PC User Reviews

This game sets off to blend WarCraft III's hero and loot systems with the 4X genre. It does so quite well with few warts. The hero and loot dynamics are especially addicting =)

I got it because I'm a **** for games like this. It hangs together surprisingly well - a combination of mechanics from HOMM3, Disciples, and Civilization/Warlock, and possibly Eador. There wasn't one single thing here I hadn't seen before in another game, that cost less. It's pleasingly challenging, a small map on normal difficulty takes about 2 days - the overall macro strategy against the AI is well-balanced... but the closer you look at any one aspect of the game, it's like it works because they broke everything and it all cancelled each other out. No tactical positioning of units, battle scenery pointless, battle formations pointless since everything moves at the same speed and hits things, some spells ludicrously overpowered, boring micromanagement of unit equipment, time-consuming UI, it culminates in one big fight and if you win the enemy won't catch up with the experience and unit level games, and the writing and the game world are really really really boring. The tech tree makes no sense (Game developers note: Civilization's tech tree only worked because it's a rendition of human history). The hero upgrades tree is even weirder. But worst of all, worst of all, necromancers can't raise decent undead, let alone the unforgettable skeleton hordes of HOMM3. Sigh. Uninstalled.

The graphics and animations are awful. Really, putting aside all the features and **** going to the core, in this day and age when pretty much every game is using a hexagonal tile system because it's superior, FE is simplified, bland, uninteresting, out-of-date - which is probably the best description - and provides nothing new. Similar titles provide a superior experience with charm, in-fact any older turn-based title I know pretty much kicks the **** out of this game.

As an avid 4x player I've played most of the recent ones, aside from Warlock 2 this is the game I most regret paying for. Could be worth it on sale, but it'd have to be really cheap. The game is boring, ugly and uninspiring. Initially had buggy quests.

A game that I really want to enjoy but can't due to all its flaws. I feel the game is a brilliant idea that could work really, really well if done right. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. It has a feeling of being incomplete and rushed. The turn-base system does not work at all. It feels like something should be added to the game to make it feel like its got more of a purpose. The game is very confusing where things will happen that will trigger me to just want to never play the game again and the short, brief tutorial didn't really help. I have played many other games by **** and I know the potential they carry and that potential is only displayed in about the first hour of gameplay. The combat is really unengaging and confusing and I ended up skipping through it every time. On a higher note, however, is the exploring. Despite the mediocre graphics, I felt the game had a very good atmosphere, much like other **** games. I enjoyed doing exploring if I ignored the annoying turn-base system. Finding different enemies, allies and places to build was very satisfying. Another aspect of the game I enjoyed was the upgrades. Although they weren't great, I felt a need to improve my town, champions and improving on the town with farms and other locations. Overall, the games not worth the money. It has potential and great ideas but is not fun in general.

This is a slimmed down version of Heroes of Might and Magic combined with a slimmed down version of Civilisation. This idea is good but unfortunately it isn't good enough. The heroes part is a feeble caricature of the original (for example a high initiative can be to your disadvantage because there is no wait function; the character development doesn't quite work either), and the Civ part feels a little cartoony it is like playing Elder Scrolls and then switching to Torchlight. There are some clunky mechanics too, for example if your army travels through a city you have to take each member out individually in a complex click and slide action. Sometimes you click on a destination and before you can stop them, your troops have left the road and taken a vastly longer route, wasting 2-3 turns. The story game is particularly very weak. Feels like it was written by a GCSE student over a weekend. On top of that the scenario creator would crash the game consistently on certain settings. On the plus side, the menus are clear and you can work out how the Civ mechanics work more easily than in the original.

Very very entertaining game! As always, the best stuff never receives the right amount of advertisement. This game is paradise for unhappy civ fans, a true spiritual successor to the glorious Master of Magic. And I don't say this lightly. Without doubt an extremely well thought game, polished, fun, very nice graphics, replayable, lots of mods. Doesn't get a 10 because of lack of multiplayer. **** seems to be one of those odd developers that don't believe in MP (not even hotseat or lan, which would have been perfectly doable with this one). Reminds me of how disappointed I was to discover that galciv2 (again **** and again an excellent game) didn't support MP. Oh well, it's still a very good single player experience.

A really enjoyable X4 strategy game, a little rough around the edges in places but they fixed those things in Legendary heroes, also owners of this game got Legendary Heroes at half price and owners of the game before this got Fallen Enchantress for free because the old game was a bit crap. **** may may mistakes, but they seem to always do right by their customers in the end. So like I said, great game but buy Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes instead if you see it.

