Godliberator
Well-Known Member
The game I will be going over will be the most recent update to the Epic War series created by Artlogic Games and sponsored by Armorgames.com and Kongregate.com. I will be reviewing Epic War IV, Alliance of Heroes today and a link to this game can be found here ---> http://armorgames.com/play/6432/epic-war-4 <---.
The initial start screen looks beautiful.
Elves and a dwarf and possibly Gandalf the gray, it draws you in from the beginning.
Click to begin a new game and after a very short paragraph you are brought to the first screen and a dialog box explaining to make sure to arrange your hero and army and after each battle you achieve gold which you can spend on upgrades for your hero. For the most part the premise of this game is simple; defend your castle with your hero and army, while fighting to destroy your enemy’s castle and army. Each battle will win you gold, and you can spend your gold on upgrading you army, so you can then fight stronger armies to achieve more upgrades, so you can fight stronger armies.
Before you can begin you must start by arranging your army. When you begin your hero is Viegraf the Red and his Goblin army.
Once you have your army arranged, you can then begin the first level. You select to play on normal difficulty and the battle will begin. Battle game play is very simple, your army will begin to spawn and stack at your base, you can click a unit and click an area of the battlefield or click the march button for the selected unit or the assault button to have all units attack at once, and if things get too heated you can select a unit and click to retreat that selected unit, or you can click to fallback for all units. At the top of the battle screen is your health, your mana bar, your enemy’s health bar and the white flag in case you wish to forfeit the battle. If a unit is killed in battle another will respawn a short time afterwards and these times vary from unit to unit and change according to any upgrades you apply to them. The army will not begin to spawn until the hero has come onto the battlefield, and in the event your hero dies, they will no longer spawn until he has respawned. The first battle will be a cakewalk, and of course by cake I mean goblin blood and castle ruins.
Once the battle is complete the outcome will be shown and this will list anything you earned from the battle. Now you are introduced to upgrades for your units.
This is what the upgrade screen looks like and you can see that you have unit paths in relation to your upgrades. The units that are grayed out are able to be unlocked and the blacked out units need to have the unit before them unlocked before they become available to be unlocked. This brings us back to the original premise of fighting battles to get gold, to gain upgrades, to fight bigger battles to get bigger upgrades and so on and so forth.
Once you pass level 5 you can then go back to the previous levels you have beaten to play it on hard difficulty, to once again earn more cash to get to the higher levels.
The difference from normal and hard is ridiculous and you will undoubtedly be replaying levels over and over to upgrade your units and abilities to best the enemies in these levels.
As you continue to progress through the levels the difficulty curve becomes increasingly higher and larger enemies and abilities start to show up which causes you to replay several missions using various strategies and continually upgrade your abilities and army to come back and eventually defeat the level.
Level 12 is technically the last level in the game, however once you defeat the level 12 boss, levels 13 to 15 will open up and you can attempt these as well. These levels are extremely difficult even on the normal difficulty and each contains a specific boss for you to beat. The most aggravating being the shadow goblin, which no matter what will one hit K.O. your ass hardcore and is invulnerable to all but one attack. However this is a good level to use for replay to build your money as the stream of regular goblins is relentless and easily defeated.
Once you also beat 5 levels on hard difficulty, you also unlock the epic difficulty on those same levels.
Once again the difficulty is ramped up to insane levels that will cause you to rage extremely hard, each level has a boss, that does respawn, when the enemy’s health gets to a certain point, mass amounts of enemies will spawn and over run you if you are not prepared for it, and it will cause you to just sit back and ask what the crap just happened….and this starts with level 1. The higher the level you go, the more ridiculously over powered the enemy combatants are, and the more you want to rage quit, and the more you find yourself playing lower levels to gain cash to go back to beat the higher levels because as angry as you get at those levels, the more you feel challenged to beat them and the more addicting the game becomes because of the beautiful game play and you just want to see what that next ability does.
This game will do that to you, the music and art draw you in, the powerful spells and attacks you unleash on your enemy will continuously keep you captivated, and the level of difficulty although enraging will give you that most satisfied feeling when you best that big boss.
Yes that guy is a huge pain in the ass, however the worst is still that shadow goblin, and when you finally defeat that level, this game keeps you coming back to beat it again on a hearder difficulty.
As a whole this game is hands down amazing and keeps its replay value, the wide variety of units and abilities to unlock and use will keep the strategy enthusiast entertained, watching your enemies get blown to bits from that dose of overkill will keep the gore enthusiast overly entertained, and the game storyline and setting will keep any fantasy enthusiast entertained as well.
The music is just the two different tracks that play over and over in the background however they are long enough that it does not sound repetitious and it adds the perfect background music to aide you in your conquest.
The only qualm I noticed with the game is when there are high amounts of enemy on the screen and you unleash a super powerful ability that will decimate hundreds of enemies, the action sequence does get a tad choppy, however that put aside it still does not take much away from the game itself as for the most part the game play is smooth and consistent.
There are the three previous epic war titles which are worth going back and playing, however with epic war four, Artlogic really perfected the game, and you can most definitely see this through playing the previous titles.
The guys at Artlogic definitely put out a beautiful game that will have you playing for hours, my full complete run had me sinking about 6 hours of playtime just to get that full complete in epic mode with everything unlocked(mainly trying to beat that damn shadow goblin), playtimes will vary from person to person of course, but this is a must play game for any kind of gamer as this game really does a good job of combining some of the best of the various elements that go into creating a good game.
