{"id":250,"date":"2015-03-20T15:10:06","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T13:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=250"},"modified":"2015-03-20T15:10:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T13:10:06","slug":"braveland-wizard-review-war-of-the-hexes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/braveland-wizard-review-war-of-the-hexes\/","title":{"rendered":"Braveland Wizard Review: War of the Hexes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not very good at real time strategy games. There\u2019s something about the sheer amount of micromanagement on such a fast moving scale that makes me go kind of blank and not know where to start. In the real time strategy heyday, I tried Warcraft, and while I generally liked that it was a fantasy game, I just couldn\u2019t keep up with the pace at which things moved. Naturally, I also played a little Command and Conquer as well as Dune 2, but all of these games effectively left me cold.<\/p>\n

there was, however, joy to be had on the strategy front in terms of turn-based games where I could take my time, focus and get things right. I loved Civilization. I fell into Fantasy Empires [but not the actual fights in that game, because they were silly] and I absolutely adored Master of Magic.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest problem with all of those games was the complexity curve they operated on. You couldn\u2019t just pick them up and play them, they would suck away hours of your life. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered King\u2019s Bounty: here was a tactical, turn based game that I could take with me wherever I went. It fit on a single disk, it had a reasonable save system and it had a play-style that meant I could dip in whenever I had the time.<\/p>\n

But New World Computing wasn\u2019t content with the simplicity of King\u2019s Bounty. They wanted to turn it into a massive game. And that, of course, is how Heroes of Might and Magic came to be.<\/p>\n

But for twenty five years, I\u2019ve longed for a game as simple as King\u2019s Bounty. One that wasn\u2019t so absurd in the complexity department that you\u2019d need a manual and at least one or two visual aids to help you work out what to do. [Civilization was wonderful, but if you didn\u2019t have a Technology Tree diagram, and you didn\u2019t know it by heart…good luck.]<\/p>\n

Enter Braveland Wizard. The [sort of] answer to all my prayers.<\/p>\n

Developed for tablets and the like, Braveland Wizard does Heroes of Might and Magic or King\u2019s Bounty, but without the gravitas of those particular games \u2013 the tone here is light and breezy. Moreover, much of the complexity is gone. There is no harvesting for materials or upkeep of hero units. Nor do you have to particularly worry about a morality slider that means bad creatures can\u2019t fit in a group with good creatures. It\u2019s incredibly stripped down.<\/p>\n

Part of this stripping down comes at a bit of a price: while the tone is light and breezy, the story \u2013 and in fact, most aspects of Braveland Wizard are rather generic. Stop me if you\u2019ve heard any of this before: There\u2019s a mage graduating from an academy let loose on a world where someone has stolen a book of power. Along the way, he meets up with other mages, fights ghosts and visits a shaman that will help him, but only for a price.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Always go right!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is, I think, some part of the game\u2019s ancestry on show: since it was initially a game meant for the Apple Application store and the Google Play Store, it has to appear friendly, but safe. And most of the design choices on display here are firmly in the safe category.<\/p>\n

On easy, i never once ran out of money, my dead units always regenerated at the end of every battle and I never seriously used any of the equipment I found unless it was particularly generic.<\/p>\n

I expect that on one of the other difficulties \u2013 normal or hard, perhaps, I may have had more trouble, but the game \u2013 as I played it \u2013 was fairly forgiving.<\/p>\n

Since the basis of Braveland Wizard is essentially King\u2019s Bounty, it\u2019s an easy enough game to explain: You start with a hero figure who drives the story along. The hero has a collection of statistics, each of which govern how hard they hit in combat or how much mana they have at their disposal.<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>
2 + 3 + 5 + 5 = 15. A perfectly balanced squad.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One special statistic is \u201cleadership,\u201d which is the gateway to most of the game. The leadership statistic defines how many of a particular unit you can have in your army. This particular setup is complicated slightly by another statistic which is essentially your \u201cArmy score.\u201d Each unit, regardless of size, has a star rating assigned to it that more-or-less determines its strength. Higher numbers are better, but also \u201ccost more\u201d in terms of total army size. For example: suppose you have an army strength of six. The question now becomes, do you take the low cost, plentiful pike men with you \u2013 you can have twenty five, but they\u2019re rated at one star \u2013 along with a bunch of mages \u2013 who are pegged as four star fighters, but whom you can only have four of \u2013 into battle or do you balance the numbers out better and go for a pair of three star monks and axe-men? With this balanced set up, you might only get twelve of each separate unit but your power would be mixed between medium-quality ranged units and medium-quality melee units.<\/p>\n

Naturally, since this is built on the Heroes of Might and Magic template, your hero acquires gold to spend as they go, they don bits of armour that they can buy and they have experience points. Each level of experience earns you points that you can spend on a talent tree \u2013 a tree which you cannot completely unlock in one full game.<\/p>\n

Given that this is Braveland Wizard<\/em>, it is naturally part and parcel of the game that you receive spells that you can cast during battle. In fact, many of your units will acquire a single spell on a fairly long cool-down that helps matters immensely during combat \u2013 there\u2019s very limited healing, but a lot of ranged spells do make up for the fact that your team generally has middling range-of-movement.<\/p>\n

\"Battles<\/a>
A first battle: Humans versus goblins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The battles themselves are gloriously old-school: A unit appears as a stack with a number beneath it denoting how many you have to kill and everyone moves around on a board of hexes. There are occasional interactive pieces of scenery [treasure chests or coins that you might be able to pick up] but most of the focus is on the turn-based tactical nature of the game. There is a [hidden] turn order for each unit to move and attack or cast special cool-down spells. You can sometimes intervene with your own book of spells, making units move faster or raining ice down upon your foes. It\u2019s all very much in line with the Heroes of Might and Magic ethos and that, sadly, is where most of the problem lies.<\/p>\n

Can I recommend it? Sort of. It\u2019s a short game and I wouldn\u2019t pay full price for it \u2013 the going rate in the play store is just about $3 and the current price on GOG is just about $6 \u2013 too much for what little there is, here. If you\u2019re seriously missing Heroes of Might and Magic, I\u2019d give it a look on the express understanding <\/em>that it is neither as deadly serious as those games nor as complex. If you can live with those dire warnings? Go right ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not very good at real time strategy games. There\u2019s something about the sheer amount of micromanagement on such a fast moving scale that makes me go kind of blank and not know where to start. In the real time strategy heyday, I tried Warcraft, and while I generally liked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[27,3,26,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}