Just for once I'd like it if a developer would play test their game before releasing it. And whilst this might not be an entirely fair comment it certainly applies to Fallen Enchantress. Not counting game breaking bugs; the UI is clunky and obtuse; it also doesn't take your screen resolution into account so you'll be scrolling tiny text windows with 90% of the screen unused. You're either over-powered or under-powered there is no tension in the battles or even the maps really. You'll win or lose and know the outcome long before it happens. And the generic pipe music becomes really, really grating. I've had quest objects disappear, endless units swarm the map and been unable to see the main quest because it's hidden under some optional quest. It's all quite frustrating. Fallen Enchantress may actually be more broken than the venerable Master of Magic and it lacks any of the original's charm. It's not all negative but the problem is there are not outstanding positives. Certainly if you enjoy turn based fantasy games then give this a whirl but keep your expectations low.

This is a great game for anyone who loves the whole nation building turn-based type of games such as the Civ series. However the touch I like is that you can make your own custom units and use them in your army of conquest. You can also recieve missions and oppitunities to gain powerful items for your heroes to use. The heroes are immortal, often being brought back to life at a nearby city, but all but your monarch gain a injury which impedes them and cannot be removed. They also need to rest for so many seasons before they are fit for duty.

First of all, this game is awesome. I love strategy games and this has to be one of the best ever made. Obviously competing with Civ's, Fallen Enchantress offers a flawless and enjoyable gaming experience that is more polished and action-packed than any other game competing in the same genre. The game design being what it is, this masterpiece belongs in the top 3 games of all time in my books. Definitely worth a try!

This game sadly fails in the simplest but most important way. IT ISN"T FUN. Fallen Enchantress looks like a good try at doing a Civilization game better than CIV. There are characters and wargear and levelling and spells, that all promise to make a game with the best aspects of Civ and HOMM. Sadly **** don't quite pull it off. The gameplay finally is over-determined by luck and a successful and very aggressive opening. Unless you get a really optimum start and a fortuitous map you will always lose later in the game. The races are bland. The challenge of nuetral enemies excessive. The engine is poorly optimised and degenerates into lag and over-use of the CPU pretty soon. Tactical battles suffer from bad graphics and poor balancing (Rend is way Over-powered). If you play on easy it's too easy and boring, but if you play on hard it's too hard and joyless. Before you lose in 'the end' you will waste many turns restarting after a single random encounter wipes out your best army or city and makes the game unviable. This could be the basis **** game. All the ideas are there. However more work is needed in optimiziation of the engine, and fine-tuning the details.

Might have been a good game if it weren't crippled by serious framerate issues. Go buy Heroes of Might and Magic 6 instead as that game is graced with a working engine at least.

Fallen Enchantress is a game that strikes at a niche that has been for the most part unfilled since Master of Magic. Simply comparing it to Master of Magic is perhaps doing it a disservice, as there are elements that it gets right that MoM never did. The computer opponents and the wild elements such as the wandering monsters are a nice balance of inactive to proactive depending on the settings you pick, and the quests drastically improve on the old 'wander around with a hero exploring places' dynamic that was part of Master of Magic's charm, making it feel like there's more purpose to the exploration than just gathering xp or resources. There are a lot of knobs to turn in setting up this game, allowing you to find a sweet spot or try weird constraints. For instance, when I first played I felt like the magic system was underwhelming it was too easy to get a hero for each branch of magic, and thereby basically obtain pretty much all spells on all empires. I wanted something where spell selection was idiosyncratic to the empire, and I found I could achieve this simply by turning off the ability to recruit new heroes. My only real complaint is that the game's aesthetic is a too drab for my tastes. Conceivably this is chosen to distinguish the game from other high-fantasy offerings such as Warlock and to give it a unique post-apocalpytic character. I find instead that it makes it harder to relate what one sees on the map with what things are units are kind of underresolved silhouettes, terrain is various shades of grey-purple, grey-green, and grey-grey, etc. I tend to play zoomed out so I can see the cloth map and chess-piece like representations of units, because otherwise I can't tell what's what.

