Review: Conquest of Elysium 3

Conquest of Elysium 3 is an old school turn based fantasy strategy game. You start by choosing one of 17 different characters, e.g. Necromancer, Demonologist, Dwarf Queen, Troll King or maybe a High Priestess of Ba’al. The different character classes vary wildly in what special abilities they have and what parts of the world they should focus on conquering. E.g. the Demonologist needs sacrifices that you gain from towns and villages, but the Druid want special herbs that are found in forests. But of course gold is always good to have, so all classes can make use of a gold or silver mine, but only the Enchanter can make a Gold Golem out of it. 

Pros:

• Old school turn based rogue like, Has a board game feel about it in a way.
• Graphics are basic yet sufficient.
• Brief overview of the game rules on the main screen.
• Game options are plentiful, Pick text size,quality of graphics,opacity for the text boxes. Your typical sound options are in like master volume and sound effects volume.
• Actual game options when you go to start a game have just as much attention. Options like map size: tiny,small,large and huge to the many different types of society (time in history) to play in. Go from the dark ages to empire or even dawn of a new empire are just a sample of the 6 options. Course if your feeling lucky you can just hit random.
• Each society on the setup screen has a brief overview of what to expect in the game world.
• Choose from the 17 different classes of character to be, Maybe a troll king or a druid? maybe a scout or a warrior? Its upto you and to make it a bit easier every class has an info button that gives you quite an in depth bio on the class.
• Each class is truly unique and can have special abilities and move allowance.
• You can name your character what ever you want and yes you can put naughty words into it.( I checked for review purposes)
• You play against the AI and can select how many you would like to face with the maiximum a whopping 7 enemy AI! You can also select what class they are and what difficulty they run on. You can also assign them to teams so in practice you could group classes together.
• Selection of difficulty options, 10 to be precise going from the lowly piss boy easy mode to the devilishly hard emperor difficulty.
• Again if you want to mix it up and don’t want to pick teams you do have a unique random players option.
• The game world is a huge map with the whole map covered in darkness, You uncover the map as you move around.
• If a square has an enemy or town on it, It will be shown on the map as a square, Before you commit to a move you can click the square and get a description of the squares contents.
• Double tap your location to move your character across the map, You cannot go over mountains or lakes.
• Zoom in and out of the map by pinching the screen, The detail really comes through when you zoom right in.
• Enemies will move around the map randomly.
• You can hire/recruit new members to join your army and depending on your class depends how much you have to pay or trade for their services.
• Assign soldiers/followers to yourself or buy another commander to make another small army.
• You can trade resources with other towns/merchants as you uncover them.
• The game goes through the seasons, And in doing so the map will change so in Winter for example, Snow will lay about the mountains and lakes will look frozen.
• Animals will be scattered around the land and again if your the right class, You may be able to recruit them or use them in a unique way.
• The wealth of enemies/animals in the game is plentiful and it takes many hours of play until you start getting the same enemies.
• Gameplay mechanics are simple with a simple move,trade,upgrade end turn order to it. Once the end turn button is pressed any actions or fights will start.
• Randomized maps every time you play so it always feel fresh.
• Fights are automatic with a text dialogue describing what is happening. You can fast forward or skip the fight scene entirely.
• Upon death you can view the whole map uncovered and in its full glory. You will also get to look at a graph of your efforts.
• UI is clear once learnt and you have a constant UI that details health/sp/mp and cash and any resources.

Cons:

• Text is too small even on the largest setting. At time you will get notification text boxes at the bottom that are even smaller!
• No proper tutorial section or practice area.
• Huge learning curve as you have so much to take in.
• First few games are a frustrating confusing mess of stats and menus as you struggle to learn the game.

In Summary, The game has quite a big first obstacle which is trying to engage the player and teach them the rules of the game. This can be a long road but eventually it clicks. Man when it clicks its glorious, The game is really rewarding, deep and fun! After my first hour of swearing and shouting crazy obscenities at my tablet, I began to fear its a game that I could never get into. Kind of like trying to learn a new language with an abacus, Its funny for people to watch, But it doesn’t help you. But then out of the red mist I hit the formula and so glad I stuck with it. Now I have gone a full Xbox 360 on it and turned into a game I cannot put down. My advice is to stick with it and fans of the genre will just love the scope of depth it brings. I have tried many of the different classes and will be trying them all out and then trying all the different societies. There is just so much content you will be busy with the game for hours. The game also allows you to have multiple saves so I have a few characters on the go. If I had a chance to change a few things then a proper tutorial section is the first on the list. Then maybe a full Google Play achievement integrated version. So if you want loads of randomized map creation with a wealth of characters, abilities and army building fun, This is the game for you but please keep at it, Its a gem of a game, You just have to find it!