides little comfort when you’re attacking you hold no forts and are as a result, limited to a low unit cap.

Now granted, there is the option of hiring mercenaries which ignore caps but these were generally overly expensive to maintain, requiring exorbitant daily wages for their upkeep. The issue here is that taxation is not done automatically, as previously stated, players must move to every town and collect gold from each location individually. This in turn, generates a circular challenge gamers must overcome; players need money and high unit caps to capture towns and castles, but overtaking towns and castles requires funding and army sizes you do not have.

As a result, Legends of Eisenwald carries an odd difficulty curve, making it overly difficult at the beginning of each scenario and then becoming too easy towards the second half. Having to travel to controlled regions just to keep them in check carries its own brand of problems. Villages may not hold any army garrisons, so you are forced to leave them undefended as you carry on with the main quest. Clearing the overworld of enemies isn’t a solution either as new hostile parties spawn at random intervals. Often times the easiest fix is to patrol your domain, though this makes for a time-consuming task.

Combat is handled via hex-based tactical grid. These instances often feel claustrophobic, offering little room to move. Even the camera left something to be desired as the scenery often obstructed my view. Characters are not allowed to move to vacant hexes, instead they may skip a turn, use an ability or attack the nearest opponent. This creates an interesting twist on turn-based combat as it forces players to think aggressively rather than defensively, but with that said, it also further reinforces the cramped gameplay.

When fighting larger armies it wasn’t uncommon for Legends of Eisenwald to stutter despite running on a computer that frankly should have been able to handle it effortlessly. Moreover, combat animations leave something to be desired as strikes lacked any real sense of urgency of impact.

The main character may choose between one of three classes, boiling down to the classic warrior, rogue and mage choices. Sadly, they do not seem properly balanced. Initially, Mystics carry an offensive spell which may be used only once per battle and must then rely mostly on buff and debuff spells. This means your low-magic wielding hero is essentially. Conversely, knights are likely overpowered providing strong defense and offensive capabilities from the beginning with few drawbacks.

Both your hero and each individual army unit can equip gear and level up, though the process at which characters earn experience is slow and methodical. When an army unit levels up it can change classes with the possibility of branching paths, so a recruit for example, can become either a soldier or a guard. Sadly, for all your hard work in strengthening an army, it’s all for naught as the units, experience and their gear disappears when players move on to the story’s next map, leaving only your main gear and his/her weapons.

It’s no doubt Legends of Eisenwald provides a unique if challenging take on the genre. The latter of which is especially noticeable during each chapter’s early stages. This can be especially frustrating considering dying brings a gameover screen and it’s relatively easy to become stuck in a no-win situation. Your army can find itself trapped between stronger units in the overworld who give chase to the player character. At least the game auto-saves often though it’s still punishing having to possibly lose several gameplay hours just to avoid certain death.

Legends of Eisenwald distances itself from similar genre entries by providing a semi-realistic low-fantasy theme. It carries a sharp initial difficulty which may be frustrating at times, but successfully motivate players into overcoming them. Some tasks required to properly strengthening your army can be repetitive, but its blend of RPG with strong strategy and tactical elements are both engaging and addictive. Anyone who enjoyed Age of Wonders 3 or Heroes of Might and Magic 6 but would have liked to see the grand strategy elements removed in favor of a more streamlined RPG experience would do well to play this.

Legends of Eisenwald was played on the PC with review code provided by the publisher.