Fallen Enchantress

The Good
What a treat do I have for you my lovelies! Feast your eyes on a modern rendition of Master of Magic! Granted, it's one of many such games, including the previous incarnation of Fallen Enchantress and... forget it. This is the place to talk about the good stuff and FE does have some good:

Like MoM, FE is a turn-base blend of strategical empire management and tactical combat, all of which set in a magic world with quests and lairs and dragons, oh my! From the world map you will manage your many cities, build buildings, take hold of magic and mundane resources, research various technologies, train troops, recruit and equip heroes and send your armies to battle. While on the tactical map you'll decide which troop will attack which enemy unit to take advantage of weaknesses to certain types of magical or physical damage, cast spells to turn the tide of battle - from offensive to defensive to creature summoning, and use potions, wands, artifacts and special martial skills to get any advantage you can get.

The tactical battles are by far the best thing about FE. For one, they're the least buggy part of the game, but bugs or not, they're very well designed. Unlike the battles in, say, Age of Wonders which can take an eternity to resolve, with tiny position adjustments by players and incremental gains, FE features fast, furious and brutal battles. Ones where you can use the turn-base format to its fullest to lay out your tactics, but also ones that prevent endless turtling by opponents. The AI is decent. You won't see any tactical brilliance on display (on the contrary, a common AI weakness is grouping too many units together, which makes them a target for AoE spells), but it's no walk in the park either. The AI will pursue your weakest units (usually archers and mages) and will gang up on any vulnerable unit to bring it down quickly. Lastly, the physical damage system deserves a special mention. While other similar games focus mainly on magical resistances and immunities, FE has three categories of physical damage (slashing, blunt and piercing) which correspond to different weapons and armor (both produced and innate), meaning that you'll need to redesign your armies to answer certain challenges.

Speaking of army design - FE allows you not only to equip various items and artifacts on your heroes, but also to customize your troops in the same way. You'll decide everything, from the type of boots to magical necklaces to special abilities that a unit will have.

As always in MoM-type games, your strategical achievements are tied to your battlefield achievements and vice versa. You'll need well managed cities to research the technologies and collect the resources needed for better unit equipment, and you'll need your heroes to level up in fights or while performing quests in order to cast the necessary city and world spells to advance your strategy.

Outside of combat, FE is fairly lackluster for this type of games. You have 8 basic fractions (but can customize new ones), 5 of which are fairly similar in gameplay. The remaining three do represent unique approaches to gameplay, which will heavily influence your strategy: Queen Procipinee of Pariden will expand quickly using her considerable magic, but will have relatively weaker troops, Oracle Ceresa of Resoln will not rely on a regular army at all, but rather on the various demons which will be auto-summoned for her from every mana shard she controls, making her armies the strongest at the start of the game, and Warlord Verga of Yithril will wait for the middle-game to train his Juggernauts, crushing any puny magician who dares challenge him.

The game's diplomacy is fairly well handled; you can trade almost anything for anything else - have too much horses but need research? Can be done. Want an economic agreement, but need to give Influence to sway the negotiations in your favor? By all means. Even better, you can see the other factions' attitude towards you and the reason for that attitude! Every international relationship is a complex matrix of the leader's personal views (conflicting ideologies, greed, warmongering), past history (how peaceful or warlike a nation was), current relations (how strong each one is compared to the other) and various other factors (including geography - factions that are further apart will be usually less hostile to each other).

Finally, the game is pretty. Yes, every new game is prettier than the last, but it's still nice to play arguably the best looking rendition of MoM. Alas, looks are only skin-deep and they often cover a host of bad decisions and bugs...

The Bad
Time for a history lesson. Once upon a time there was a little game called Elemental: War of Magic. A game so bad that even its developer and Stardock's CEO called it a complete failure. However, despite being an utter disaster it had an interesting story (which eventually was novelized) and some good ideas. So, after some corporate drama, it was decided to release a better game as a form of apology to the fans. Enter Elemental: Fallen Enchantress - the alternative title for this game. There were only two little problems - many bugs remained and the rich story which featured in the novelization is mostly absent from the game. Oops.

Don't get me wrong - FE is much more playable than the abomination that preceded it, which is like saying that the scent glands of a skunk are much more edible than a thallium sandwich. It's definitely true, but it doesn't do much to build confidence. Even after two games and countless patches, FE still has numerous bugs, the worst of which are unfinishable quests (which is particularly bad for world quest areas because it means that a large portion of the map will forever remain unusable to you). It has badly implemented features, like the random map generator that generates maps with utterly insane layout (in one case my starting location was on a very long piece of land that was exactly three tiles wide and had, besides one city building location, one resource, one quest tavern and one creature nest nothing at all). Hell, it even lacks some features entirely - remarkably this game still doesn't have a multiplayer!

But you know what? Fair enough. Not every game needs multiplayer and we can avoid many bugs by playing custom designed maps and campaign... Singular? There is only ONE campaign and a dozen or so maps? Oh. How awkward. One wonders, how did a game like HoMM 3 manage to give an order of magnitude more campaigns, maps, a richer story and even a fricking multiplayer a dozen years before this game lumped to the world stage? Were the pretty graphics really worth it?

This careless approach to design didn't spare the poor factions either. Like I said above, out of eight factions only three offer a truly unique experience. Fast expansion in the early game and overwhelming strength in the end game for Pariden is countered by powerful magical troops at the beginning for Resoln, and both can be countered by the raw strength of Yithril. The other factions are closer to the low-magical Yithril, but can't match it in sheer strength, nor match the two high-magical factions in expansion speed or late-game dominance. Simply put, there is no reason to play the other factions unless you want greater challenge. Which you might want because even at the higher difficulty settings the game remains not very challenging.

Ah, but even good programming, or even basic care, can get you so far. The problems with FE are bigger still. For one thing, it forgot that the best thing about MoM style games is the ability to cast over-land spells - massive incantations that will raise mountains and flood valleys. And you still can do it - on your own territory. Yes, except for a handful of spells, all of your world map spells can be cast in the one place where you don't need to cast them - next to your cities! Granted, this gives you a good defensive arsenal, but given relatively unchallenging opposition, by the time you get these spells you'll have no-one to cast them on!

The only upside is that this franchise have a large and loyal modding community that creates maps and fixes that address some of FE's problems. That community, combined with the raw potential of this game give it an above average rating.

The Bottom Line
An above average remastering of Master of Magic, with fast paced combat, decent diplomacy and an interesting world. The unit design feature alone is worth a look at this game, as the careful tailoring of new units complements perfectly the multitude of strengths and weaknesses that your enemies posses.

This game's flaws include some annoying bugs, a lack of maps and campaigns and a generally poor balance in some aspects of the game. However, the modding community did fix some of those problems, making the game more accessible.

Sadly, the greatest flow - the lack of multiplayer - cannot be addressed, making this game a solo experience.