Warlock 2: The Exile, the antiparticle squeal to Warlock: Master of the Arcane, is now available. For those of you that haven’t read my preview, Warlock 2 is a 4X strategy game that is similar to the Civilisation series, that takes place after the last DLC of the original, after witch the world was broken into shards. It does have significant changes from the original, with a now tiled shard world system, you must build an army, research magic and crush your enemies.
Warlock 2 does, as one might expect share many features with with the other’s in it’s genre, such as it’s Hex-based map style and turn placed play. However while a 4X game it is by no means a Civ’ 5 clone. Focusing more on the exterminate and explore aspects, Warlock 2 places a large emphasize onto the combat of the game, with a rugged and robust system that holds up well for both small skirmishes and when throwing full armies against each other. Unit’s assist others that are near by with ranged unit being about to provide support to melee units. Unit’s also fall back to try and negate damage or allow you to retreat if it takes too much damage too quickly. The idea of building an army isn’t too hard ether, while it is possible to simply build units at your city’s, you can also get unit’s from quest rewards or there is a chance after defeating a neutral mob for you to gain control of it, the multiple way to gain unit allows you to build and maintain an army with out spending ours simply cranking them out from production queues. This system allows for some interesting strategies, and that is with out even mentioning the use of combat and utility spells, but more on them later. There are a great many other difference’s that separate Warlock 2 from the main genre of 4X games and lest the game carve out it’s own portion of real estate, including but not limited to it’s quest system, spells that range from simple fireballs, to the summoning of dragons and plunging the land under sea level. It is easy to see after only a short time of play that Warlock 2 has it’s own ideas and deserves a place up next to the other big 4X games.
A big part of the Warlock 2 game that many who play other 4X games might find strange are the neutral mob’s, these mob’s are not like barbarians from Civilisation, no these mob’s can cause a lot of damage even late game and will continuously spawn new lairs in the fog of war, each shard has it’s own monsters and they are dangerous even to veteran unit’s. This means that unless you have the whole of a shard explored and constantly under watch, your city’s are not safe, the mobs as well as other players ability to insert unit’s into your lands, mean that you really feel like you have to protect you whole kingdom and not just have unit on the boarders that expand your territories.
Previously mentioned was the quest system, Warlock 2, has both a sandbox mode and a campaign, a true campaign with other character’s a story, quest arcs. You play as the Exiled warlock from the first game, the land broke into shards and you have to traverse these shards in order to reclaim the heart of the land Ardania and reforge the lands under your rule. When playing the campaign you have an overarching quest to unite the land but you are given sub-quests to help you accomplish this. At one point one of the my city was besieged by random spells sent by one of the United one’s (the bad guy) subordinate mage, who would only go away after I had proven that I had mastered a spell that even he did not know. This lead me on a quest to find an old witch, earn a large amount of money and then having to summon a Rainbow dragon. This type of quest must be done to advance the story, although it by no means stops you from build a bigger army or expanding to new city’s.
The other type of quests available in Warlock 2 are side quests that pop up randomly for you to ignore or indulge in at your wish, these quests can be anything from simply needing to deal with a bad crop harvest before you lose population to starvation to the need to defeat an epic monsters such as a legion of vampires that request a full several squads worth of units to deal with. These quest normally provide small rewards such as gold, mana or simply happiness for your people, but some have greater rewards such as enchanted equipment for your lord’s. The way in which these quests random turn up can provide a fun distraction for the player, adding a degree of unexpectedness to each playthough.
A mine feature to the Warlock games are the spells and your ability to use the. There are a great number of different spells in Warlock 2, that allow for a variety of game play choice. Some spells are pretty simple a fire ball, that causes damage to an enemy unit or a heal ability that can give you unit’s that edge in combat, however there are a great number of other spells that can change the gameplay completely if used correctly, or with a little creativity. Spells that cause the land to be covered in snow can be aimed towards the enemy city’s causing them to run low on food or other resources, the land can be raised up creating barriers or choke points for combat, alternatively sink the land into the sea to buy time. Warlock 2 has a spell for everything you could want and this really adds a level of play unseen in most 4X games while against the AI these spells can be used pretty simply, it is when you play against other player’s that spells add a whole new dimension to the play, allowing for complicated strategies to be created to use against the enemy rather than simple flanks or charges with an army.
Warlock 2 does an good job of easing you into the game play, teaching you what resources you have available to you, how to use them and then unleashing you into the world. With only 3 resources, gold, mana, and food it is easy to keep track of how well you land is doing economically and to make sure that you know what structures to build in order to expand. I have a fair amount of experience with 4X games and found the UI easy to understand and it easy to keep track of everything I owned, from my resources, individual city level, lord’s, research, quests and my army, while it can seam like a lot to look at Warlock 2’s first few quests and tutorial help to ease you into understanding what your doing. I do expect that some player’s new to the genre might have a bit of a hard time at first after a few hours of play, it should become familiar.
Not covered in my preview was the editor tools that came with the release version, these tool work with steam workshop, to let you customise the game to your hearts content. You can change everything in game lands, unit’s, lords, character’s, item’s spells and more, theses mods can be customised completely with new images, values, effect and such. This system can be used by both new player’s and skilled fans alike to create everything they could want more re-playabilty to a game that you can already play over and over again. In the hands of those with true skill I can see some amazing mods being made that change the game completely that could provide hours of entertainment.
All of this is not to say that Warlock 2 does not have problems of it’s own, the game while having a great combat system has a very limited diplomatic feature, while you can create alliances and there are options for diplomatic play, it is obvious that the game was built around combat, while this is fine as long as you understand what type of game you getting into it is something to keep in mind. Another issue with the game is large amount of things that game be done in game, while a strength in and of it’s self, and the game does have a good tutorial system, new player may feel overwhelmed by the amount that they can do and the options available and this can lead to a narrow very and play style, in the single play this isn’t such a big issue although it might take some fun away, in multi-player it is easy for a player to with experience to completely dominate a play with little experience due to the tactics that can be brought into play, using the ability’s given to player’s such as raising and lowing the land to change the battlefield, again this is not really a weakness of the game but a strength that must be watched out for by new players.
In conclusion Warlock 2: the Exile is a brilliant game that brings it’s own twist on the genre with an amazing combat system and tactical options and combat strategist will love this game’s versatility. While having diplomatic features, those that are looking for a game that can be played solely in this manner will not enjoy Warlock 2. New players to the game and genre should enjoy Warlock 2 immensely but should watch out for a few of the traps that they might not be expecting but should have a lot of fun once accustom to the game. With the release of the editor with the game Warlock 2 should provide hours of entertainment, with the possibility of many more in the form of mods created by the community. Warlock 2 provides a unique experience I have not found elsewhere and will be looked at differently by fan’s of 4X games depending on your play style, it is a game that you should true atleast once if your a fan of the genre.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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