If you are a TRUE RPG fan, DO NOT buy this game. It is a waist of your time. I was nuts over this when I saw the trailer Come to find out I'm playing RISK...? Srsly? If I wanted to play Risk I would pull out the game board and play it. Please learn to make an RPG right

after i played this game for +150 hours i can safely say that it's worth my ****'s a very addicting game and deep ****'s hard to please the 4x crowd but for me this game is a 10.customizable factions+customizable units+customizable leaders+deep strategy=9000+ Awesomeness

I am shocked by the number of mixed reviews this game has received. I am a long-time strategy/RPG gamer and this game is fantastic! Let me address the most common reasons for mixed reviews: - Bad graphics: Really? It's stylistic, and will get better with the expansion. - Bugs: It's being aggressively patched by a great company. - Lack of variety kinda true-ish... if you want more variety, it is very mod friendly. - Poor documentation: yeah. there should be more. - Misc other complaints: Again, patching. **** is very receptive to user feedback, and the AI is being improved upon. In summary, FE is a great game, and once it has matured like the fine wine **** that it is, it will I think become one of the best 4X games of the modern era.

This game intended to "fix" what they did wrong in the original Elemental: War of Magic, but in my opinion turns out to be a little less fun. Not saying that it isn't a fun game in its own right, but they removed my favorite 'elements' of the old game and dumbed it down a little but forgot to do anything to add to the overall 'fun'.

I've spent a couple nights on this game, it's quite addicting. If you enjoy Heroes of Might and Magic, you'll probably like this one. I find it superior to the Heroes of Might and Magic games. It's not perfect though, feels like an Indy game, but it's quite fun.

While Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is certainly not an easy game, even on "easy", it is entertaining and provides hours of distraction. This installment is a great improvement over the original Elemental: War of Magic, and if **** proves true to reputation, Fallen enchantress will only improve even more over time through many patches and terrific post-release support. There are some flaws, of course, with the game feeling very unbalanced at times. Sometimes, you might be struggling to **** by when you encounter another kingdom or empire that is several orders of magnitude your superior. Other times, you have built a tremendous empire only to discover that your opponents are still banging rocks together for laughs in their first village. While there is a certain aspect of "reality" in these possibilities, there is little fun in steamrolling, no matter which side of it you are on. If you have multiple opponents, diplomacy can be used to even the footing if used carefully, and provides a somewhat useful tool. Overall, I would rate Elemental: Fallen Enchantress as a solid 8. While it does combine many elements together in a unique fashion, none of those elements are truly novel. The game itself conjures memories of Age of Wonders with it's base game, and borrows from Master of Orion for some of the underlying 4x and customization. Still, it is well implemented and with **** usual excellent post-release support, will only get better.

Didn't really get into this game, and kind of regret buying it now. It has potential, but it really fails in graphics and the combat system feels too much like a mediocre indie game. I'll give it another shot next week but so far I'm a bit disappointed.

A good game that just fell short of greatness, I had some good hours of fun with it, but ultimately there isn't enough of the game systems too keep you coming back. The AI is annoying instead of challenging, always sending cannon fodder that couldn't possible threaten you. However, the game tries being many things at once, and succeeds in many of them. Maybe the expansions will polish this rock into a gem.

I previously made a fairly negative review, after the patch 1.2 came out, the game has improved a little, some resource problems have been reduced and the waste of research end-game has been removed with repeatable tree-ends. Sadly, some minor bugs were still not addressed and as many others have put, this game is just mediocre. While you're able to customize a lot of options and on the fastest pace the game feels much better, I don't find myself wanting to keep playing. Even after I got into the game, when I drop it, nothing really compels me to continue playing. A few certain mechanisms of the game are still unexplained/bugged and pretty much nothing is explained when you begin to play making it hard to get into. The graphics, for a modern game are below par, sounds are good, I feel this game could of been a lot better.

I took part in the Beta for this game. I wanted very badly to like it, but too many of the "key mechanics" such as Character Development and the Magic System were bland and uninspired. It's not a bad game, per se, but many of the aspects upon which it hangs its hat feel as though they were developed in a vacuum and glued together. It doesn't really all "work" as a unit.

I played the War of Magic game and was disapointed because I saw what the game could have been. FE fixed most of what was wrong, and has become a stronger game. I got the game for free because I bought War of Magic, and I also played a bit of the Beta. I was nervous on how the game would come out, but I was pleasantly suprised. I keep clicking the turns to get that one more quest, finish the next building, fight that next monster or finish that one tech. I enjoy the game, and what it is. There are a few things which could be improved. The AI, on harder difficulty settings, has employed tactics to delay my armies through the creation of obsticles, throw-away units to delay me etc. so the AI could muster a defense. I was happy with this. However, the AI doesn't seem to do much with the diplomacy options. It could be that I play against too many factions that are naturally aligned against me. Who knows. I also wish the buildings stood out more in the cities, or you could zoom in more to see them. The major buildings and larger ones stand out. I would like to select each one and see what I spent time on building. I find that heros are too few and far between for my liking, and being able to select enemy units during combat to view stats, vulnerabilities and strengths would be good. You can see this on the main map, but if you forgot to or forget what you read, you can't see it during combat. There still exists a few smaller bugs, or improvements the game can get through patches, but that will just further polish the game. I would say this game is definately worth a try. I'm actually going to submit this review and play a new game with something I just thought about doing!

