Etherlords II

"A great game that could have been fantastic."

Etherlords II is a good game, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. However, there are a few things that could have made this game so much better.

Graphics: Usually I'm not one to complain about graphics, but they look pretty bland and dated compared to today's other games. They look comparable to the graphics in ''Black and White'', which has been out for quite a while now. Very little improvement over the original. I at least expected something new. Its not all bad though. If you don't have a new machine, you shouldn't have a problem running this game. My computer is about a year old, running on a Geforce 2 and it ran perfectly.

Sound: Bland. Nothing special. Can't complain, but can't compliment either.

Gameplay: There is ONE thing in the combat structure of this game that single handedly kept me from giving this game a 8. When you kill an enemy, there is a chance that it will be resurrected with full health. Normally this would add a good sense of finger crossing hope, because you wouldn't think this would happen very often. It happens ALL the time. Every battle I played after I passed the first hour or so of the game, it happened at least four or five times. It needs to be lowered dramatically. It happens so often that it stops becoming fun and turns into tedious work. Other than this, I loved the combat system. You draw cards from a deck of 20, so you don't have DIRECT control over what you can do, which adds a bit of excitement, or at least it did for me. Then you also have the specializations, perks at level ups to improve your hero, and artifacts, which should sound very familiar. Why? Because this is a carbon copy of the Disciples series. Their heroes work the exact same way and in some cases can gain the exact same bonuses. It felt like a rehash, just tossing in things from their other games. I felt cheated, frankly. I thought this would be a new experience, but it felt very familiar because of this. None of this is bad though. I like this way of customizing my hero, but this isn't Disciples, I wasn't expecting Disciples, and I didn't want Disciples. I wanted something new. But it wasn't new, just like the graphics weren't new.

Conclusion: Despite the bad points I made, I honestly like this game. However, it could have been so much better. Strategy First usually impresses me with their titles. They usually feel polished fairly well and are pretty different from their other games, but this just felt they got lazy and decided to take the easy way out, hoping we wouldn't notice. If they can fix the extremely high chance of the enemy being resurrected to full, that alone will make the game drastically more fun. If that ever happens, I will be able to overlook everything else. However, this is such a sore and serious flaw for me that combined with everything else, I just can't look past it all to give it past a seven.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/03