Published by: 1C Company
Developed by: 1C: Ino-Co.
Release Date: 3rd April 2009

Elven Legacy is essentially the follow on from Fantasy Wars, a fantasy hex-based, turn-based strategy game that was released in the latter part of 2007. We've been spending some time with the single player game and it's been a fairly enjoyable experience. The game features a single-player campaign, a collection of single missions and hotseat, LAN and Internet multiplayer modes along with two tutorials to get you up to speed with both the basic and advanced concepts of the game.

The campaign and single missions offer three difficulty levels with the easiest of the three pretty much allowing you to breeze through the missions. It's rather pleasing to see that the campaign offers replay value as it's non-linear, offering branching pathways through the storyline. The campaign missions reward you for completing them in a timely fashion. You can earn gold, silver or bronze medals if you complete any given mission within a set number of turns. On the easiest of the three difficulty levels it's pretty much a cinch to claim those gold medals but it's not quite so straightforward on the other difficulty settings. Doing well in a mission also makes additional resources available to you to carry forward into later missions so you're not going to want to waste your time when completing any of the missions.

The game's storyline, which we won't go into here for fear of giving too much away, is rather disappointing. Elven Legacy has plenty of things going for it, for fans of the genre, but the storyline certainly isn't something that's going to stir anyone's interest. Part of the problem comes from what appears to be a rather ropey translation into English. Some of the dialogue appears to have been processed through one of those clumsy computer translation programs and as a result it just doesn't feel natural enough. Let's hope this is just a problem with the preview build we've been playing and that the final version doesn't have any of these translation problems.

In regards to how it plays, Elven Legacy comes across as a pretty solid turn-based strategy game. There's a healthy amount of units to choose from ranging from the typical infantry and archers to the more unusual Sky Hunter. You'll get to deploy your forces at the start of the battle and prior to that you'll get to recruit additional forces if you feel the need to. Unit movement and combat is pretty much what you would expect and there's little to fault here. I was really pleased to see an undo button that allows you to take back a unit movement if you feel you've made a mistake. It's such a simple addition but you'd be surprised at how many turn-based strategy games neglect such a feature. The attacks don't take too long to play out and this keeps the battle moving at a decent pace. Unit movement can be a little on the slow side but you can skip this if you wish.

Graphically, Elven Legacy can't be regarded as cutting edge but it looks good enough. Like most fantasy turn-based strategy games, the game has a bright coloured palette. The game environments are rather pleasing and the characters models look good too. I think the designers went a little overboard with the Elven women however. I've always thought of Elves as slightly built and slender in just about every fashion. The Elven women in this game are rather buxom however and a fair portion of their double-barrelled assets are on display thanks to their revealing costumes.

The preview build we played was a bit of a mixed bag for deaf gamers. Part of the intro movie wasn't subtitled. The tutorials contained lengthy video clips which were not subtitled and this made the tutorials pretty pointless for deaf gamers. The main game was much better however. All of the dialogue was subtitled and you could read the text at your own pace as you needed to click the left mouse button to progress the conversation. All dialogues were accompanied by character portraits so you could see who was saying what at all times. Mission descriptions and objectives are shown in text and can be recalled at any time. You were notified in text when a particular unit was 'broken' and the game also did a good job of visually showing damage values that had been caused during a battle. The game makes it clear where you should be heading at all times and you're notified when you're coming close to the maximum number of turns that you can take to earn specific awards.

Elven Legacy is definitely shaping up to be a game that enthusiasts of the fantasy turn-based strategy genre should definitely appreciate. The combat system seems pretty solid and the AI definitely seems up to scratch. Our only reservation at this point would be the storyline which appears to suffer from a poor translation into English. If that's sorted out and the tutorials are properly subtitled then it's definitely a game we'll be eager to sink our teeth into when it's released later this year.