Fallen Enchantress does a lot of things right, but somehow there's something lacking from it that denies the game the "just one more turn!" feeling that describes truly great games. There are few games in this genre, and the obvious comparison is the now-dated Master of Magic. In both games, you play a wizard who rules a civilization, and you try to expand your civilization and simultaneously gain magical power, with the ultimate goal of conquering the world. Fallen Enchantress does all this well - there are interesting civilizations and spells, designable units, magic items, heroes, and enemy civilizations. However, the game seems soulless - there is no plot to it, and which character or civilization you play only matters in that it affects the advantages you have. The game just doesn't seem to be that engaging, and that keeps it from being the kind of game you want to replay time and time again. As mentioned, however, there are few games in this genre, and it has enough options to make sure players get different experiences. It is worth picking up on sale, with the hope that in the future it might be improved.

It's a solid turn-based fantasy 4x game. Good, but not great, with a lot of potential to become better with constant updates, future expansions, and community modding. I always recommend doing some research before buying any game if you are interested. Youtube Let's Plays and **** website forums are great places to start. Cheers.

Fallen Enchantress is a mixture of Civilization-franchise and Master of Magic. Additionally, equipping troops resembles me Master of Orion's ship-building. It's hard to learn, but once you know the ropes there is a lot of replaying value and pricing is attractive. There's no multiplayer at this point. Community is rather active and helpful. However, some annoying bugs can ruin gaming experience, but they are also addressed to. FE is about fantasy-world filled with swords, dragons and spells. The storyline missions get very boring, so most value comes via sandbox games. There you establish a faction, of your own if you like, and its sovereign. You recruit heroes, establish new settlements, research technology, build improvements, spread your kingdom (or empire) and seek a victory. You beat the game by eliminating everyone else, forge an alliance with everyone still present, cast a spell of mastery or find a sceptre of dominion after doing a quest saga found somewhere on the world. Both heroes and ordinary troops can be equip with new weapons and armor and they all gain experience by winning battles or solving quests. When heroes level up they also get bonus trait, whether it is more spells they can cast or new fighting techniques. You choose one from five possible outcomes. All premade factions are very different. They are divided into kingdom factions and empire factions. Diplomacy is poor, but I can't figure out any such game where it's brilliant anyways. Battles are more or less extremy lightly approached. Your actions can make some difference between different outcomes, but reloading and retrying is usually pointless. Big difference of your strategic goal is decided which type of settlements you create. Towns are good for economy, fortresses are focused on military might and conclaves are specialised towards magic, research and mana. Cities level up much like in Civilization, but once they do you choose specific bonuses for them. Resources are fairly balanced. There are no hidden resources you discover when your technology improves, but the level of harnessing the resources does. Spells are effective, but somehow it feels that there could be more variety. It also feels like it's too trivial to reach spell of mastery -victory over all others. A good diamond, and I sincerely hope it gets polished.

