Sorcerer King was amusing, but has major design weaknesses

[DrPraetor]

https://www.gog.com/game/sorcerer_king_rivals

It's an interesting hybrid of Master of Magic and Heroes, more like one or another in different ways.

This is the latest installment of a series of RPG and strategy games that take place in Elemental (https://www.gog.com/game/fallen_enchant ... te_edition being the previous game), which I'd heard of a couple of times (it's the same people who do GalCiv, I think) but had never given any attention. It's a handsome enough game, with well-done isometric sprite art. The plot is too generic to burden people with, but the world building isn't as generic as I'd assumed from the name.

Theoretically, you have a bunch of options, but most of them are traps. The best hero is the Paladin (because she comes with a cleric), and the best bonus spell is the default for the General (which refreshes the move of a stack 1/turn.)

The game supports a lot of unit recruitment and some modest city development which barely matters, because you build a highly-trained superstack and it teleports around the world murdering things. Maybe you upgrade some of the troops in it a few times but it hardly matters by the point you have that option.

[*] The only statistic that matters is army size limit, especially once you have the spell that you can cast 1/unit which raises the movement of the entire stack by +1 (so a stack of 15 can have +15 move while a stack of 5 can only have +5 move.) You get XP on a per-unit basis so building the biggest possible stack and killing everything with it is the thing-to-do.
Theoretically the Dwarf has the biggest army size, but it takes a long time to build up (5 + a skill that gives +1/city, hard limit of 15). The General has the biggest army size earliest (7, +2 and +3 for skills), followed by the Tyrant (5, +3 and +4 for skills), Lich (same) and I think Wizard (but it's not open). The Wizard does have some other advantages that are actually good, so those leaders are good and the Priestess, Guardian and Tinker are weak, basically.
Oh, your starting army matters a lot since you earn XP and treasure for winning fights; but there isn't much you can do to boost your starting army so (EDIT) this doesn't supply many meaningful choices?

[*] The spell selection is boring - you choose spell books rather like in Master of Magic, but the choices are bland and flavorless: Chaos (many debuffs, some things which are "random" or "buffs which also hurt your guy") has a little flavor, the other three schools are Enchantment (unit and city buffs; probably the best), Summoning (I think it's lame but maybe I'm playing wrong and it's awesome?) and Wrath (direct damage - sorta okay). Because casting spells cost out of the mana pool from learning sovereign skills (which can increase your army size cap), you are incentivized to being very conservative in magic usage.
You want to kick over neutral monsters on an industrial scale, but you generally don't get income boosts or other "accelerated curve" benefit from kicking them over, so investing mana or taking losses in winning fights simply isn't worth it. I suppose if you have no easy fights to choose, you might be screwed and unable to earn XP on your troops, so then you'd want to cast combat summons or something?
The best spells are mostly either in Enchantment or in universal; some of the Wrath and Chaos debuffs are useful, especially I guess if you have an otherwise lousy start. Maybe summoning is secretly really good if you abuse it properly? But not that I saw - it's too expensive to rely on it to win fights.

[*] Even cheating for a favorable map, the game seems to be over by the time your cities can build any high-end units.

Other sundry complaints:
This is the expansion, and they only added options to play as 2/7 non-default factions (the Lich and the Dwarf, respectively.) The other teams:
[*] A united front of asian-expies and dark elves.
[*] Mages who wear a lot of red.
[*] Fire elementals.
[*] Swamp Giants.
[*] Ice Giants.
all look more interesting.

So I played it a bunch but wouldn't recommend it highly; it disappoints on a number of fronts.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I vaguely remember a strategy of the wizard using hypnosis to get an army of the best guys ever.

I also played it when it came out and apparently they overhauled everything.

[Longes]

Shouldn't this be in the video games forum?

[DrPraetor]

Oh, yeah, I guess it should. I suppose it might matter if someone were looking for a review of the game.

Is there a way to move things?

[Zinegata]

I played it and don't recommend it highly either. The premise is interesting but it simply never feels like you're the Resistance fighting an all-mighty Overlord that has already conquered the world.

It does end up being more of "move one stack around" instead of a 4X, which unfortunately gets a bit repetitive and tiring.

Thea: The Awakening is in many ways a superior game operating around a similar premise; with the added novelty of having one mini-game apply for all skill challenges and all skills end up being used (albeit in different ways) in the different skill challenges.