Too Many Games!

You know what I’ve often found?

See, I get a lot of video games at once, a lot of times. I find a video game, I like it, and I play it for a week, which isn’t much really since I don’t have a lot of free time. Then I play another game the next week, which I just got, then the same thing happens a third week. Its annoying, because I want to play all these different games, but I often don’t have the time to play all three, so I end up playing well… only one or maybe even none.

For instance, I got Zeus: Master of Olympus the same week my brother got Prince of Persia. I played both, now I’m playing neither. I admit I had already started to get bored of Zeus (it’s a good game, just good in smaller doses), but Prince of Persia… I could have played that for a good while.

What happened? I got Majesty II from Jacob. Its also an amazing game, I really loved Majesty and thought it was one of the most well thought-out and unique games to be released over the past few years. Majesty II, while not perfect, does a lot of new, cool things that I really like and keeps the formula pretty much the same.

I am not playing Majesty much right now. What happened? I found this amazing game called Battle for Wesnoth. What is Battle for Wesnoth? It’s a hex-grid, turn-based, fantasy, strategy game akin to a strange combination of Fire Emblem and Age of Empires or something.

See, like Fire Emblem, a unit that is gone is gone for good and that’s it. Units gain experience and can be carried over from level to level so you’re encouraged to keep units alive, level them up, and keep on powering your army through the game. But unlike Fire Emblem, you’re expected to lose units and its perfectly acceptable if you complete a level having lost a unit or two. So in that way its kinda like your standards strategy game where your units are expendable and the only thing important is a few key, powerful or important (like heroes) units.

Anyways, the game has a few pretty cool little features. I’m playing a campaign that gives me access to a variety of elven, mermen, and human (and probably other things later on) units. Elves move fast through the forest, have high defenses in the forest, and possess the ability to move fast through forests, also, most of their units can wield both a bow as well as a sword, often to almost equal results. Humans… humans don’t seem particularly amazing, probably balanced overall, but with access to high damaging mages. Orcs are really strong and have brute force (duh) and mermen fight good in the ocean… but bad everywhere else, they also have the ability to swim in deep water.

One of the cooler features the game has is a meaningful day-night cycle. Warcraft III had a day-night cycle but it didn’t seem amazingly important, but in this game it really is. See, certain units fight better at night than at day. Orcs, being chaotic, fight really well at night, gaining a +25% bonus to attacks (and defense… I think) at night, but a -25% during the day! Humans, being lawful, have the opposite. Elves, being neutral, receive no benefits but have no penalties (making the elves more versatile, not the usual “sting you with arrows, but bad at everything else” guys. Nope, elves have good swordsmen, good archers, decent healers, and decent cavalry).

Anyways, it’s a good, entertaining, Strategy/RPG game. Best of all? Its free. Legally, free, that is, not “Jacob gave me Majesty II on a USB and I didn’t ask any questions” free, no, legally-you-can-download-it-from-a-website-and-that’- what-you-are-supposed-to-do-free.

I’ll write more about both this and Majesty II at a later point, though I really should play Majesty II some more before I do that… haven’t gotten too far in the game.