If you like turn-based/4X games, you should give Fallen Enchantress a try, because it has a lot of promising pieces to it, but don't expect a great game, or you'll be disappointed. And, I recommend waiting till you can get it on sale. If you really like it after you buy it, you can give **** more money by buying the map packs. That said, great 4X games come along once in a long while (Total War: Shogun 2 is an excellent example, while in my opinion, Civilization V is not). Unfortunately, Fallen Enchantress is not one of them. **** does some fun things with this recent addition to the 4X/turn-based strategy/RPG genre (such as being set in a fantasy world with armies of wandering monsters and challenging quest areas), but it lacks in enough fundamental areas that I just wasn't excited while playing it. **COMPOSITE SCORE: 6.875/10** **ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 7/10** Fallen Enchantress has enough good pieces to interest a player in spending a couple hundred hours if you give it a chance. It has the standard explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate aspects of games like the Total War series and the Civilization series, but it actually allows you to join in combat between armies which Civ does not (Total War does). Being challenged by behemoth monsters early in the game if you expand too much is a fun twist as well. However, there are a number of weak aspects to the game too. Winning diplomatically seems far too easy to me. Unit movement is very short: two spaces without roads until you get horses... and that will take a long time for a full army. Army sizes feel miniscule at the beginning, and champions always feel underpowered. **GRAPHICS: 6/10** I will admit that I am probably spoiled by Shogun 2's setup, attention to detail, variety in armies, and graphics, so when I loaded up my first game in Fallen Enchantress, I was immediately disappointed by what I considered to be PS2-era character models and textures. The reason for this is that **** used the very same model for both the campaign map as well as close-up shots of characters and army units. Many other games will use models with varying numbers of polygons depending on how far out the "camera" is from the model, but they don't here, so we're stuck with the low resolution models and textures. Bleh. The strategic map was similar in detail to Civ V's, and the combat maps were about the same as well. Compared to Shogun 2's combat maps, Fallen Enchantress's lacked a lot of detail and options. I do like the dragon models though. **SOUND: 9/10** I had no problems with Fallen Enchantress's sound. What voice acting there was was quite reasonable, and the music was very good. **DESIGN AND GAMEPLAY: 6/10** I've already mentioned the standard 4X-setup. That works pretty well as long as you disable some options (such as allowing the game to go to the next turn without you telling it too... lost a lot of building/research turns till I found that option). And again, the wandering monsters and quest areas added a level of challenge I hadn't seen in other 4X/Turn-based strategy games (especially if you turn up the monster frequency... whew). I noticed an AI scripting problem though: if you change the number of opponents you have to below the recommended number for that map size, the AIs will often do nothing until you encounter them. That could be 30 turns... or 200 turns. Encountering an opponent when they have 1 city and you have 9 makes it kind of boring. Also, I feel like there's a huge flaw in the army creation system: when you start out, you can make army units with three men in them. By the end game, you can create army units with seven men in them. But, you can't convert a unit you made at the beginning, leveled up, and outfitted with new gear into a a 7-man unit. They're always stuck at the size you created them at. It makes no sense to me and is frustrating to deal with while playing. (Reason being, your early armies max out at 27 men. Late game armies max out at 63 men. So, why can't I just pay more resources to upgrade to 7 men????) Lastly, although there are a lot of combat spells available, I never used any, because frankly, an army with one champion buffing eight units of top-tier archers destroys anything, so why bother with wimpy spells? **GAME LENGTH: 8/10** Much to my surprise, Fallen Enchantress did have an actual campaign (they call it a scenario). I had originally thought it was just a Civ V style of game with only the conquest maps. The scenario's story is pretty good. Loss, tragedy, redemption, more tragedy... all good stuff. Unfortunately, it's only about six hours long. But, the regular maps can take a very, very, very long time. So, plenty of game length all around.

Decent, but needlessly complex game. What I miss most is "the" fun element, something this would all be "about". You can level up heroes, but they are weak and later on largely pointless. You can build units, but combat with them is horribly simple and no fun. You can cast spells but they are hardly effective. You can build cities, but they do not feel unique nor special, and everything takes forever. The interface fortunately allows you to control all the aspects comfortably, and this alone is a tremendous achievement. However, the game looks very under-par and the art is average at best, downright ugly at worst. It puzzles me why a game with so much work thrown into it settled for such horrible looks. I would ultimately advise against buying it, unless you really are desperate to try it. Even so, wait for a sale.

Take homm, civ and master of the arcane throw in a dash of age of wonders and you'll have this game, I've seen many complaints here about "flaws" and "bugs" but have yet to experience any myself, it's likely many were patched quickly the art style and animations are smooth and pleasing the combat and city management is intuitive. It's a turn based strategy game with rpg elements and infinite re-playability and built in map creator. Well worth the price of admission.

I have played just about every 4X game since Empire for the VAX, and I've found it harder and harder to find new ones that feel worth playing, but FE succeeds very well in this for me. Pros: * Addictive "one more turn" game play both in spreading your cities and building them up, and in the RPG progression of your heros. * Lots of customization of your empire and your leader. It's fun trying different combinations, from overpowered military rushes to archer madness to fire crazy mages of doom to power leveled henchmen using purchased quests. I haven't played the evil death magic slave lords yet, but I feel them coming on soon. * General 4X goodness, with lots of settings to tune it to your tastes. You can adjust map size, number and quality of AI enemies, and tech pace depending on what sort of game you like. It plays and feels like a distant ancestor of Civ I should. Cons: * 1.0 version had some crashing bugs, but current 1.02 version seems stable. * AI is better than many of these sorts of game, but could be improved. * It is a little hard to figure they resource and production systems out at first, but they actually work pretty well once you're used to them. If you like 4X games, this one is worth getting and sticking with through the initial learning curve.

