Review RPG Codex Review: Legends of Eisenwald

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Aterdux Entertainment; Legends of Eisenwald

Somewhere in Eastern Europe, there is a country called Belarus that is totally not a part of Russia. There, a studio called Aterdux Entertainment has been working on a medieval Strategy RPG Legends of Eisenwald, now out of Early Access and available on Steam. It took them more than three years to release the game after the Kickstarter they did in early 2012 (promising the late 2012 release date), so is it any good?

Esteemed community member sser is here to answer that question and generally tell you all you need to know about the game.

The full review can be found here, but first, have a snippet:

Legends of Eisenwald is a solid game.​

There, now go ahead and read the full thing instead of just basing your judgment on a random snippet. In contrast to my ramblings here, it's really well-written, to the point, and deserves to be read in its entirety.

Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Legends of Eisenwald

 

[Eyestabber]

Nice review, sser! Been lurking the Eisenwald thread for a while and the review is very informative and sticks to the point. Guess I'll end up playing this game at some point, but no rush.

EDIT: also, "first into the fisting"! Cuz CB is 2fast4me.

 

[Crooked Bee]

First into the fisting!

The one who needs to be fisted is sser. It's a really great review.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Thank you sser! Who did you end up fighting in the end? Curious which path you took I hope there is a spoiler tag somewhere here.

 

[Eyestabber]

First into the fisting!

The one who needs to be fisted is sser. It's a really great review.

You quote me faster than I can edit. Ninja womyn, great. Now the West is truly doomed!

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Couldn't help sharing this short video where Mystic alone kills the entire army of a rogue knight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSXgVlw5se4

 

[MicoSelva]

Wow, that was fast. Nice work, sser!

EDIT: and it is a funny and well-written review. Kudos, bro.

 

[PosledniKovboj]

Agreed. This is a good game and deserves more attention.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

After seeing PoE reviews here I take this one as a big compliment! Shock: Codex didn't tear apart Legends of Eisenwald

 

[Eyestabber]

After seeing PoE reviews here I take this one as a big compliment! Shock: Codex didn't tear apart Legends of Eisenwald

PoE is a pretty low bar, Alex...

 

[Drowed]

Well, it wasn't written by Roxor.

And this game wasn't announced as "the Baldur's Gate that never was". With balance.

 

[tindrli]

Couldn't help sharing this short video where Mystic alone kills the entire army of a rogue knight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSXgVlw5se4

i truly hope that combat speed can be raised like 4x

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Rarely are you far off from a holy man’s healy hands. As far as actual healing goes, the system does suffer from a very classic issue: if I have characters that can heal, why can’t I heal after battles? What I ended up seeing are a few battles where, after the fighting was all said and done, I actually began skipping turns as much as possible to let my healers heal everyone up, and then ended the fight. Legends of Eisenwald is not uniquely labored by this problem, but I always felt flaws like this showed a lack of foresight in game design. Eh, maybe that’s just me though. (Whenever the topic is discussed I tend to stand straight up like the Manchurian candidate and proclaim my robotic defense of Dragon Age’s auto-healing so maybe I’m the one with real issues.)

Could be solved with having short term battle healing resources and long term healing resources which work only outside of battle. Maybe would it work even nicer if battle heals could be used outside of combat with some bonus to effectiveness (it's easier to heal when nobody tries to kill you), but this would lower the chance to react to the changing battle dynamic(by having resources deployed).

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

PoE is a pretty low bar, Alex...

Well, I'd wish we sold half as much as them

Could be solved with having short term battle healing resources and long term healing resources which work only outside of battle. Maybe would it work even nicer if battle heals could be used outside of combat with some bonus to effectiveness (it's easier to heal when nobody tries to kill you), but this would lower the chance to react to the changing battle dynamic(by having resources deployed).

We were going initially to have global spells but we dropped them because the game got too big for us to handle. I am not sure what we do next and honestly don't think it's that great of a thing to do. There is gold, you can heal. What does it add to the gameplay? It's like potions in some way...

 

[mindx2]

Congrats, Alex Aterdux Entertainment I'm glad you've gotten the well deserved attention from the Codex and I hope you'll let us know if you sell enough to consider it successful...

