It's hard to play a game over 100 hours and then not recommend it. And yet, I can't. I wan't to - but I can't.

You've heard the saying that 'the sum is greater than the parts'; in this game, the parts are greater than the sum. There is such a good game here waiting to 'happen'. Unfortunately, the overall game design is flawed.

Specifically, the size of the 'shards' and the mechanics of the shards hurt the overall game. Because of this, you won't even use most of the best units/buildings/etc. In essence, you've got all this outstanding content that never comes into play bacause of the mechanics of the 'meta-game'.

-Bought this when feeling nostalgic about Master of Magic / HoMM. I also like CiV and slower, turn-based games sometimes.
-More complex building options than HoMM and in some aspects MoM.. More specifically the City Build menu can be overwhelming to look at for the first time. I particularly enjoyed this aspect of the game - its complexity left me wanting more and more so I would restart a game after losing to tweak the build and see what works best.
-The heroes can be viewed as simple/straightforward - 4 classes. Each time you level you put one point into one skill (out of three offerred).
-Spells are just similar to Heroes of Might & Magic. Build the 4th tower to get the best spells.. except there is a different building for each magic type - there are 6 magic types (I think?) at least as far as buildings / main spells go.
-More complex gameplay & darker theme than Heroes of Might & Magic
-Can't wait to play multiplayer!

Even though the "battle for a shard" is a lot of fun, it gets boring and repetitive after a while. The campaign is a sequence of maps (or shards) you have to win in order to meet all other masters. But the game is fun as long as the player wants to play it and can be recommended to anybody who likes games similar to HoM&M.

It took me 248 hours to end the campaign - and I chose the quickest way to finish.

If you like to finish your games - beware of the necessary time investment!

The game runs very unstable (release 1.4.5) - during my playthrough I had over 100 crashes to the desktop (seems evenly distributed between "Invalid Pointer Operation" and "Access violation...").
The game might run smoothly for 5 hours or crash 5 times in 30 minutes.

The idea is interesting but the implementation is lacking. Highly random starting positions can vary the difficulty from "cakewalk" to "impossible," and strategy games should be decided more by your decisions than by randomness. Hero units drive the game, so if your starting area is good, you steamroll the map; if not, you may be able to grind through, provided the enemy hero did not get a steamroll start that lets it one-shot your troops and two-shot your hero. "First OP hero wins" is not an interesting strategy dynamic.

Before each fight, the game evaluates your forces versus your enemies and gives you a difficulty estimate from "no casualties" to "no chance." Whatever math is being done does not compare the units' strengths and weaknesses. You will regularly find impossible "easy" fights and "run away!" fights you can win without taking damage. Between this and the highly random elements, you can see why so many places on the forums advocate save scumming.

I encountered fewer crash bugs than other reviewers did.

I enjoyed this game for around a week or two before I just didn't have time for it. I think, if I played Eador when I was younger, I would have had 100s of hours spent playing it. It seems like the kind of single-player game that manages to reward you for putting a lot of time into it, which is rare.

++faction customization, as you go
++still being updated
+broad scope of units
+vastly non linear gameplay
+many ways to play

--bugged heavily
--broken multiplayer
-limited provence interaction
-no smooth transition between easy and hard

Conclusion:
Do not buy this game... yet

so after about 20 hours of gameplay i thought it would be appropriate to tell people not to buy the game that i find insanely addicting, you're likely seeing mixed results mostly talking about bugs and various other issues and yes those are a problem, a major one, online multiplayer is either impossible or extremely clunky, the game crashes often due to node issues the longer you play (sounds like allocation problems), your interactions with provinces aside from raiding and the occasional event are very limited, and while i feel this is likely for the sake of balance I still feel they could have done something with it.

so why do i keep playing it? simply because it has so much of what i've always wanted in a game, the potential to be insanely evil, with consequences for doing so, the ability to rule my nation with an iron fist and a cold heart, and reasons to do so, a true and practical necromancy with the potential to create an army from the remains of the dead, deals with the devil, trouble with the church, the capacity to become a dark lord, raise armies of monsters, create your own faction rather than being given options within a set of factions, become a brilliant commander, a dragon slaying sniper, a powerful wizard, or mighty warrior, with subclasses in all of these to boot! Good games leave a small part of themselves with you, Great games let you put yourself into them...

but even though Eador is a great game... it is not a stable game and I simply cannot reccomend it for that very reason

Surprisingly fun turn based fantasy game. Basically you play through 'shards' each turn, building up an army and eventually conquering each shard, which then unlocks bonuses for the next shard. While this game isnt too challenging, it is very fun to play here and there as you conquer more. Similar to Heroes of Might and Magic but with new mechanics.

