Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria

The Good
There is a lot to like about this title. The best part, I think, is the sheer simplicity of it. There's only one resource (save for magic, I suppose), and every town is identical in the setup. Unlike other Heroes of Might and Magic-style "conquer the map" games, Warlords IV doesn't bog you down with micromanagement or resource hoarding. Rather, your only resource comes from the towns used to produce units. Every town you conquer gives you +30 gold a turn, and every unit takes a little bit of gold as upkeep. Keep more towns, get more gold, more units, conquer more towns, etc. It's a very simple and direct system that gets straight to the point and doesn't make every battle a constant tug-of-war for the multitude of various resources.

The RPG elements rock. Every single unit levels up, allowing you to upgrade four or five different abilities, and every single unit has its own special ability that makes every single unit, right down to the weakest, cheapest one, valuable. All the different races and different units and abilities available to you allow you to come up with a multitude of army combinations, and just cramming a "brute force" fifth-level-creature army into an army of eight won't always mean victory. For instance, if you were facing creatures of evil, some Knights with their "Smite Evil" ability would certainly come in handy, with a unicorn to heal them and a hero with the "fear" ability to knock down the opponent's combat rating. Throw in some archers, a siege unit, and an Archon to "Bless" your troops, level them up a bit by fighting monsters (thus making them stronger in their combat, life, or other special ability ratings) and you'll have an unstopable machine on your hands. That's just one combination -- with so many races and units and unit skills available, there are hundreds more at your disposal!

Combat is fun. It is by no means a strategy gamer's masterpiece, but it is very fun. You basically pick which unit (out of your army consisting of up to eight (up to sixteen if you are defending a town) goes up against whatever unit your opponent chooses and they fight to the death, aided by a percent-to-shoot archers or other support abilities. With high level heroes involved in the battles, the battles can be tense and quite exciting, even if they're over rather quickly.

The campaign is a series of provinces you must conquer -- thirty-two in all, though you only have to conquer ten, I believe, to win the game. Each province you conquer aids you some way in your next battle, by either giving you a powerful hero for free, or giving you a speed or money bonus, or allowing you to play as another race altogether in any future battles.

The Bad
The storyline is boring. Just plain boring. It's sad to say that, because it really didn't have to be. The campaign's story is something like this: thousands of years ago a cataclysmic event called "The Sundering" nearly destroyed the world. Now some Dark Elf chick wants to attempt the Sundering spell once more, and so now you are hot on her trail to stop her. Along the way you have to do some tasks for a dragon, conquer some warlords to gain their respect, and fight your way to the Dark Elf chick herself to stop her. Between storyline battles there is an absolutely dull cutscene that are nothing more than half a dozen drawings (which you see again and again and again) with the most absolutely boring narration I've ever heard. If they could have thrown in some other elements than "go kill them" or "go kill them" or "go kill them", it would have been much better. Or a plot twist, or something that might mix things up a bit.

Also, it seems that every single race in the game really, really, really, REALLY wants to kill one another. The Sundering potentially can destroy the entire world -- one would think the Elves wouldn't mind sharing their knowledge on where to find a certain artifact that would aid you greatly in stopping the Dark Elf...but no, rather, the Elves will only give you the knowledge if you defeat them in a massive battle. The Dwarves have something that can stop a certain spell from being cast. Rather than negotiate or seek their aid, you must KILL THEM ALL AND TAKE THE ARTIFACT. The Dragon can tell you where to find the Dark Elf and stop her...but he wants you to kill the Ogres and take their whatever-he-wants and then he'll help you! I understand the need to progress the story with gameplay, but surely there was a better way to do it than by fighting a battle every time you need something. After all, the fate of the entire world is at stake.

Missions are pretty repetetive, though it is expected with such a simple game. Some events that occur in battles help break up the monotony ("A group of undead arrive at your capital. They remember the Sundering quite well, and they don't wish to will aid you," for instance.) but they usually only happen within the first few turns and then never again in the battle. Most battles were won (for me, at least) by creating a powerful army and blitzing straight to the enemy's capital, which would have been really damned annoying had the computer used the same strategy against me.

There is a rather annoying movement quirk in the game that Ubisofts insists is not a bug and won't fix. If you have an army that has run out of movement points, and you move a unit with movement points remaining into that army, that unit loses all its movement points. I don't see how this is logical. I rememember in games such as Heroes of Might and Magic that it was often a perk to move units in and out of parties to act as scouts. Send them out to investigate and move them back into the party with what movement points they had left. Why is this not so in Warlords IV?

During the campaign, a mission might say, "You'll be fighting Undead as you attempt to conquer the province of Whatever..." or something. This is really misleading. All this means is that the main opponent (there are often one to three other warlords to be fought in a map) is Undead. All this does it determine the warlord capital's particular race. It does NOT mean the map is filled with undead. In fact, aside from that one capital, there may not BE any undead on the map. The mission's briefing is very misleading, especially when choosing your own race for the mission. If I was told I would be fighting Knights or Empire (two human races), I think I would choose the Undead as my race, as some of their units have the "Manslayer" ability, which when fighting humans would raise their combat and give a bonus to attack when fighting. Only I would be fighting all other races, and probably not that much humans.

Also, I think it would have been much better to have a more lasting or perminent bonus from conquering provinces. All but the "you are now allowed to command this race" bonuses only last until your next battle. Most of the bonuses you get from conquering provinces (save for the experience and levels that comes from fighting anyway) are just "Some Hero will join you in your next battle!" There are a few others (+3 speed, +1000 gold to start), but they're not that great, and they only last one battle, so in the end, my only real purpose for conquering every province was just to get the experience to level up my warlord and heroes. It would have been nice to have something like +1 morale, or +3 gold income, something kind of how Rise of Nations did it in their "Conquer the World" scenario.

Why weren't all the races from Warlords: Battlecry II included? It would have only kicked more ass.

The Bottom Line
Warlords IV is an addictive, simple turn-based strategy game. Those who love Heroes of Might and Magic type games but don't want to deal with stressful micromanagement should love this game. The combat is unique and very fun, with a plethora of combinations available.