pretty fun

This game reminds me of hereos of might and magic 2. It is a stradegy game, but it could be better. I wish the campaign was longer, had more story to it, and more in depth!

This is a review of the game as it stands on release day.


Pros

• Stardock's "most polished" 4X game on release in recent times, in the sense of being the least overtly buggy.
  
• Good quest variety and writing, particularly compared to Fallen Enchantress/Legendary Heroes
  
• Likely to be fun the first couple of times through.
  
• Prettier and more attractive UI compared to Stardock's own Fallen Enchantress/Legendary Heroes (but at the same time not in any way better than rival 4X titles like Endless Legends and Age of Wonders 3)
  
• Nice music.

Cons

• Serious replayability concerns
  
• Narrow scope, and same base units no matter which sovereign you choose
  
• Crafting is too tedious particularly late game for what you get in return.
  
• Many balance and design issues that results in limited amount of actual, interesting, strategic choices and options.
  
• Lots of spells but you'll likely only end up casting a very small subset of them (i.e. plenty of unattractive spells - note that you'll have to sacrifice a unit's turn to cast a sovereign spell...)
  
• Actually manages to feel like a lesser game than its predecessors (Fallen Enchantress/Legendary Heroes) once you've this game figured out, though it provides gratification and fun sooner.
  
• Definitely a lesser game compared to the likes of Age of Wonders III despite being at the same price point.

Verdict:
A game that is designed to, and succeeds, in striking a great first impression. But once you've played a couple of games and grasped the mechanics, it is hard not to notice the many design and balance flaws as well as how shallow the game ultimately is. With time, these issues can hopefully be addressed but as it stands now, this game is hard to recommend at the $40 price point. Wait for a sale instead, and hopefully you'll get a patched and better balanced game in the process as well.


I find this game to be okay... There are quite a number of components that are better (e.g. quest variety) than Stardock's previous efforts in the Elemental series (Fallen Enchantress, Legendary Heroes) and the graphical and UI overhaul is largely welcomed. Many of the subsystems will feel very familiar to players who have played Legendary Heroes, including the not-particularly-tactical Tactical combat, right down to obscure stats like Spell Mastery (which is a different stat from Spell Damage).

So, basically, I believe that if you like the premise of the game, if you have a certain fondness for 4X games, this will probably satisfy you to a degree and you'll have fun. If you like tactical combat (such as those found in the Heroes of Might and Magic series, as well as King's Bounty, and most notably Age of Wonders 3), you'll find yourself sorely disappointed. There _is_ a tactical element to tactical combat, it just doesn't feel particularly deep compared to the examples above.

My personal misgivings about the game in its current state include:

• Longevity of the game once you have beaten it once. There are only two victory conditions after all and they'll play out the same no matter what. The only thing that differs is what playstyle you utilize to get there. And yes, while there are 6 sovereigns each with their own unique units/play style slant/gimmick, they ultimately all train the same base units which all utilise the same progression paths.
  
• Concerns about balance - units like Enchanters are a late addition and don't feel like much thought has put into making them an interesting strategic option. At the moment, units like Enchanters and Clerics just feel entirely useless instead with how fragile they're and their low initiative (which means they take action very rarely, and pretty much die instantly if an enemy ranged unit looks at them funny, or if an enemy mage were to cast an AOE spell...) - you're much better off giving that precious army slot to another Paladin or Rider instead which brings so much more to the table in comparison... Given that Enchanters were added by Brad, the lead designer of the game, it doesn't inspire much confidence... (compare to the design process and goals that goes into games like League of Legends, the way the Enchanter was designed and added just feels random/adhoc).
  
• Various obscure elements not well explained e.g. what do traits like Wisdom, Courage, Persuasion, Cruelty do (you pretty much find out only by watching the Stardock streams or searching the forums), with no way to look at what traits you've accumulated so far. What is the spell mastery stat (not explained in the Help sections, or manual, or tooltips)?
  
• Concerns about the Crafting subsystem - It gets _really_ tedious late game, and there are issues... For instance, when you seemingly max out on Crafting recipes, the game doesn't handle it well (e.g. you can still attempt to trade for more crafting recipes, pay the price and get nothing in return).
  
• Alot of the spells/skills are not enticing - playing the Priest, I barely found the need to cast anything beyond Into the Light, Restore, and the occasional Refresh in tactical combat. Also, many of the sovereign skill trees do not offer choices that feel very compelling or rewarding. Note that you need to sacrifice your unit's turn to cast a sovereign spell in tactical combat, but I rarely found this trade off worthwhile.
  
