Turn-Based Strategy games are usually dense in terms of their aptitude. Eador: Masters of the Broken World; new to this genre has turned out to be exceptionally surprising with its quality and intensity. A game that takes you into an immense world full of excitement and makes you attached to it.

Starting with a motivating story of how the universe known as the Astral is divided into several Shards, where your role as a demigod is to rule as many shards as possible and eventually rule the Astral. In doing so, you must be cunning making your moves, diplomatic in maintaining relation with other demigods, and show your ruthlessness on the battlefield. The Astral, presented here, is a massive arena to conquer and rule, while the other demigods are equally effective taking control over the various shards to validate their supremacy. Each shard provides both technology and resources that gives you strategic advantage. But this isn’t a game where you simply take over shards after shards and overlay your supremacy. A strategic balance between discretion and domination is more essential to rule the Astral.

There are four different classes such as the Commander, Wizard, Warrior and Scout. Each of these roles has their distinctive strengths and weakness. Commanders are most effective when you are controlling a massive unit of soldiers playing on larger maps, while Warriors are best suited for smaller maps as they are deadly in melee combat. Scouts are most efficient at exploring and helps acquire bonuses to improve your stats, and the Wizards hold mysterious powers in their magic. At their maximum spell power, they can provide priceless benefits that other classes can’t. The characters can be most effective based on the map and resources gathered. Before you master the diplomacy of Eador, battles are going to be your key to success. The game will provide a synopsis of the enemies and terrain along with the rewards that can be obtained from a victory before you take part in bloodshed.

When you decide to conquer a shard the strategic map view appears. Shards presented in various provinces. As the game progresses, a number of choices keep on increasing added with complexity while conquering shards. Your hero is benefited by the resources each province provides and its uniqueness. With further exploration hidden treasures, artifacts and locations can be discovered from these provinces. There are vendors who can buy these explorations or your hero can be equipped with them. It is helpful to control a hero who is skilled and can provide unique benefits while capturing shards and to manage it. When you want to capture a shard, you don’t necessarily have to conquer all its provinces. When a few captured provinces are turned in thriving colonies, capturing the rest comes easily. Once captured, it is important to create structures to strengthen their defense as random events and revolts will take place often. When you have a good grip on the province captured, however creating industrial buildings will provides certain advantages. When a province possesses unique resources it helps to assemble certain structures that help reduce the cost and enable more carpentry.

Even though the game provides a very friendly tutorial, establishing the capital is still confusing. Most buildings come with certain requisites, and with the array of edifice you’re given to make, it becomes puzzling at times. Not to mention upgrading those buildings later on is another hassle. This requires you to spend a large amount of time on construction work, which someone not familiar with this series can easily get annoyed by.

While there’s nothing especially wrong with combat, it runs at a very slow tempo. There is an option to adjust the combat speed in the menu, but quite a few of the animations of the hero classes occur before the accompanied actions, disrupting the spectacle of battle. Yes, there combat scenarios are very pleasant to the eyes, but watching the same type of animation over and over again gets monotonous. Some animation mishaps occur, but the developer has promised a fix.

These drawbacks won’t hold you back from enjoying the game. Managing an Empire supposed to be a complex task and a massive game such as this is meant to be that way. The story itself will keep you busy for over 100 hours which comes with eight distinctive endings. For only $20, it’s a grand bargain. Bottom line, Eador: Masters of the Broken World is a game that fans of this genre shouldn't miss.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed