14 DAY TRIAL // Eador: Masters of the Broken World is a turn-based strategy game with fantasy influences and a very interesting core mechanic from developer Snowbird, combining hero and kingdom management with tactical battles.
The nearest reference point for the game is the Heroes of Might & Magic series, but Eador: Masters of the Broken World seems more complex than the Ubisoft series and more innovative.
The entire world of the game is made up of shards of land, all of them filled with creatures, strongholds, treasure and heroes.
All of them float in the void, threatened by Chaos, and a number of very potent entities with unclear origins try to unite them under their banner, via violent or diplomatic means.
Gamers need to build up their own areas, recruit various types of heroes and then create a force that will travel with them on the shard they are trying to control.
Each new area has a number of locations to explore and foes to battle and Eador: Masters of the Broken World is not afraid to throw some pretty tough challenges at gamers.
The player can choose to bribe them or simply fight for control and once that happens, the game moves to a hex-based tactical map that’s very similar to those seen in the first three Heroes of Might & Magic titles.
The major difference is that rather than alternatively moving one unit, the two opposing forces can each activat etheir full complement of forces, which makes initiative more important and means that placement is crucial for those who need to defend.
Units also have various special abilities in addition to their normal attacks and gamers also need to take into account their morale and the spells that the hero can deploy.
The entire world of Eador: Masters of the Broken World is fantasy based, but the development team at Snowbird also fills it with humor, including an assistant that constantly breaks the fourth wall while teaching the core mechanics of the game.
Eador: Masters of the Broken World is set to launch on the PC during April.
Worth a full Softpedia review? Yes.
