Hello Malstrom
I’m one of those people who were just stunned when GoG relesed Eador, I mean where on earth did *that* come from? So of course i had to buy it and see for myself, and I want to share my imression.
Some background first, the first time I heard of Eador was a few month ago when i read about an upcoming Russian-made game called Eador: Masters of the Broken World, a turn-based strategy game where you play a sort of demigod conquering fragments of worlds floating in outer space. Eador: Genesis was developed in 2009 and it’s basically the same concpet as Masters of the Broken World, but with simpler tech. Until recently the game has been only available in Russian and this is the first time it’s available in another language. (as a side note, on of the develpers of Master of the broken World has confirmed that it will be available on GoG as well)
Now, for the game itself, where do I begin? As I said, you ply as a “master”, a sort of demigod or something (not even the masters know exactly what they are) and you try to conquer shards to unite them into your own world. The game concists of several layers, the topmost layer (at least so far) is the Astral, basically space, where the shards and worlds float around. From here you can interact with other masters and you pick a free shard and then try to conquer it. There will be more to the Astral later but so far it’s only a level select screen for me.
Once you’ve selected the shard the main part of the game starts: you see the land of the shard and your goal is to conquer the enemy players’ capitals. The map consists of “provinces”, each province is a field and there is nothing between them. The players compete over these provinces by moving their armies over them and trying to take enemy provinces. Each army is lead by a hero, who also partakes in battle. Unlike Heroes of Might & Magic there is no unit stacking, each unit is a unit on its own. Of course it’s not enough to just step on a province and that’s it, each province needs to be managed on its own, it generates gold and magic gems, it grows, the population has its own mood, you can hire guards (improve mood, defend from invaders and suppress riots) and build structures. All this is done just through statistics, so you don’t need to micromanage individual workers all day. In fact, the time spent on managing your empire barely increases as your empire grows, I really like that. It gives you enough to micro-manage without making it tedious, it’s very quick. As I mentioned before each army has a hero. The hero can be one of four classes (warrior, scout, commander, wizard), can equip items, level up and learn new skill that help his entire army, a hero with a high enough level can practically solo most battles. The hero is accompanied by regular units who can also level up to a lesser degree and learn new skills, but they are more or less disposable. Battles are fought in the usual hex-grid based manner when two armies clash or when one of your armies tries to take over a province that is guarded. Each turn you can give an order to an army, like going to a certain province, exploring the current province (when exporing your hero can find new locations which can lead to events and you need to ha a certain rate of exploration when the province wants to grow) or entering a location within the current province (like a dungeon or a special store).
One cool feature are the events. All throughout the game little events will pop up forcing you to make choices. A simple example is when you send your hero to explore a province and he finds an ancient ruin then your choice is whether to fight the creatures inhabiting it and get the loot or to skip it for now. Other events are more interesting, forcing you to make a moral decision. An event can occur randomly, such as a magic rainbow appearing in a certain province, you getting a visit from someone like a famous adventurer or a mighty wizard or a province getting attacked by wild monsters. I remember once a wizard came to me and claimed he knew a spell to make gold rain, so I paid him the magic gems he needed. Turns out that having solid chunks of metal fall from the sky at terminal velocity is a very bad idea for the crops, buildings and the rest of the population in general, leaving me with the question of what to do, collect the gold, help out the survivors or just let everything sort itself out.
Now so far that’s all standard turn-based strategy stuff. The fact that you move only over provinces is kind of eird, but that’s not what makes this game stand out to me. What makes it stand out is the role-plaing aspect. Not RPG-aspect in the sense of stats and loot, but in the sense of playing a role. The morale, or karma as they call it, is a great system. You know how in most games you get a good and an evil choice and when you pick one then one thing happens and if you pick the other then the other thing happens. That’s boring and it’s stupid because the world does not work like a binary switch. In Eador evil choices have an immediate favourable effect but they tend to hurt you in the long run while good choices require you to make a sacrifice by paying or not getting something, but in the long run they will pay off. Basically it boils down to the dark path being easier but also more dangerous. For example the exploring hero might come across a whitch house and you’ll have to decide whether to chase away the witch (or burn her at a stake) or have her stay, which will make her produc magice gems fo you but it will also lower the population mood. Being evil does not just mean picking evil choices in events, but also generally performing evil acts, such as summoning demons or raising undead during battle. You can give out free candy to everyone, but people will notice you make pacts with the forces of hell behind their backs. Sometimes you won’t even know what the right thing is, for example on one occasion a group of monks asked me to let them build an altar, and naturally I thought giving them money was a good idea. Then it turned out they were sacrificing babies (no really, that’s what the text said!), so I had to make a choice what to do with these monks, I was kind of responsible for what they had done.
