Stardock have announced *deep breath* Elemental: Fallen Enchantress - Legendary Heroes, a standalone expansion to their standalone expansion. But while Fallen Enchantress was Stardock's mea culpa for the problems surrounding Elemental: War of Magic, Legendary Heroes promises to expand upon FE's solid foundation. It promises new maps, monsters and an enhanced levelling system.

The purpose of the expandalone is to change the way Champions work. According to lead designer Derek Paxton, "In Legendary Heroes, the champions seek you out based on your fame. Your kingdom gains fame through a variety of means and as a result, the player’s affinity with champions is now tied to the choices their Kingdom as a whole makes."

"Players will immediately recognize that the world has changed," Paxton continues. "Besides just looking a lot better, the battles are far more intense. Units have a lot more skills to choose from in battle and the maps are much more varied. We redid virtually all of them."

A post on the developer's forum runs through the new features:

"A new Champion progression system. Instead of random traits your champions have a trait tree that they can select traits from as they level up, grow your champions the way you want."
"The ability to recruit special non-human champions. Champions aren't just humans anymore. Rare opportunities or quests may unlock champions of various monster races that can choose traits and use equipment."
"New tactical combat options. Swarm gives a bonus for every ally that surrounds the enemy you are attacking. Be careful where you stand as even weak creatures can become dangerous in groups (especially those with traits that improve their Swarm bonus). Weapons all have special abilities and every faction has a special ability they can use in combat so even lowly spearmen have 2 special abilities they can use in addition to their normal move and attack options."
"New monster types like the Banshee who is immune to physical weapons, or the Garagox who knocks enemies back with each hit (which makes it difficult to get swarm bonuses and control the battlefield)."
"New spells and abilities. New range types have been added that allow for adjacent and line spells and abilities. Use Wall of Fire in tactical to create a line, 7 tiles long, to block allies from enemy units. Master necromancy to summon up to nine different skeleton units at once with the Raise Skeletal Horde spell. Use Resoln's Wraith Touch to drain life from a nearby enemy or Altar's Rush ability to forfeit their attack to get an extra action."
"A new scenario. Relias has returned to warn the kingdoms of what he discovered in the East, but there is little time left. The war has begun."

Due in April, the expansion will be free for anyone who bought War of Magic before 31/10/2010, cost $20 for owners of Fallen Enchantress, and $40 for everyone else.

Thanks, VG247.

This might be the first game I’ve ever been given as penance. It’s a standalone expansion for the turn-based strategy game Elemental: War of Magic, which was released in such a shocking state of disrepair that Stardock decided to make this expansion free to everyone who bought the main game at launch. It’s an extreme gesture, but the right one. Elemental: War of Magic was patched drastically and often, but the constant state of flux made it hard to get into. Fundamental game mechanics were being changed, and savegames were usually incompatible between versions.

Those of us who loved its potential were willing to wait for Stardock to take a proper second stab at the idea: a turn-based fantasy strategy game about building an empire while your hero fights monsters and levels up. But yeah, we would have balked at having to pay for it.

Like Elemental, Fallen Enchantress is a game about building an empire, and among your armies are a few special units who can take on quests and find magic items. Enchantress does add new features, but they’re not the main attraction. The maps you’re fighting on sometimes have big Wildlands areas, which are rich in resources but dominated by powerful creatures. They’re not really worth the effort: if you’ve got an army strong enough to clear them out, it’s usually better spent clearing out your actual opponents.



There’s also a new story-driven mode that strips out all the base building and restricts you to a couple of heroes. In effect, it cuts out most of what makes Elemental interesting and replaces it with pages of ponderous fantasy wank – I strongly suggest you ignore it.

The reason Fallen Enchantress is exciting is simply that the main game is fixed. It hasn’t crashed once for me, the AI is much more aggressive and challenging, and clunky systems have been ripped out and replaced by more elegant ones.

You can only build towns on scarce patches of fertile land now, which makes the terrain much more interesting to explore and squabble over. As they grow, your towns each have to pick an area of progress to focus on, giving your empire distinct production, research and military centres. And the faction you choose to play as has a much bigger influence on your playstyle.



Playing as stealthy hunter faction Tarth, I could explore the map without being attacked by any creatures I didn’t want to fight. But I wasn’t quite ready for how much better the AI was at expanding and building up a military. By the time I encountered the other two factions, one of them was more than twice as powerful as me, and immediately started demanding money for my continued survival. I cosied up to the weaker faction, and eventually persuaded them to be an ally. And then, in my travels, I found a boat.

There’s still no naval combat, but neutral transports can be used to access isolated islands. And on one island, I found a dragon shrine. I devoted my whole empire to researching it, hoping for a dragon ally, and years later one stomped out. I escorted it all the way back to the mainland and declared war. Then another one popped out. By the time my sovereign reached my rival’s capital, she had six dragons in tow.

It was exactly the kind of comeback Elemental’s blend of strategy and RPG promised, but nothing like it happened to me in War of Magic. Fallen Enchantress still has issues: a single big army of archers seems to beat every balanced or distributed approach, and the AI still isn’t very aggressive in war. But I was never dreaming of a perfectly balanced strategy game, just one with lots of interesting possibilities, and one that actually works. Fallen Enchantress finally manages that.



Expect to pay: $40 / £25 (free for Elemental owners)
Release: Out now
Developer: Stardock
Publisher: In-house
Link: www.elementalgame.com