Be sure to check this game out and leave your comments and suggestions below.
The initial start screen looks beautiful.
Elves and a dwarf and possibly Gandalf the gray, it draws you in from the beginning.
Click to begin a new game and after a very short paragraph you are brought to the first screen and a dialog box explaining to make sure to arrange your hero and army and after each battle you achieve gold which you can spend on upgrades for your hero. For the most part the premise of this game is simple; defend your castle with your hero and army, while fighting to destroy your enemy’s castle and army. Each battle will win you gold, and you can spend your gold on upgrading you army, so you can then fight stronger armies to achieve more upgrades, so you can fight stronger armies.
Before you can begin you must start by arranging your army. When you begin your hero is Viegraf the Red and his Goblin army.
Once you have your army arranged, you can then begin the first level. You select to play on normal difficulty and the battle will begin. Battle game play is very simple, your army will begin to spawn and stack at your base, you can click a unit and click an area of the battlefield or click the march button for the selected unit or the assault button to have all units attack at once, and if things get too heated you can select a unit and click to retreat that selected unit, or you can click to fallback for all units. At the top of the battle screen is your health, your mana bar, your enemy’s health bar and the white flag in case you wish to forfeit the battle. If a unit is killed in battle another will respawn a short time afterwards and these times vary from unit to unit and change according to any upgrades you apply to them. The army will not begin to spawn until the hero has come onto the battlefield, and in the event your hero dies, they will no longer spawn until he has respawned. The first battle will be a cakewalk, and of course by cake I mean goblin blood and castle ruins.
Once the battle is complete the outcome will be shown and this will list anything you earned from the battle. Now you are introduced to upgrades for your units.
This is what the upgrade screen looks like and you can see that you have unit paths in relation to your upgrades. The units that are grayed out are able to be unlocked and the blacked out units need to have the unit before them unlocked before they become available to be unlocked. This brings us back to the original premise of fighting battles to get gold, to gain upgrades, to fight bigger battles to get bigger upgrades and so on and so forth.
Once you pass level 5 you can then go back to the previous levels you have beaten to play it on hard difficulty, to once again earn more cash to get to the higher levels.
The difference from normal and hard is ridiculous and you will undoubtedly be replaying levels over and over to upgrade your units and abilities to best the enemies in these levels.
As you continue to progress through the levels the difficulty curve becomes increasingly higher and larger enemies and abilities start to show up which causes you to replay several missions using various strategies and continually upgrade your abilities and army to come back and eventually defeat the level.
Level 12 is technically the last level in the game, however once you defeat the level 12 boss, levels 13 to 15 will open up and you can attempt these as well. These levels are extremely difficult even on the normal difficulty and each contains a specific boss for you to beat. The most aggravating being the shadow goblin, which no matter what will one hit K.O. your ass hardcore and is invulnerable to all but one attack. However this is a good level to use for replay to build your money as the stream of regular goblins is relentless and easily defeated.
Once you also beat 5 levels on hard difficulty, you also unlock the epic difficulty on those same levels.
Once again the difficulty is ramped up to insane levels that will cause you to rage extremely hard, each level has a boss, that does respawn, when the enemy’s health gets to a certain point, mass amounts of enemies will spawn and over run you if you are not prepared for it, and it will cause you to just sit back and ask what the crap just happened….and this starts with level 1. The higher the level you go, the more ridiculously over powered the enemy combatants are, and the more you want to rage quit, and the more you find yourself playing lower levels to gain cash to go back to beat the higher levels because as angry as you get at those levels, the more you feel challenged to beat them and the more addicting the game becomes because of the beautiful game play and you just want to see what that next ability does.
This game will do that to you, the music and art draw you in, the powerful spells and attacks you unleash on your enemy will continuously keep you captivated, and the level of difficulty although enraging will give you that most satisfied feeling when you best that big boss.
Yes that guy is a huge pain in the ass, however the worst is still that shadow goblin, and when you finally defeat that level, this game keeps you coming back to beat it again on a hearder difficulty.
As a whole this game is hands down amazing and keeps its replay value, the wide variety of units and abilities to unlock and use will keep the strategy enthusiast entertained, watching your enemies get blown to bits from that dose of overkill will keep the gore enthusiast overly entertained, and the game storyline and setting will keep any fantasy enthusiast entertained as well.
The music is just the two different tracks that play over and over in the background however they are long enough that it does not sound repetitious and it adds the perfect background music to aide you in your conquest.
The only qualm I noticed with the game is when there are high amounts of enemy on the screen and you unleash a super powerful ability that will decimate hundreds of enemies, the action sequence does get a tad choppy, however that put aside it still does not take much away from the game itself as for the most part the game play is smooth and consistent.
There are the three previous epic war titles which are worth going back and playing, however with epic war four, Artlogic really perfected the game, and you can most definitely see this through playing the previous titles.
The guys at Artlogic definitely put out a beautiful game that will have you playing for hours, my full complete run had me sinking about 6 hours of playtime just to get that full complete in epic mode with everything unlocked(mainly trying to beat that damn shadow goblin), playtimes will vary from person to person of course, but this is a must play game for any kind of gamer as this game really does a good job of combining some of the best of the various elements that go into creating a good game.
Be sure to check this game out and leave your comments and suggestions below.
