Back in 1999, a friend of mine was visiting my house. Total babe. She decided that she wanted to play a computer game; civilization 2, specifically, my favorite game. So I sat her down and got her on the computer and set her loose. She had a good ol' time, playing for about 30 - 45 minutes--- before dying. Big game over screen. "How on earth did that happen? I didn't think it was possible to actually lose!" Turns out that what she was doing was clicking from tile to tile, uncovering the map, moving her initial settler over mountains, hills, through forests, and uncovering delicious goodie huts. Until she ran into a barbarian and that was, as the saying goes, all she wrote. Even though she played the game objectively incorrectly, it was still fun, and once I showed her how to build a city, she lost all interest.
Fast forward 13 years. I fired up Fallen Enchantress beta last night and I am reasonably sure that I am doing it wrong.
On launching the game I selected an empire and fired up a map. I established my first city and ordered it to build a workshop. I immediately wondered if I should have built units. No matter! I can summon wargs! A window asking me what to research popped up. Problem: None of these technologies seem particularly interesting. Its not like I'm learning "The Wheel" or developing basic fireball spells-- its technology like "Civics." Boooooring. Regardless, I chose civics, which I assume launched me down a technological path. setting the course for the game. Or maybe not. Its hard to tell, reallly, since this is a strategy game with RPG elements, am I supposed to be specializing my empire or generalizing it? I did note that there were only three tech trees, rather than the entirely untenable 5 trees of WoM. I never did get the hang of that-- sorting out how much of each tree you needed to uncover; eventually something would come along and roll me, so I assumed I was going for too specialized a path.
I then wandered from combat to combat, killing various creatures and stealin' their pelts. I like this part; it gives your units something interesting to do rather than garrison cities or attack cities. I then lost a battle, lost the king and his friend I hired. I was getting sleepy-- a few too many brewskis-- so I went to bed.
So the reason that I'm writing my post today is that I really feel like my friend back in 1999. I just wander this game, and WoM before it, without a clear understanding of what I'm doing. Am I questing? Am I conquering? Am I supposed to be developing magic or weapons and units, or do I really have to do it all? Do the rest of you entirely forget about your cities while moving units around, or is that just me? In short, I cannot shake this rather nagging feeling of WoM and now FE. What is it, exactly? Is it a strategy game with RPG elements? An RPG with strategy elements? A unicorn-dinosaur combat simulator? I'm pretty sure its not the third one, but I can cross my fingers for the next stardock game.
