Review | Elven Legacy

Format: PC | Genre: TBS | Publisher: Paradox Interactive | Developer: Ino-Co | Out now: £19.99

By J.D. Richardson

Elves are bastards.

You only have to play Elven Legacy for a few hours to see that. They’re like the contestants on The Apprentice: tight lipped, yuppie wannabes watching with desperate, dead, crow-like eyes for any opportunity to backstab and bitch about each other. They still look like the spritely blonde forest folk we all know from fantasy and fable, but personality-wise, make no mistake, they are right proper bastards.

Elven Legacy is the new turn-based strategy game from the developers of Fantasy Wars, Ino-Co, and like its predecessor Elven Legacy is bloody hard. The challenge-to-pounds-sterling ratio makes this game a bargain. I quit so many times in complete despair at how difficult it was – yet I kept going back. Because when you get down to it, Elven Legacy is not bad at all. In fact, it’s rather good.

//Red sky at night
What makes it good is that the core gameplay, that most precious and important of all things game, is spot on. Strategy works: you have to think about what you are doing or you’ll be beaten by the very crafty AI over and over again. You will win if you use your brain and learn from your mistakes – of which there will be many. The positioning of your troops is paramount. Placing archers behind swordsmen, for instance, creates a barrier between the weaker close-combat ranged troops and strong close-combat attackers. It also means that when the swordsmen are attacked the archers get to fire a volley of arrows into the ranks of the enemy as they are in an adjacent hex, which really does make a difference. Also, because of the traditional hex-based approach, positioning is always simple and effective if you know what you are doing and you have spent time on your overall strategy. That is what I’ve always loved about turn based strategy. You can sit back and plan whilst raising an eyebrow and swishing a glass of brandy in your hand.

Adding to this are the wonderful graphics – not technically cutting-edge by any means, but very nice to look at, with superb motion-captured animations. Every unit is well textured and detailed with a unique visual style. Dragons, armoured deer riders, air ships, trolls, giants, knights, catapults, mechanical dwarf tanks and so on all look great running around and fighting. Elven Legacy also has some of the most atmospheric skies I’ve ever seen in a game. When you position the camera so you can see one of your Elven skyships gliding across the battlefield with a setting sun in the background and angry storm clouds overhead, you’re in fantasy wet dream land.

//Lulz
There are a few problems that can’t be overlooked. The tutorial is broken, and half the voiceover talks in Russian while the other half talks in one of the most ridiculous accents ever, sounding like one of those ‘dramatic reading’ piss-takes that are going round the internet. The Orc voiceovers are so absurd that you’ll most likely get genuine belly laughs out of them. There’s also one recurrent bug, so I’ll warn you now that if you are using Elven skyships then sometimes the game crashes to desktop when you use its bomb attack. Luckily, the game autosaves at the beginning of each turn, so don’t despair if this happens and you forgot to save.

And, quite frankly, the story isn’t really that interesting. All I can tell you about it is that the elves are pursuing a mage who has stolen a spell so powerful that it’s been locked away in a big dark tower for thousands of years. And that’s about it. In between each mission you get a diary entry spoken by your main hero character Sagittel, which fills in the story and gives an insight into his rather twisted mind. The man is a bit of a nutjob, to be honest, with two personalities that are constantly fighting for control – and it’s usually the twat side that wins. I do like this aspect; it’s a refreshing take on the usual flighty, butter-wouldn’t-melt Elves.

Multiplayer is present in a number of different forms: online, LAN and even hotseat, so you can play with your mates sat around one PC just like in the good old days. There’s even a level editor so you can make your own campaigns to challenge your friends with.

Overall, Elven legacy is a great package for TBS fans – but if that’s not you then I’d probably give this one a miss, as it probably won’t win any fans for being so damn hard. In fact, I’ve gone to the trouble of producing a little cut-out and keep guide that you could stick in the game manual over the part about the difficulty settings.

//J.D. Richardson’s unofficial cut out and keep Elven Legacy difficulty settings guide (TM)
Easy: Hard.
Medium: If Stephen Hawking were an army general…
Hard: What. The. Fuck?

8/10