Unfortunately, this is just a below average game with undistinguishing gameplay. Very frequently, I read on their forum how the game is "highly moddable" which I guess means that the company expects us gamers to finish their game for them. How horrible and lazy!

FE improves on the hideous, buggy mess that was the original Elemental, but it's still a hodge-podge of disassociated systems that don't quite blend together well. The graphics leave something to be desired and it's still not entirely stable, though it's not unplayable and it does a decent job at trying to fulfill the normal 4X TBS checklist. But with fantasy 4X TBS games like Warlock: Master of the Arcane available for a much lower price (and the far-superior non-fantasy Civ V available for the same price), it doesn't fill much of a niche in the gaming market today.

Since Fraxis dumped down Civilization 5 for the kiddies, us long term civ fans have not had a lot to get excited about and I really was not expecting much from Fallen Enchantress either. But it turned out to be an excellent game. This game mixes a full blown RPG (I am not kidding) with Civilization style gaming in a fantasy world. Not only do you create your own leader character like you would in any serious RPG, but he levels up as you progress. You can hire heros too which also level up. Build cities which level up as they grow and gain extra features. And do all the building that you expect inside a city in a civ style game. For an RPG Fan + Strategy fan, it does not get any better than this. Its a mix that works really well and drews you in pretty quickly. The only real tactic you need to know early on is to build lots of cities. Not only is it rock solid stable game with out a single crash in 15 hours of playing. But the world is just so rich and deep it has lore running like rivers across the landscape. AI players all have their own background story and special abilities and if you choose to play one your self if you want. But I like to create me own character. As with all good RPGs, weapon types, units, spells are all different, so are the enchantments. You get a lot of strategic options from mixing units you can build with your leader and heroes. Sometimes you can get your butt kicked simply because you had no ranged units in your army, other times you will win because you have something the enemy has no defence against. The battles you will see in the videos look crap, it nearly put me off buying the game but to be honest, its a lot more fun and lot more tactical that the videos make it appear. So before puking at the sight of the battles understand, the game is a lot better than that and you can auto fight the battles and skip that if you like too. The part I like is exploring the map, seeing a village or a temple or a ruin or something else and sending a unit to that square and either getting a quest or a bad guy to fight or both. You just do not get that in Civilization games. The games background story goes something like this. The old world is invaded by titans and the battle to destroy them lays waste the world. When the Titans are finally destroyed most of the life on the planet is wiped out and for the next hundred years, ancient beings called Elementals start appearing and taking over the world. Mean while several kingdoms and empires start to emerge, kingdoms being life loving types and empires being merchants of death. Empires follow the old titan teachings, where as kingdoms fight against it. Several premade AIs exist for both Empire and Kingdoms and to win you can either beat them to pulp, allie with them or our research them I believe. The usual stuff. Each element (pardon the pun) adds a layer or lore to the game, once that lore gets about 12 layers thick, as happens in this game, you could almost drowned in the game lore if not for the fact the campaign walks you through it in a nice fun way. Though I should add, the campaign is NOT a sandbox game and plays differently from sandbox since most of the options are disabled in the campaign which focuses more on the story than the world conquering strategies. Everybody I know who brought this game, loves it so far. Its turned out to be a hidden gem ****.

I'll start by saying I like Fallen Enchantress. There is a lot of good in this game for the fantasy 4x crowd. What it lacks is focus, polish, and a compelling setting. It does try to do a lot of things. Is it a hero based RPG with city building attached? Is it a fantasy Civ game? Something else? There is a lot of seasoning in the pot. Some aspects are well fleshed out, and some are not. I expect **** will work on the polish, but the bland races are likely to endure. I would have preferred stereotypical races. What we have are blue people fighting gray people in a brown world. That said, if you can get past some of the design decisions and you're a fan of the genre, there is no better game to play and no better company to support.

Overall this is an entertaining game. I have played this game for many many hours. Could it be better - yes it could. Given the amount of time the team worked on this title should it have been better - once again yes it should - and probably will be. At this time I would say it is an 8 - it could have been a 9 if a few aspects were more polished. My biggest gripe is that each game feels too samey - i.e., you tend to play same game and strategy every time.

Overall a great game and has ALOT of potential that SD appears to be following through on. Ver 1.01 is basically the 1.0 of the game, though it has some UI problems with 32-bit machines. Am really looking forward to future updates, as this game definately has the potentialt to become MoM 2.0 and receive a score of 10!

