Elven Legacy Preview
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 – by Ewan Aiton, Staff Writer

Turn-based strategy is having a bit of a renaissance courtesy of the Japanese and, of course, Creative Assembly’s Total War series. Most titles now have a blend of real-time and turn-based action to varying effect. On the PC though there are still plenty of developers who will cater for those more ponderous gamers who play strategy games like they were playing chess rather than needing action feed their twitching thumbs.

Elven Legacy is one such title but it likes to mix things up again by applying turn-based strategy to the good old fantasy setting. As you would expect from the title, elves are very much at the forefront of this game.

You command an always outnumbered elven army lead by a warlord known as Lord Seagate. Your task is to recapture an ancient magic, stolen by a human wizard and transported to an evil part of the land that bears a striking resemblance to Mordor. As you would expect, Tolkien’s influence runs through Elven Legacy and is very heavily evident in the storyline as well as the visual style of the game.

Much emphasis has been placed on the game’s non-linear storyline. Between each battle you are presented with a choice of where to go next. Each option presents a different tactical challenge so budding elven commanders can choose the battle that best suits their abilities and style of combat.

The game’s developers, 1C: Ino-Co, have decided to bring turn-based strategy kicking and screaming into the 3D era and all the battle maps are nicely modeled and viewed from an isometric perspective. Of course there is still the old hexagonal movement grid just to make sure that aficionados of the genre don’t run away in utter panic thinking that Eleven Legacy is an RTS of all things.

At the same time, nicely animated units, the 3D aspect and the fantasy setting help give the game an RTS-style feel which should help draw some of the more hardened RTS fans into at least giving Elven Legacy a try when it hits the shelves.

So far the game engine runs very smoothly, especially on underpowered machines. There are some awesome grass effects leading me to think that the finished version will be visually stunning and look just as tempting as the current crop of RTS games.

In a departure from the grittier appearance that EA adopted for their Battle for Middle Earth series, Elven Legacy does have brighter look about it as well. This makes the game feel a touch more cheerful despite the impending doom that you are chasing throughout the game.

Publishers Paradox Interactive is very impressed with the way the game is developing. Paradox Interactive Executive Vice President Fredrik Wester said, "This is one of the best-looking TBS games I've seen in a long time, and it follows in the same spirit of games like Heroes of Might and Magic, Master of Magic, and Warlords Battlecry. The developers have really taken care to provide extensive depth and content, which could make this game one of those that stays on gamers hard drives for a long time".

Elven Legacy has also ditched resource gathering in favor of having a more RPG style leveling up system for the army. The only real resource is money which you gain from defeating foes and sacking settlements on your way to the heart of the evil realms.

From the hands-on time that we have had with Elven Legacy it is clear that the game has the potential to break down some of the barriers that lie between the turn-based and real-time strategy camps. There is obviously an ambition for the game to bridge the gap and give the more hardcore turn-based fans a bridge to the real-time world while drawing in some of the RTS fans who long for something a bit different from the usual resource-gathering and tank rush cycle.

1C:Ino-Co CEO Alexei Kozyrev reinforces this, "In Elven Legacy, we've focused greatly on making the plot intriguing and nonlinear. Our games are already known for their rich tactical opportunities, which usually come highly rated by players. This, combined with our improvements in the AI and interface, allows for this game to appeal both to fans of turn-based strategies and to newcomers to the genre."

If completed with the same effort and polish as we have seen thus far, Elven Legacy could prove to be a nifty gateway between the two very different worlds.