Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria review (PC)

Despite this lack of availability, you may still be tempted to assemble a motley "killer stack" consisting of high-level creatures from differing factions. Doing so will cost you an exceptional amount of gold for maintenance, and it will also cause a severe morale hit (though low morale can be compensated for in a few different ways, like having a hero with leadership skill, for instance). Since all units, from heroes to the lowliest level-one units, gain experience levels, you'll often be best-served by having a full stack of eight. You'll want to preserve it for as long as possible so that its troops can survive to gain levels. Experience is gained through fighting, which can be auto-resolved, as in previous Warlords games, but battles are now much more interesting using Warlords IV's new combat system.

When two armies clash in Warlords IV, the game pits individual units against one another until one dies. The controller of the dead creature then gets to choose the next soldier to step into the fray, though between these skirmishes, archer units and defense towers can unleash arrow attacks, and siege units can attack defending towers to knock them down (and cause them to stop firing arrows). While the system may seem like a simplistic slugfest, at first, it's actually surprisingly strategic, since your units' special abilities and your magic spells can affect the outcome of a battle significantly. For instance, certain evil units have an ability, called "terror," which not only decreases an enemy's effectiveness in battle, but it can also "frighten" an enemy out of battle, forcing the opposing player to choose a different unit to fight instead.

All units have four special abilities. They also have skills that are generally useful, like regeneration, armor, and warding. Some units feature highly specialized skills, like manslayer and smite evil. Even though your actions in battle are largely limited to choosing the order in which your soldiers will fight for you, battles are deceptively deep--though fast-paced. Your units' various special abilities, and the fact that the last surviving unit receives bonus experience toward gaining a level, make combat quite nontraditional in Warlords IV.

While Warlords IV boldly eliminates many fantasy strategy conventions, its production values probably could have used a boost. Though the game includes colorful 2D graphics, Warlords IV's visual presentation is inconsistent. One moment you're looking at large and fairly detailed portraits of your warlord (some of which were recycled from SSG's Warlords Battlecry games); the next minute you're looking at your miniscule stack on a sparse-looking overland map. Then you're looking at small 2D portraits of your units at the nearest town. After that you're watching battles between poorly animated, rendered sprites that take jerky-looking swings at one another. The game's sound effects aren't impressive either. Fighting monsters grunt and squeal, while humanoid units cry out goofy-sounding taunts that might have been more amusing if they weren't so muffled. The game's synth-orchestral music, at least, is appropriate for its setting and is unobtrusive enough to ignore.

Its presentation aside, Warlords IV offers a comprehensive single-player campaign, 28 one-off skirmish missions, and a host of multiplayer options, including online play, direct IP connect, play-by-e-mail, and hotseat play on the same computer. The game also includes a map editor that lets you create your own missions, as well as a random map generator, so you probably won't run out of things to do with Warlords IV for some time. While Warlords IV does streamline out a great deal of interesting strategic elements you might expect from a game of this sort, what it leaves behind is still engaging enough to keep fans of fantasy strategy playing.