It's much much better than the Elemental War of Magic. Kael did fantastic job to make this game an (almost) perfect 4x fantasy game. Elemental : FE = Master of Magic 2012. Thanks Kael !!!

why are all these people crying here bout bugs? it works fine for me and no crashes, don't you just have stolen version or something? the graphics are fine, maybe not great but still ok, have seen worse.

Fallen Enchantress has the potential to be one of the best games not only of the year, but of its kind. Unfortunately, that potential has not yet been met. Players who are familiar with the Civilization IV mods Fall From Heaven and Fall From Heaven II will recognize the influence of Kael / Derek Paxton, the lead designer on this project. It is obvious to any fan that he was trying to realize his creative vision in terms of a standalone game -- an idea that should excite anyone, but that isn't "there" yet. Fallen Enchantress is also a great heir to the classic Master of Magic formula: It plays like a highly intuitive version of Civilization with magic and fantastic units included. When you first begin the game, you can easily find yourself pulled into the atmosphere and excited to see what your heroes, monsters, and beasts can do. For a while, it feels like you are playing both a great RPG and a great strategy game, as you build up cities from tons of building and strategy choices -- all while your customized sovereign explores the landscape, collects treasure, vanquishes monsters, and completes quests. However, there are a number of problems keeping Fallen Enchantress from becoming truly great: 1) The graphics, although passable, are flat and do not create either compelling characters or landscapes. 2) The RPG and strategy elements do not always work together effectively, leaving you quickly feeling that you have exhausted your options on the RPG side. To be fair, this is often very true with other, more highly regarded games, such as Age of Wonders. 3) The mythology is usually very flat. While there are some fantastic late-level quests (the one related to the darklings and the Pit of Lost Voices stands out) most of the writing and flavor text is so-so. This is a result of Kael having to work with the frankly boring Elemental mythos. As we know from seeing his mods, he is great at creating an environment on his own -- but it doesn't translate well here. If you can look beyond these issues, you'll find that there is a great, engaging game that's already very playable and enjoyable. It looks some of its impact in comparison to what it could have been, but I for one intend to stick with the community through all the amazing modding (which has already started) and expansions that are sure to become available. Fallen Enchantress is a very ambitious project and a worthy successor to the games it's inspired by. When a few minor issues are worked out, it's sure to be a ten. If you're a big fan of 4X, buy it now -- otherwise, give it a few months to cook with the wider gamer feedback it's sure to get.

Fallen enchantress is another large disappointment from ****. It's a shame that the best game they've released recently is a retread expansion (Sins: Rebellion) for which you have to pay full price. The worst about thing this game is the lies and hypocrisy that the company puts out. They say that the game won't come out until it's fully ready, but it's clearly NOT READY. Buggy quest? Check. Graphic slow downs? Check. Unbalanced game play? Check. If you go to the ****, the fanboys are all saying 'Wait for the patch!' WTF? Why can't this company just release a finished game. Clearly, they released their game early again to catch the holidays. This is exactly what happened with their War of Magic -- And while Fallen Enchantress is quite the mess that game was, it's clear that Brad Wardell (**** ceo) is lying again when he says he values gamers over profit. Well, this is definately, the last time I'm buying a **** game.

This is a boring game that takes several steps backwards in the genre. The tactical battles are much worse than both master of magic, a 20 year old game, as well as heroes of might and magic, another 20 year old game, and ages of wonder a 10 year old game. There's very little thought or strategy in any of the battles. Where are range, line of sight, fortification, terrain modifiers? There isn't even a little bump of hill in the map to create choke points or any form of stratetic combat placement. In reality, its a rts clickfest, just click attack over and over again, minus any of the excitement. The non-battle portions of the game is also done very poorly. The city builds are very uneven and you'll find your cities doing nothing for longs periods of time. Hence, they feel really stagnant.

**** got it right this time. THIS is the game that Elemental should have been. It's not without flaws - the interface is still a bit unintuitive, and sometimes doesn't respond to clicks. There seems to be no way to scroll the battlefield - not WASD or cursor keys; instead you zoom out, point your cursor somewhere else, and zoom back in. Cumbersome. Why didn't the testers pick this up? But the core game is finally there. Battles are fun. The world is interesting to explore. The story is ok. Lots of equipment with strategy changing stats. The cities look great and so do the units. Battle animations are nice and it's fun just to see the different monsters, they look good and move well. I'm having fun. I disagree with Guinevere, it DOES have that one-more-turn feeling. It's 11pm and I have to work tomorrow but as this review is now finished I'm off to start a new game .... :-) Well done ****! And Kudos to Brad Wardell for giving it free to "Elemental" buyers.

