Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria Demo

Although the fantasy TBS genre revolves around franchises like Heroes of Might and Magic, King's Bounty and Disciples, Warlords is also part of this exclusive club, despite its rather different set of ideas. Most of the mechanics are largely the same, on the other hand, given the fact that you have to produce units, explore the map and defeat the enemies that stand before you in order to advance through the story.

Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria is a turn-based strategy game in which your purpose is to become a mighty warlord, by subjugating every rival city, defeating the evil creatures that roam the land and gathering as much treasure as you can in the process. Obviously, all of this is achieved through magic and a sizable army, which can either be trained in one of your own cities, or hired when they ask to join you themselves.

At the beginning of the campaign, you are allowed to create a warlord, which sticks with you throughout the game and even in the other available modes, including skirmish. You can choose his/her name, race and appearance, as well as a few other attributes that influence your play style. Naturally, you can always create a new one from scratch if you get bored with the old one, although by doing so, the experience points are lost and you have to take it from the top.

The game world is about as fantasy-like as possible, which means that it is filled with knights, dragons, castles and plenty of other unpleasant creatures. Although you usually start off with only one city, which is also your main one and houses your overlord, it is possible to conquer others along the way. After you defeat the forces guarding the gates of the targeted castle, you have the option to either make it yours, raze and plunder it, or take everything of value from it and burn it to the ground. While the second option leaves the city in ruins, it can still be rebuilt if you wish to do so, but the latter practically erases it from the map and you cannot bring it back.

The battle system is quite different from what you would see in HoMM or Disciples, since there is no grid and you actually cannot move the units at all on the battlefield. Rather, you just select one unit from the available ones and pit it against one unit from the enemy's roster, and so on until one of the two sides runs out of units to spare. Hence, although you can employ a more tactical approach from time to time, by casting spells and choosing the most efficient units, the system is still pretty simplistic and not very challenging most of the time.

Obviously, Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria is not a perfect game, but it can provide you with a few hours of fun, especially if you are a huge fan of the genre. The casual combat system, huge load times between the turns and the rather clunky interface might be a bit hard to deal with, however, especially since a lot more could have been achieved with the elements at hand.