The Battle for Wesnoth

Fantasy games may appear to be the same in most regards to the untrained eye, but those who enjoy them know that it couldn’t be more wrong. Azeroth has very little in common with Faerun, and even less so with Tamriel. Middle Earth is funnily enough a middle ground between these, most likely because all of the above borrowed and modified elements from Tolkien’s work.

The Battle for Wesnoth does not take place in any of the realms mentioned above, but it is very similar in many regards. There are orcs, elves and humans fighting for supremacy, as well as all sorts of wizards and nasty creatures looking for trouble. The game is a TBS in the purest sense of the word, which means that you should be able to deploy your most hardcore tactics and strategies with it.

You are even greeted by multiple campaigns to choose from, each one of which features a different conflict. One of them puts you in the middle of a struggle between two orc tribes, while another challenges you to win the throne of Wesnoth and rule over the entire realm. Thanks to the variety of available scenarios, you should be able to get a lot of game time out of the campaign mode.

The gameplay is the most intriguing part of the game, because it’s not what you would expect in the genre. While the movement is a lot like what you may have seen in Heroes of Might and Magic, each unit has a separate instance on the map, including the hero. Hence, the movement needs to a lot more calculated and careful, especially since there are bonuses or penalties to defense depending on the type of terrain you are fighting on.

Speaking of which, the combat is as simple as it can get, at least on the surface. All you need to do is get your units near the enemy and attack. That’s hardly a winning tactic, on the other hand, since there are many other factors that come into play. The graphics are more than decent as well, albeit slightly old at this point in time. It certainly looks like it’s from another era, so it can probably play the nostalgia card.

In the end, The Battle for Wesnoth makes no concessions regarding gameplay complexity, so you should go in prepared for that. However, there is a tutorial in place to get you started, not to mention the three different difficulty levels available for every campaign.