Fallen Enchantress is extremely fun and deep. **** has made an enjoyable world - but more importantly, they have made their own enjoyable world maker. I've played the vanilla game for countless hours and have never tired exploring the maps, mechanics, and content of the vanilla factions. As of the time I write this review, there are two fully functional and exceptional mods named Stormwold and Master's Affliction which give the player even more choices to enjoy the game. The community is awesome, and this playform will give hours of enjoyment for years to come. I refuse to give any game a 10 - but FE is worthy of a 9. There is awesome replayability with this game. Highly recommend it to fans of 4x strategy.

I have mixed feelings about this game, but its the only game out right now that adequatly fills the niche left vacent by Age of Wonders. I really like the fact that **** is giving this game for free after its previous Elemental game failed. That to me adds A LOT of credibility to ****. The game itself has a little bit of a learning curve. At first its very hard to tell whats going on. The normal map graphics are just mediocre and difficult to tell whats going on. The cloth map (zoom out) is gorgeous though, and makes it easy to see whats going on. The gameplay is a mixture of Civilization + Fantasy RPG. Your cities and champions level up, and you research a tech tree. I don't really like the tech tree... too much stuff going on and it doesn't really branch off enough. The tactical battle is really fun... until you release that there is no real cover or walls or anything. They plan on adding them latter on, but thats a step backwards from Age of Wonders and really inexcusable. The wild (non civilized) NPS are really awesome looking, but the civilizations themselves are just humans with different colors. I really wish they put some more diversity in the models and skins for the civilizations. While the art in the opening scene is AWESOME, the rest of the game is lackluster. I agree that it just seems to lack a 'soul' as others have said. So why do I think this is an 8? Customization. Customization in this game is leaps and bounds above Age of Wonders. You can design your own units from the ground up. Its really rewarding to develop your own unit and put it to battle. What gives this game a soul for me is the custom civilizations you can build and the awesome support for mods. I wish there was more vareity in the aesthetics (what if I want to make wolfmen, or demons ect ect ?) on release. Overall, if you ache for a Age of Wonders in 3d and LOVE customization you will find something for you in this game.

What A fun game, I cant stop playing. The start of the game is the most fun, i find my self starting over and over. Lots of quest and great build for Hero's. A lot of people keep trashing the graphics but i think the game looks great and plays great. The MOD making is fun also. A must have if you are not some D-bag who wants the game to be some BS super game. Oh and Civ games are good but there not that good.

I heard that the predecessor of this game, War of Magic was extremely broken on release, so it was with some trepidation that I bought this game. I'm happy to report that this game is mostly working. There are some quests which are bugged, but there doesn't seem to be any major broken features. Unfortunately, just because things are not bugged doesn't mean they are enjoyable. For example, the game offers extensive background lore, but the writing is so horrible that it makes skin crawl. I mean, I like pulp fantasy, but I live for pulp fantasy, but the drivel in this game is completely XXXX. The tactical combat is also very poorly done and shallow. I read on their forums that they purposely dumbed it down to emphasize strategic thinking. I infer that the game they really wanted to make was Civ + Fall From Heaven, but really, if you want to remake that, why not just do it? Why tack on a half-ass tactical combat? This game definitely has a lot of parts, but none of them are done very well and summed together provides a very tedious and boring game experience.

I disagree with some of the comments I have seen in reviews suggesting that this game is missing a soul. It is alive and you will go to sleep dreaming about kingdoms and empires and your wolf called Anna that has been with you since you only had one town and some humble militia, howling alongside the warg that you ride into battle against a huge juggernaut that could fell a man with a single swing of his axe. For those who love Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and the "pet" appeal of games like Pokemon, this game is well worth playing. Hopefully **** and the modding community will also bring more love to it. The problems are mostly balance related in my opinion - the combat may seem tiresome to some, but I have always been a turn based strategy fan and I love the Heroes 3 or old Final Fantasy battle types. To illustrate my comment about balance, I played a game where I found a dragon temple and claimed it, which spouted dragons that decimated any opponent with ease... and yet most other games I am struggling to raise armies that can fend off the wild creatures of the world. Maybe I just won the lottery that game...

i really wanted to love this game. I deeply appreciate gesture from **** for giving this game for free to people who bought original Elemental: War of Magic. Yet no amount of good will will make it better. I put countless hours in Master of Magic back in the day replaying with different magic combinations and this game could not hold my attention for more then 6 hours. Mostly same complaints that others have in their reviews. All races are the same, magics are primitive, something just does not click. I am giving it 7 ant being very generous just because i like **** in general. I really hope they will bring better stuff to the table next time.