The Qaedon Wars - The Story Begins

Review

You start the game with a story of the people of Qaedon being happy folk. Everything in their world was plentiful, with food and trade with other kingdoms. Different races lived side by side and flourished; there had been no conflict in more than one hundred years. These days though, things are very much different, ever since Eimonar the Archmage opened the first Rift. No one is quite sure why Eimonar opened the Rift (was it on purpose or an accident?), but what everyone is sure about is the fact that it cursed Qaedon’s people and kingdoms. Creatures of nightmare emerged from the Rift and the people of Qaedon weren’t prepared for them. Few could stand against these creatures; the Great Houses rallied together for a while keeping the creatures at bay. It seemed the tide was turning until the Rift spat out the first Riftmage, then another and another.

Qaedon was lost, the Riftmages opened more passages around Qaedon, the Undead returned after being absent for more than a millennium and formed an unholy alliance with the Beasts. Noble houses and Kingdoms fell one by one, the Dwarves retreated underground; Orc tribes and the Elves were powerless against these creatures. Many nations allied with Beasts to save themselves, and historical hatreds resurfaced. The first to join the Beasts were The Venagrians followed by the Dark Dwarves, the Trevan Empire and other greenskin tribes. The last great house, The House of Jaroth finally succumbed in battle against overwhelming odds. There is a rumour though that not all the bloodline of Jaroth was lost, a child heir was carried away to the Southern Isles. This is where your adventure will begin …

Selecting a new Campaign will give you various options to customize your game. The options for your game are Advanced Rules, Save and Load, Spells and Abilities, Trading, Healing and Training, Recovery Rates, and finally, Choose Your Hero. Under these categories are quite a few options to fully customise the game to your liking, such as in Advanced Rules you can change the AI Hit Point Bonus (-50% very weak to +100% making them very tough). Character Points on Level Up (Number of Character Points you’ll gain each time you level your characters up). Loot Quality, Maximum Deployed Army, Story Mode, Turn Timer and Unit Actions are some of the other options you’ll find under Advanced Rules. There really is plenty of choices when customising your game in these option settings, too many to post here, but you’ll be able to play the game as easy or as hard as you would like.

After you’ve sorted your game settings, you’ll then move on to choosing your Hero. There are twenty-one heroes to choose from, with different races and class types. Armoran Spellbinders (Mage), Inquisitor Maior (Warrior/Clerk), Hairfoot Shooter (Rogue/Archer), Kellish Huntress (Archer) are just a few of the options you can choose from. Select a hero, then the Customise button will take you to the hero's stats, giving you plenty of information on them, including Attributes, Abilities, Movement, Combat, Inventory, Spellbook, Spellbar, Lore, and Allocate Character Points, with some also having subcategories. If you don’t like the looks of the hero, you can select Cancel to go back and choose another hero. Once you’ve settled on a hero and allocated the Character Points you can select Start Campaign for your game to commence.

Once your campaign starts, you’ll have the option to choose from two storylines, Gang of Thieves and The Overlord being the first two. You can select either storyline and then the Next button for information, as well as the Objectives and Bonuses on that storyline. Selecting Begin from the Objectives screen will then take you to the game screen. The game screen consists of a hexagonal grid with various landscapes such as trees, plains, hills and various buildings scattered here and there. I decided to play Gang of Thieves, where I had to find six potential heroes to join me to find somewhere in the area. You will have another hero start with you as you search for these new recruits and you’ll be placed somewhere at the top of the map.

From here you must move your characters around to find them. You do this by selecting a hero, which will then show you where you can move that hero. The range of movement is determined by their stats; some move through woods better than others, but they may have fewer movements through swamps or other regions. You can change these stats with Character Points should you wish to do so. Once you have moved your heroes, you must hit the big green arrow on the right bottom corner to end your turn. It will then be the enemy’s turn; this might not happen if you haven’t revealed an enemy. If this happens it will then just go straight back to you for your next turn.

Enemies are hidden by Fog of War and will only be revealed when you move close enough to them. Make your way to the various buildings on the map and hopefully you’ll find a new comrade. If you do find one, they will join your group and you’ll be able to take control of them. Finding the new heroes was only part of the objective.  After finding all the heroes I then had another objective to complete before being able to move on to the next area, after which I got a Victory screen saying congratulations etcetera along with any Bonus Items and Qaedi (currency) for completing the objectives.

After finishing the mission you’ll be taken back to the world map, where you’ll notice a new region unlocked for you. Selecting the new region will then take you to the storyline options, where there are another two stories to choose from. However, this time after selecting the storyline and checking the objectives, instead of a Begin button you’ll find an Army Management button.

Here you can Buy Units, View Units, Dismiss Units, Bank Equipment, Sell Items from Bank, Buy Items to Bank, View Item, Temple and training Grounds. Defeated enemies will sometimes drop Chests, which can contain various, weapons, armour, spells etcetera. You can then use these items to customise and hopefully strengthen your hero's attacks and defenses. Any fallen heroes will also drop their equipment and items in a chest - just make sure to pick them up before an enemy does.

If you do have a fallen hero you can resurrect them at the Temple, you will have two options of resurrection and both will cost some Qaedi. One option will resurrect your hero with full health while the other option will only recover twenty-five percent of their original health etcetera. If you choose to go with the percentage restoration of their health, you can regain full health by that hero skipping a turn or two. This is the same if your heroes are injured; they can regain health and mana simply by resting and doing nothing for a while.

After you’ve done buying items, equipping your heroes, etcetera it’s now time to move on to the next campaign by selecting Start Battle from the Army Management screen. This, as before, will take you to the game screen, only this time you’ll be able to place your characters on the map where you like within a marked area. Once done its time to complete your objectives.

Each character can hold quite a few pieces of armour, weapons, items etcetera.  Certain items can’t be used by certain characters. You can transfer any items to other characters by standing by them and using the transfer inventory. This is a little bit frustrating as you may be trying to give one character something to bolster their stats only to find it’s no good to them. Equipping items in the Army Management is also frustrating, you can put all non-equipped items into the bank, but you’ll need to open each character profile separately and then take the required items. Then you must open the character profile and go to the inventory to equip it. So it’s very frustrating and time consuming trying to equip each character, especially when you have a few of them.

In the Options, you’ll find settings for Screen (Resolution, Full Screen and V-Sync), Keyboard, (Remappable Keyboard Shortcuts), Audio (Music, Ambience and Sound Effects), Interface (Show Game News, Spell Effects, Battle Grid and a few others), Player (Player and Enemy Units options), AI (AI Personality, Hero and Troop Experience, Centre Camera, Track Unit Movement and a couple other options), Tooltips (AI Units, Selection and Spell Bars, Use Ability/Item Dialog, Inventory Items, Unit Buttons, Other Buttons).

There is other information you can find in Player Guides, Game Manual, Item Directory and Spell Compendium to help you along.

I found the game at first a bit slow and I was getting my botty spanked a few times. After a while though things started to pick up as I started to build and equip my group. The game isn’t very complicated to play and there is a ton load of options you can mess around with to create that perfectly balanced game for your pleasure. What really put me off a bit was the inventory and equipment of items. It’s just very frustrating jumping in and out of several screens to equip something. Apart from that the game isn’t too bad overall.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!