It’s really the events and the karma system that make Eador feel like more than just a game of chess with dice. It makes me feel like I’m really in charge of a living and breathing empire. You cannot be good all the time, if you keep handing out free candy you won’t have any gold, which the population hates as well. You need to find a balance and sometimes the temptation is just too big not to snatch some gold that doesn’t belong to you or summon a creature that’s clearly offending all that is good. That is what makes role-playing and it never feels cheap, like the game just throws some random crap at you, it feels very good, because you never know what the next turn might bring. It could be something bad, but it could be something good as well. In fact, you can prevent bad things from happening by keeping your provinces well developed and guarded. Again, if you decide to be cheap and don’t bother with people’s needs it will come back and bite you.
The music is very nice and the visual design is well done. The game lacks any combat animatios, you just see units touch each other like miniatures and that’s it. I don’t mind though, at least I don’t have to put up with anoyingly long animations. I really like the art design of the game, it looks “rich” for the lack of a better term. You can clearly see that a lot of work was put into detailing all the portraits and backgrounds to make the game come alive. The game has also a nice sense of humour, it’s done in a subtle and dignified way instead of beating you over the head with dumb jokes. I like that, games that take themselves too seriously can be a bore while games that try too hard to be funny are just stupid. There is just something about the aesthetic of the game that feels very proud and dignified, something I cannot find in neither American nor Japanese games. American games glorify themselves while Japanese games are just batshit insane. Eador on the other hand glorifies the player, it’s all about making me the centre of my story.
If I was to pick something negative then it would be that the game can get too abstract for some to enjoy. In most games you move units across a map while in Eador the map consists of provinces, small maps on their own, but you interact with these provinces just through statistics. Then again, that is what Eador is, so changing it would mean changing the game.
So far I have conquered three shards, lost one shard and I’ve met another master. The game can be quite time consuming, not because it’s slow, but because it’s quite fast for a turn-based game and I always find myself playing “just one more turn”. So far I have only a fraction of the technologies available and I’ve only fought over tiny shards, so I’ll see what is still to come. At least so far I have really been enjoying it.
Now, I’m not just writing this to tell what I liked about this game. Eador is an interesting case, it is being developed in a different environment than the industry games and your typical indy games. Here is an inteview about Master of the Broken World:
http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/6/18/3089509/eador-masters-of-the-broken-world-rules-with-an-iron-fist
It’s really interesting when he starts comparing Eastern European developers to Westen developers. Western developers (and of course the Japanese even more) have become decadent, they have been taking gaming for granted and started making games for each other. The same goes for indy developers who are more concerned about art styles and unique game mechanics than the actual game content. Eastern European developers on the other hand cannot afford this form of decadence, they have to make games instead of movies. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the only other game in recent years that has managed to blow me away was King’s Bounty: The Legend, another Russian-made game, ironically based on an American game. I’m not saying that Eastern Europe is the future of gaming, but at this point I feel like Eastern Europe and Asia are more likely to breathe fresh life into gaming if only those areas were given a chance to properly develop.
Nice write up.
He says: “West is interested in making movies and we are interested in making games.” I would replace the word ‘movies’ with production and ‘games’ with design. Increasing the production of a game does make a more enjoyable experience. But where is the design in all this? Why are we playing the same games with just better graphical effects and added ‘cutscenes’? Design should get more focused.
I’m currently playing FTL and while I think the game has been overhyped, it is a breath of fresh air because the game offers a new design. There may have been games like FTL, but I cannot think of any offhand. I’m more interested in seeing games with interesting design than interested production. Obviously, both would be the ideal world.
I have many of the newer indie games now. You should expect to see me talk about them in due time.
To anyone asking, “Is FTL worth getting?” If you like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, you will love the game. If you hate Star Trek, you will hate FTL. It’s a good thing for the FTL makers that many gamers are Trekkies.
Later, I’ll tell you of a huge design oversight that would have made FTL all the more magical. A damn shame it wasn’t done.
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