• Iffy design concerns - I have concerns with general placement/layouts of the sovereign skill trees. As an example, I find inexplicable how "Enchanted Forges" is extremely early in many of the sovereign skill trees yet you can't actually build the corresponding Wonder to actually unlock enchanting until mid-late game... On the other hand, +army size is fairly accessible for some of the sovereigns (e.g. Priest, strangely, who according to dev journals, was designed to have weaker/smaller armies), and extremely inaccessible for some of the others who really need it (e.g. the Guardian sovereign, who starts with a Ranger hero with skills that benefit ranged units as well as Tame Beasts yet struggles to find the army slots necessary to fit in frontline units/beasts and still have space for ranged backline).

At the end of the day, the biggest concern is with longevity. You're ultimately playing a solo game here, and with there being only 2 ways to win, and with you going through the same motion and fighting the same boss every single time, with there being only 1 playable race, it is probably going to get old fast.

And by the way, I thought I would just toss it out there that the asymmetric turn-based games has been done before - the campaign games of classics like Heroes of Might and Magic have you undergo similar jounreys to overcome asymmetric challenges. Within the 4X space, the campaign modes of games like Age of Wonders 3 pretty much offers the same (as well as a very satisfying sense of questing, levelling, progression, and more satisfying tactical combat). The problem is Sorcerer King is that the asymmetric premise is kind of the only thing you have going on, whereas all these other games, including Stardock's own past entires like Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes, actually more ways to play and more races/classes to play with.

At $40, this is a Not Recommended for me. Suggest that you wait and get this when it is on sale instead (hopefully the game will also be more polished then).

Players who already own Legendary Heroes can get the game at $30 with the discount code from the Stardock store, and at the $30 price point, it still is hard to make a recommendation for this game in its current state with any conviction.

Sorcerer King is a game that occupies a slightly different niche than other fantasy 4X games. In fact, if you go into this game expecting a typical 4X experience and challenge, you may well be disappointed. Yet, the differences are what made me really enjoy this game over its competitors.

The way I prefer to see SK is as an RPG with a 4X control scheme. Sure, you build cities and expand your empire, but the main focus of the game is always on your champions. You explore the world, you find and do quests, you hunt for loot to craft new equipment, and get experience for your heroes so you can handle the final boss at the end. The strategy elements are still there, but downplayed compared to the RPG elements. This is the type of game for those of us who enjoyed our hero stacks in other fantasy strategy games.

Also be warned that SK is a very text-heavy game. A lot of the quests, as well as the interactions between yourself and your various allies and enemies, are told through text boxes. The writing isn't especially deep, but is filled with humor and snark through-out. This keeps the writing interesting, even if it may seem a little jarring with the post-apocalyptic premise.

I am personally much more of an RPG gamer than a strategy one, and so it surprised me how much I ended up truly loving Sorcerer King. It definitely gets my recommendation, and I'm eager to see how the game continues to develop.

First, about the game.

It's fun, mechanics like the Sorcerer King, the doomsday Counter, the Shards, the crafting system... Are interesting. The combat is an improved HOMM grid battle, fun too.

Then, why the negative review? Very simple, game is buggy as hell. Some units will dissappear from your garrisons, spells won't work sometimes, if you hit autobattle a 1 rat army with your mega fashion all magic legendary items 1000000 power army of destroyers warg riders heroes and ogre wizards, the rats will destroy you sometimes.

Sometimes buildings will stop going on production and you won't be able to stop/dismiss so a lost resource. Sometimes their effects won't apply... Battles will freeze, and you can try autobattle or autoresolve, but nothing will solve it. Bugged units, bugged world map, bugged item descriptions...

Game is a mess, unplayable and it's a shame because it gives a cool feel playing it, with comic language and silly quests.

Avoid this until they fix the bugs.

Sadly this game is a huge step back from Legendary Heroes. Instead of expanding and improving that franchise Stardock was intent on releasing a new game that's honestly better suited for an ipad. At first glance the game isn't bad and to be fair I did somewhat enjoy my first playthrough. It completely lacks depth though and once you've beaten the game you've really seen it all. If it was 5.99 I would recommend it as a novelty but that's all it is... a novelty.

Basically, all you do is take your heroes and run around the world fighting monsters and competing text based quests that just basically involve you choosing an option and fighting a monster. BORING. There is no 4x in this game. Beware.

I played Fallen Enchantress for probably 200 hours. So, of course, I figured that the negative reviews for Sorceror King were probably not going to be accurate for me. Here it is, a week since I've bought the game and I can't even bother to try to make it through my 2nd complete game. I'm a big fan of this company but they really missed the target with Sorceror King.

1 - Enemy armies can enter your ZOC and attack you in the same turn meaning you have no advance warning so you can try to protect yourself.

2 - I generally end up with one solid hero but he and his units have to spend half of their time Cloud Walking back to whatever territory is getting overrun by enemy units _constantly_. I can normally get 4-6 turns away from a territory before I have to come back which significantly reduces my ability to expand.