 

[thesheeep]

Well written review, congrats!

Can't wait to play

 

[KingDoofus]

Lurker here, but enjoy the game and the review. I started the game on normal then switched over to a harder difficulty; one thing I would add is that on tougher settings, prep decisions that don't seem to matter much can suddenly have an enormous impact. Moving a unit over a couple spaces to focus on a certain enemy or switching from a high damage axe to a low damage spear can be the difference between winning and losing (but yeah, prep is still where most strategy is). Also, all units on the map outside of the player's control (ally or foe) seem to gain a set amount of experience every day. Another huge point of strategy becomes deciding which enemies to go after before they get too strong and getting your own experience so that your party doesn't get outpaced by the rest of the map. And so far, I have steamrolled nobody.

Great job!

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Great to see your review out sser ! This game is a bit different in style to our normal CRPG fare and that's a good thing. The industry could use some injections of new ideas.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Come here and harvest your brofists sser !

 

[Ulminati]

I'm not sure how I feel about the combat. It seems.... weird. Also the whole idea of starting over from scratch in a bunch of territories isn't appealing to me. Other than that, it look slike a very solid Expiditions: Germany clone. I'll probably pick it up at some point now that it's actually finished. Once I've worked through some of my backlog at least. The grimdouchebag writing for your protagonist looks fun. :D

I'll just have to find a stream or let's play where I can see the combat in action.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Check out our combat video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibG4iMSaTOo

 

[MrMarbles]

Not often a codex review that has me laughing out loud a few times. It gives a nice rundown too. Kudos

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Now that's a review that would be nice to get from press: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197971640510/recommended/246760/, posted in our socials:

If one of those bigger budget game companies released a game as well written and storied as this, they would get full 100% reviews louding them as the new "planescape torment". It's really that good. Even moderately good recent RPGS like Divinity, Wastelands2 etc, have'nt on staff any writer even half as talented as whoever wrote this game and its characters.

This is one of those rare gems so full of style, atmosphere, character, story... This is exactly what gaming really needs. The more you play it, the more it reveals itself to you as a deep setting, with a rich story and very deep characters that any other developer would envy.

At first I thought negatively of this game because of it's enormously lackluster combat mechanics. Yes, they are really simplistic and bad, forcing the same kind of repetitive mindless grind every single time. But this game is so much more.
GET IT!

 

[DeepOcean]

Now that's a review that would be nice to get from press: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197971640510/recommended/246760/, posted in our socials:

If one of those bigger budget game companies released a game as well written and storied as this, they would get full 100% reviews louding them as the new "planescape torment". It's really that good. Even moderately good recent RPGS like Divinity, Wastelands2 etc, have'nt on staff any writer even half as talented as whoever wrote this game and its characters.

This is one of those rare gems so full of style, atmosphere, character, story... This is exactly what gaming really needs. The more you play it, the more it reveals itself to you as a deep setting, with a rich story and very deep characters that any other developer would envy.

At first I thought negatively of this game because of it's enormously lackluster combat mechanics. Yes, they are really simplistic and bad, forcing the same kind of repetitive mindless grind every single time. But this game is so much more.
GET IT!

Duh, get a few million dollars on ad avenue and your game will be the new Citizen Kane. It works for AAA publishers, you know, we all know how they make moving stories about batman breaking some criminal bones, I heard on the last batman there is a scene where batman gets in doubt if he should break the face of a thug or not and gone on a monologue "to hit" or "not to hit", it moved Polygon journalists so hard that they gave 10/10 on tears, it was quite emotional, some people are even talking that sequence will manage to make Batman Arkham Knight win the best written game of 2015 award from Fallout 4. Some Polygon journalist was so moved that he said not even if Bethesda kills that dog from the trailer it will manage to be more emotional, true story.

 

[skyst]

I was able to play this game recently through the first territory and really enjoyed it, I will certainly be purchasing it once I have the free time.

Aterdux really should consider releasing a demo, however. $30 seems a bit of a steep cost to go in blind. Especially since the game is a lot more fun than it seems from just watching a video or screens.

edit: Duh - fantastic review, sser. Very readable and informative.