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A dark Secret meant to be hidden for eternity, has been uncovered and threatens to unmake the world. A human mage, newly armed with the forbidden secrets of the elves, is the on the loose and it's up to you to hunt him down with the Sorceress Gilwen and the ranger-lord Seagate. Over 100 units and five powerful heroes await your guiding hand. Destroy the mage.

Elven Legacy is a solid, strategic, challenging hex based SRPG that doesn't stray too far from the fundamentals of the genre. It's developed by 1c company, the largest Russian developer/publisher, and it's a PC game, which might explain the games complete lack of popularity here in NA. It's the sequel to Fantasy Wars, which is more or less identical in SRPG mechanics. It bears the most resemblance to the open source SRPG game The Battle for Wesnoth. It contains 18 campaign missions and 7 single player missions independent from the campaign.

Combat is very well balanced with the usual assortment of foot soldiers, archers, horsemen, flying units, stealth units, and siege engines. Units can earn XP and level up, gain access to special abilities, and equip items with various effects. There are a wide variety of abilities that include buffs, debuffs, armor/anti-armor, terrain bonuses, etc. The player must make a strategic choice of one ability out of three every time a unit levels up.

Unit production and economy don't play a very large role in this game. There's no constant source of gold to continue recruiting units with, instead you're expected to keep your units alive and level them up through the campaign. There's room for a variety of party setups, although generally you'll want to stick to a balanced party that can handle any situation.

There are 3 difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard), a scoring system based on turns taken (Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals), and no optional grinding. Adding to the hardcore anti-grinding stance, if the player fails to meet the Bronze medal requirement, the game ends. Gold and powerful items are scattered across the mission maps waiting to be picked up. The maps are designed so that it's impossible to kill every enemy or grab every reward if you're trying for a Gold medal, so it's often a strategic choice of what to do with the limited time available.

Difficulty modes are more than a matter of bumping up enemy stats. There are more enemies in the harder modes and they tend to be of a higher tier and level. Like most SRPGs, playing poorly will result in the game becoming impossible at the harder difficulties, since the players party isn't able to keep up with the increasingly stronger enemies. Most damage outcomes vary by only -1 to +1, so save/reloading a lot will not have much effect if your strategy is poor.

The story missions are fairly fast paced and have scripted events and lots to do. There are bonus missions that are unlocked for earning a gold medal in certain story missions. The bonus missions set you up with a one-mission-only army and are among the longest and most difficult in the game. Finally there are some well done single player missions that offer a variety of scenarios and challenges, all but one of which have gold medals to attain.

Getting a gold medal on all Hard difficulty missions requires efficient general strategy and mission specific strategies, and there's no way to mitigate the difficulty at all. If you're looking to test your SRPG skills this game certainly won't disappoint you. Even on Easy difficulty the game is quite a challenge for the average or unskilled gamer, as evidenced by the many reviews complaining about the challenge level. If your only experience with SRPGs has been easy, simple games like FFT or games by NIS or Idea Factory, this game will be a good kick in the pants to remind you of how skilled (or not) you are at SRPGs.

Not every mission has engaging and clever strategies to figure out, though. The story missions sometimes rely too heavily on the use of magic AOEs that cover a wide radius and deal a huge amount of damage. On some early missions mowing down enemies in a straight line then dropping a bunch of AOEs is the only strategy that needs to be employed. Later on though you'll need to save your limited AOEs for pivotal points during the mission. The last couple bonus missions and campaign missions are particularly challenging, but you can always switch down to an easier difficulty level at any time.

The AI plays a stationary strategy, knowing that if you want the gold medal you will have to approach it without much aggression required on its part. It's smart enough to hang back until it spots an opportunity to gang up on an exposed unit. However, it's usually all too eager to leave a good defensive spot like a city or castle to start attacking your forces.

If you are a fan of SRPGs you'll enjoy the solid mechanics, party management, and strategic depth/challenge in each mission. Put on your thinking cap and go buy this game and its expansions - easiest to purchase it online, since I doubt you'll find it in retail.

As others have said, the game has a good atmosphere and is complex. I haven't finished it yet but it is quite fun, just not enough time in my life for all the games. As I'm a turn based strategy gamer, it was right up my alley. If I had paid $50 for it, I might not be so happy but it is a great value for the around $20 that it is going for now.

I liked it, but not as much as the first game, Fantasy Wars. This is a full game, not an expansion, so you don't have to buy both.

Pros:
Excellent upgrade system.
Better story and acting than Fantasy Wars. (Not a major selling point.)
Solid use of terrain.
Challenging campaign and scenarios.
Good balance between rewards for map exploration and rewards for speedy completion of objectives.

Cons:
Crashes Frequently.
Cover picture has nothing to do with the game. (Although it gives an idea of what to expect from the cutscenes.)
No orc campaign. (The orcs are more fun than the elves, dwarves, and humans.)
Tactics are very simple to learn and master.
Not much content. If I hadn't played FW already, I would have felt gypped.

I like turn based fantasy strategy games, but this game did nothing to satisfy my itch for this under-represented niche in the video game industry. Elven legacy is pretty ho-hum with no replay value. The easy setting is pretty ridiculously hard. But after beating the game on easy, you should have a basic understanding of the NPC strategy and medium seems actually possible to beat. Unfortunately I doubt anyone would want to play through the boring campaign a second time. There is no random map generator, and only a few scenarios. So you can play the campaign, and play a couple scenarios. This game does not offer anything else.
Voice acting is pretty terrible, but could offer up some laughs.

I learned about this game in a conversation with a teenage relative of mine, who complained that it was impossibly difficult even on the easiest difficulty. He could not make it past the third (optional) mission, and he was getting frustrated. Together, we beat the mission, on the hardest difficulty, and with the best possible rating, but not before we had learned quite a bit about the game's mechanics.

So I want to make a few things clear, so you know what you are getting it, should you buy this game:

o The game is rather complex. Be prepared to spend some time figuring its intricacies - unit skills, terrain effects, morale effects, temporary effects from spells, neighbors, attacks, perks, etc...
o The game is too challenging to win by throwing your men at the enemy, even if you manage to "get there fastest with the mostest". You will have to understand the way his units interact, and you will have to devise a strategy to dismantle his formation.
o In some scenarios, there simply isn't time to both finish quickly enough to get the best victory reward, and to explore every corner of the map to get all the goodies to be found. This can be frustrating.
o The translation is not very good. Sometimes I read the mission briefings, and could not understand what the characters were trying to say.

That said, I loved the game. It is very satisfying, the campaign is long enough, and I found myself replaying the missions, trying to improve my final results (higher difficulty, fewer losses, more artifacts, faster completion)

This is a fantasy, turn-based strategy in its purest, and arguably best form.