3 - Depending on your starting spawn the game is really just, simply boring. All you have to do is get a unit with 3+ paladins and a hero, put some good gear and +move/+initiative stuff on them and you're going to walk through anything that is put in your way. Diplomacy is non-existent.

4 - You often find yourself in a scenario where because you walked into a Bazaar square there's no way to get out of it so you *have* to choose one of the trade options even if you don't like any of them.

At this point short of a miracle patch or DLC I don't think I'll ever play this title again. And I have played Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes off and on for years now.

The majority of my hours were in EA and then like a sucker I've fired it up each patch to see if they've magically made it a good game. I've played all of the Elemental titles and this is by far the worst. It's a departure from the more traditional 4x genre but not in a good way. It's more of a choose your own adventure mobile game in a cartoon setting.

TLDR -Issue: The game itself is really more of a single mission or scenario rather than a full fledged game.

Single Player: It's "Won and done" as you're doing the same thing every single time. Zero replayability, zero depth. I know you're saying to yourself, "but you have 130 hrs in-game?" Again, lots of EA skirmish time and a run through of each class can get you that sort of playtime. However it barely matters what class you choose as you end up with all the same units and most of the same spells anyways. Same mission everytime, same units everytime, same gear everytime - no matter your choices. It's one dimensional and boring.

MP: None

Story: There isn't one, other than kill the bad guy. Not that SD ever did a good job at developing the lore of Elemental but the little they did share is gone. I felt like I was starting to get a feel for the factions, geography and lore after FE but that was all "streamlined" out. I should note that SK in fact is a comedy. The writing itself is comedic but it obviously doesn't fit the setting. Honestly, it's comparable to walking around with Tosh 2.0 making fun of everything you see and everyone you talk to. Again, it doesn't mesh with an end-time saga of survival.

Graphics: Plastic kid toons. The visual assets and UI look like they were outsourced to the My Little Pony people. Adds a layer of unwanted cheese and embarrassment. I brought this up on the forum in EA and was told that people really like the Fisher Price look. No, they really don't. Your game didn't sell, people hated it.

Campaign: Just when I thought Stardock couldn't offer any less of a campaign than they did in GC3 they went ahead and proved me wrong with SK. It's quite literally a singular, static skirmish map with gate icons that partition the map and trigger text events. I've been playing vids for 30 years and this is one of laziest efforts that I can remember. I played a ton of early access thinking they were just getting warmed up with content and features for release but sadly they really weren't, it was obvious they had given up on the game months prior.

Unfortunately this franchise is all but done. They didn't see much of a future for it based on their effort, budget and execution. It needed to get darker, deeper and more story driven to legitimize the franchise and instead they mailed it in with a silly, watered down mobile game.

It's efforts like this and GC3 that remind us that Stardock is really more of a publisher than a developer. SK is a low end game that warrants $20 maximum. I used to respect Stardock but it feels like they stopped respecting themselves and it shows in their poor quality games and DLC.

Sorcerer King is a beautiful game with a clever idea. However, it is absolutely lacking in content. You only get one faction to play. You only ever get one enemy to fight. There are just a handful of monsters and generals to face. You can only choose from a few leaders for your single faction. Stardock did not try to give the customer value in this game.

Gameplay is redundant. You fight the same scenario each game. It doesn't matter that the map chances, it's the same darn scenario each time. You can't customize the number of opponents, win conditions, and faction abilities. It's just the same routine over and over.

This game may get better with expansions, but they will need to be broad expansions. There needs to be so much added to this game to make it as good as FE:LH 2.0. Stardock should reconsider whether it was wise to launch a game with such little content and hopefully never make that mistake again.

I do not recommend SK, especially at the $40 price point.

A couple of weeks before the official release, Brad Wardell (Stardock CEO) ackowledged that " The game was designed to be played once. After you've played it a few times, you've played it". He also committed to fixing that issue. His ideas to fix it included the ability to play as one of the minor factions and to have multiple win conditions. However, to me, this will just make the game a lighter and shallower version of Fallen Enchantress or Ledgendary Heros.


As for the game play:
It's very fun at first. However, it's shallow compared to Legendary Heros, and gets old fast. Futher, the sovereigns, while different, are rarely needed to be called on beyond the early game, and perhaps at the final battle.

Many of the level ups for heros just aren't useful or interesting. Many of the spells are fairly useless. You'll find yourself using the same small group of spells over and over. They claim that there are many, many quests, but I often get the same ones each time I've played. Futhermore, the treasure in each quest (or monster lair) is the same group of gems and berries (used in crafting) over and over again

The crafting system feels clunky and isn't worth the effort, because most of the the items you can craft are pretty weak.

The style of writing and humor used in quest and interactions with the minors and SK is amusing initially, but like the overall game play, gets old fast. I would characterize the humor as snarky, cynical, mean, and juvenile. The units are the same for all sovereigns, and the mage ones are weak and not worth training. If you're looking for high fantasy, look elsewhere.