As you may have read elsewhere, Warlock 2 makes a number of key changes to the core ‘Warlock’ formula. The new mode, ‘Exiled’ mode, is the new story-driven campaign that takes place several years after the events of the last game’s final DLC – ‘Armageddon’. While the ‘player’ was away fighting evil, another great Mage cast the insta-win spell and became ruler of Ardania, and Exiled everyone else to the broken shards of the outlying lands. The aim of the game is to travel from shard to shard, to get back to Ardania itself and beat the up-start little so-and-so, along with his four lieutenants. It takes the ‘multi-dimension’ theme of the original game and focuses it a bit more, and makes it more integral to the flow of the game.
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| Managing your empire across so many worlds can get confusing |
Coming back to the management aspect of the game, your empire is limited to the amount of cities you can control, and you have a lot of ground to cover to get to the ‘final’ world. Being an empire-based game however, you’re ability to ‘operate’ too far outside your empire’s domain is also difficulty, so your empire has to grow along with you. This is where the art comes in – you’ll have your main cities that will grow and develop over time, but as you find the need to expand outward, you’ll need to do something about the old cities, or perhaps with the new ones you are laying down. Cities can be converted into ‘special’ cities, that don’t count towards your empire’s limit but also don’t act in normal ways. Free-towns, for example, will give you resources towards your empire’s total, but you can’t build anything in them. Fortress towns act like giant-super forts, and are great for guarding empire borders or gate entrances. You can also build ‘shrine’ cities which will improve your relationship with a particular God, allowing you to make use of their bonuses and unique traits.
That’s not to say the original set-up has been kicked to the curb. Warlock 2 has a ‘legacy’ mode where you can play the game as it was in the first game, with the updated mechanics etc… for Warlock 2. We haven’t tried this out properly yet, so we don’t know if the weaknesses that were in the old game are still in inherent, but it’s nice to see it still around. The funniest/scariest/hardest thing about the original Warlock was the travelling to different dimensions and getting your ass handed to you by the tough monsters that resided there. The spirit of that remains in this, in both the Exiled mode and Legacy play.
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| Even if all else fails, your starting ‘shard’ should always remain a stronghold |
The original Warlock was an interesting game, if at times little more than a fantasy-based Civilization. Warlock 2 has taken the things that the first game did well, and improved on them ten-fold, while keeping it unique, as opposed to being something like Age of Wonders III. This is a good sequel, and InoCo should be proud of what they’ve accomplished. The original Warlock had a great DLC library to back it up as well, so we look forward to seeing some of the post release content that the team will produce. Warlock 2: The Exiled is due out on April 10th.
Most Anticipated Feature: Seeing how an Exiled mode game plays out in the later stages, when you’re ready to invade Ardania itself.