Easily one of the funnest games I have played, that being said, I would not recommend you buy unless you have a god tier computer. On my normal computer, this game does not work it crashes all the time, I recentlly built a very nice computer and it runs as smooth as a lampshade made of fresh baby skin. Also the issue with the crashes and errors I got on my other two computers (ones a laptop) will not be adressed as none of my emails or error reports ever got a reply. Maybe the company is not the best at pr. This game is amazing nonetheless, I enjoy the strategy and it is not insanely easy as some others, so long as you dont select skilled or anything below you will have very nice combat that requires actuall planning and thinking, story line was pretty awesome too. Only issue I have had is that you need a strong computer to play it, and the lack of help or support from the creators, but I get that from ea and almost every company too. Another cool thing so far as gameplay goes is that you can use one method to win most battles, for example necromancy, however these battles can be slugfests, and you may end up losing, where you essentially trade blows until one of you manages to get the upperhand and you will end up taking days of back and forth battling to take or lose the shard, when if you just adapt you strategy and maybe add a commander with long range units in the back and strong defense with low attack to shield the path of incoming land units you could maybe have won the shard or faster if you win anyways. There are flying units too, the strategy is quite varied, really an awesome game.

You want to play turn-based combat and simultaneously building up your empire while leveling every single unit in your army up? You, dear Sir, have quite an interesting taste. And found a jewel.

The story itself is engaging while you conquer the whole universe and face from humans to gods everything you might think of. The shards (worlds) itself are then conquered by your hero and his armies, who fight your battles in turn-based combats. All the shards then allow for more units, equipments, buildings and boosts for the next shard to fall under your rule.

The graphical presentation might not appeal to anyone, but it is atmospherical and suits the game and gameplay well enough. A lot of peopel are reporting technical issues with the game, however I have never encountered such problems. If this bothers you, I recommend checking other reviews in more detail.

7/10 for breaking under it's own size from time to time and the technical issues a lot of peopel might have (This is hard to factor in, though, because if you do have such issues, one would very likely give it a 0, as in did not deliver).

Highly recommend to all fans of fantasy, strategy, and tactics games. Plenty of unique units and buildings, heroes and units gain levels and you can customize their growth, explore the terrain to find new locations and upgrades, manage resources, and increase your own power by conquering other worlds/shards. The campaign does a good job of introducing you to more intricate tactics and developments as you progress. One downside is that with each new shard/map you start over somewhat, but things still manage to stay interesting through new units and buildings, new opponents, and randomized events.

This game closely resembles Heroes of MaM, in its gameplay but adds several features. First is is much more complex and takes significantly longer to actually play the game. One difference is that each map is devided into provences where you move from provence to provence each turn. Do do not actually attack enemies on the game map, bu through events that are specific to the provence that your hero is working in.
Then there is the world building phase of the game, which acts as a break point between each of the shard games. You play a campain on the world building section of individual conquests of each individual game map.

Type of recommendation: If you love the turn based HoMaM games or possibly King's Bounty but want something more complex, you may enjoy this game. The biggest difference between those games and this one is that you are not moving freely on the map but moving from provence to provence where all the events take place.

Otherwise this game is probably going to be too tedious for most people. I will continue to play it but only periodically.

For all the fans of Heroes III, Age of Wonders and similar titles. Not recomended for casuals, they will cry loud..

I had a hard time deciding wether to recommend this game or not given the current flaws it has.

Watch a few youtube videos to understand the mechanics and know that this is game about trial and error. The battle prediction is broken, dont trust it ... there are some predicted "very easy" encounters which in my oppinion cant be won. A battle against 4 medusas without a ranged hero is a loss regardless of predictions.

The above brings me to the next obvious point; inbalance. The devs simply did not take their time to implement this propperly, some creatures are simply too powerfull for early game and you have to know this prior to engaging ... unless you dont mind reloading a lot.

Early positioning and ressources can also be an issue, but in my oppinion not as vital as the two flaws mentioned above.

