Review by: William Abner

Elven Legacy is a sequel, of sorts, to 1C’s underappreciated Fantasy Wars, and like it and its predecessor’s shockingly bland names, the game is vanilla in its design and certain aspects are ridiculously bad...but it still has a surprising addictive quality that begs you to play one more turn or one more mission and proves that this type of game still has the ability to scratch the turn based tactical itch.

If you’re familiar with Fantasy Wars: this is basically the same stuff but with a map editor available as a separate download. If you’re coming into Elven Legacy fresh, it is a tactical turn based game very similar to the old DOS born Fantasy General from SSI right down to the hex-grid map, the opportunity fire from archers and catapults who act as the game’s de facto artillery pieces, and the powerful unlimited range spells that can turn the tide of a battle.

Your units even earn experience points which can then be spent on buying “perks” which allow them to specialize or just become flat out better fighters or defenders. There are a slew of these perks ranging from making Sky Ships even deadlier bombers or turning infantry into forest or swamp fighters. You can take these veteran troops from mission to mission and it offers an effective sense of attachment to your units and you feel the sting when you lose a high level group of Fencers or Elf Cavalry. This is all turn-based gameplay 101 and unless you are a complete novice to the genre you should be up and playing the game within a matter of minutes.

When you start the campaign pay close attention to the dialogue – if only because it’s cringe-worthy in its awfulness; the voice acting is so over the top that it‘s impossible to take seriously (maybe that’s the point?) and the overall storyline makes as much sense as Naked Lunch. You play the elves and end up fighting a lot of other races for some reason or another. It’s not all that important and in the end doesn’t detract from the gameplay, but I finished the campaign and I still have no idea what it was about.