Playing A Game Champions of Anteria PC

I played a demo of Champions of Anteria, what feels like forever ago, and remembered it as a simple tactical RPG with a light base-building touch. I don't know how I managed to avoid seeing the Warcraft III influences. Just imagine a custom map with only hero units (you know... like Dota), and which restricts base-building to turns inbetween hero missions.

In other words, Champions of Anteria is most like a remixed real-time strategy game with an action focus. That action focus isn't very good, though. (To be fair, neither is the base-building.)

Action controls often feel broken, for one thing: heroes can have commands queued up, but will ignore those commands under circumstances which I'm still not totally clear on. They'll auto-attack if enemies come within a certain range, but that range isn't clear either, so sometimes they'll stand around while their friends are fighting just a few steps away. And pathfinding often fails because a rock, or another hero, got in the way.

But I think the bigger problem with Anteria's combat is the fundamental rock-paper-scissors design of elemental strengths and weaknesses. There are five elements, which feels like a lot, and you can only take three heroes into battle, so... even with prior knowledge of the enemy's favored elements, there will invariably be some enemies to which you lack an advantage and some which have an advantage over you.

The magnitude of these elemental advantages is so great that it completely overshadows the game's other tactical features. This de-emphasizes special attacks, except for crowd control, and emphasizes the importance of unit positioning, which -- uhh, see previous notes regarding pathfinding.

Anteria's mediocre combat could've been carried by engaging base-building or storytelling, if it had those things. But the base-building is clearly in a back-seat role, acting mostly like an over-complicated menu for preparing combat items (like health potions) and very slowly-developed hero upgrades.

And the story, despite some dry-wit charm from the narrator, isn't attention-grabbing at all. It's a fantasy world and there's some evil wizard whose face needs to get punched. Each hero receives about ten seconds of characterization, far from enough to get invested in their backstories or personalities.

Champions of Anteria isn't "bad," exactly, but none of its key features are stand-out successes either. After 2-3 hours I feel like I've seen enough of Anteria.

Better than: Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim
Not as good as: Brütal Legend, Sid Meier's Civilization V
For a more intriguing genre hybrid, see: CastleStorm

Progress: Conquered like, two new territories.

Rating: Meh