When all is said and done its not a bad game, the devs should just give it it a final look to balance things out and I would recommend it in a heartbeat.

Enjoyed this game. Game length gets a little hairy though, so I don't recommend you play it unless you have four hours to spend at a time.

Eador, Masters of the Broken World. The best way to describe this game would be that it is heavily influenced/steals from (well, the older version but okay) Heroes of Might and Magic 3. You upgrade cities by making new buildings allowing for magic, income, creatures, experience for your creatures, or special effects. Battle is done on a grid system in a turn based combat manner and as your heroes level they gain new abilites and skills.

However, there is were similarities end. For instance, unlike HoMM3 all cities are equal, which the same creatures being able to be recruited. You explore the map by conquering surrounding provinces - which can be upgraded with buildings but with a much smaller variety than the cities. Thus no free roaming on the map and individual armies of provinces can be daunting to defeat. Furthermore, magic does have some impact, but I would say less in the battlefield that HoMM3, but can be more impacting on a global scale than HoMM3, due to the so called rituals. Another important difference is the 'happiness' factor. If a province gets unhappy it might revolt, that is something you do not see in HoMM making Eador more of a grand strategy game in that sense. It also has more RPG elements than HoMM3 as quests can be given through the conquering of a shard (= one map) and acting differently can have very different consequences. Even more so, if you are friendly some troops will like that and get better morale, where others will think you weak. Likewise, you can not ally e.g. the Elves (some rare neutral provinces on the map) if you play like an evil ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Personally I miss a bit the variety in units from time to time, but that has been partially lifted by the small DLC (allied forces) of 4 euro. Although that states only 2 new units per individual faction, it actually creatures more new units and with a new special building that can be found in a province (the mercenary guild) you can actually hire these troops. This is great because it sometimes tediously long to get e.g. to level 2 unit buildings and this gives your army the edge you need for higher difficulties in my opinion.

All in all, Eador is a good addition for anyone that enjoyed the old HoMM series (not V as it does not have those graphics implemented) and is looking for a different game with a slight twist.

So frustrating...the gameplay is great, nice graphics, vast World to explore. Seems like a great game...but it does crash a LOT. It takes away the joy out of playing as this game crashes for me almost every 10-15 minutes. Frustration is a mild term to use here. I would recommend it to anyone who likes strategy turn based games with RPG elements, but it is still full of bugs almost a year after the release - the patches don't seem to fix the problem a lot of the players are facing.

First the bad things:

The game suffers from some balancing issues, sometimes everything seems to be against you and can be really unforgiving as Hell.
There are some small bugs when I'm writing this review.

The good things:
The campaign seems to be going on forever! As a dinosaur remembering Civilisation 1 on Amiga, where I've spent months on one session bringing my country to greatest power ever I strongly appreciate very long games.
Map generator - you can specify how you want your skirmish map to look like and go!
Diverse strategies (not as many creatures as in say HoMM3, but there are so many different tactics!
Unuque game structure, where (in campaign) in order to gain new tech you need to conquer particular shards - this means if you loose one important region, you may not get certain tech and be forced to reevaluate your stratedy.

Summary:
Really like this game - spent quite a bit of time and am already considering the allied forces expansion.

What a great, old school heroes style game. I really liked this one as a 31 year old casual gamer, it has a lot to offer me. I find my gaming life is winding down and that I am not as good as most of the kids out there playing; this game makes me feel like a kid again, lets just say :)

Not sure why the user reviews are "mixed" when this game is by far one of the most enjoyable of its genre. Having played Eador Genesis before this I was happy to see the content was the same just with a shiny new look. The game has a faster pace to it than its predecessor with more unlocked with each shard conquered and the shards themselves feeling smaller. This is probably a good thing for many, though I didn't appriciate this myself. You will always start with humans as the race you control with the chance to complete (sometimes over the top difficult) quests to ally yourself with a non-human faction on each shard. One complaint many have is the difficulty, I myself am quite average when it comes to strategy games but even I found a way to secure a victory over every shard (hint: the scout is a great hero to start with). Also not seen any bugs which apparently plagued the game earlier in its life so many thanks to the developers for sorting that all out.

Overall this is a game for those seeking a challenging turn based strategy and not put off by the fact that it can get a little repetitive. Personally I would suggest trying Genesis first as it is cheaper to get a taste of what it is all about and if the old school graphics there aren't for you but the gameplay is then consider buying this.