Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye comes across as a soundly unique game. It takes micromanagement to the next level where each hero you control has to be given a task for each of the 13 months of the year. If you maintain continuous tasks for the same character they become specialists. You can specialize in anything from masonry and quarrying to stealth and combat.
You play any of 18 heroes of Irish legend each leading small tribes of followers to ultimately conquer the 42 provinces of Ireland in pre-roman times and then drive out the evil other-world conquerors.
Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye comes across as a soundly unique game. It takes micromanagement to the next level where each hero you control has to be given a task for each of the 13 months of the year. If you maintain continuous tasks for the same character they become specialists. You can specialize in anything from masonry and quarrying to stealth and combat.
You play any of 18 heroes of Irish legend each leading small tribes of followers to ultimately conquer the 42 provinces of Ireland in pre-roman times and then drive out the evil other-world conquerors. Each hero begins with several skills sets and if they are lucky start with a non-acquirable talent; e.g. vitality allows you to recover faster on the field of battle. In
between long periods of developing your provinces and enhancing your heroes (fighters, druids, and bards) and increasing their experience level to allow greater amounts of hit points and combat ability; you will periodically attack or defend another province.
The combat field is excellent for its time. You select one hero leader who if captured or killed will end the battle. You can be accompanied by up to 6 other heroes each with a small band of soldiers. The coolest feature with these wars is the ability to recruit almost the heroes you defeat by capturing them thus continually expanding your kingdom. It creates a bit of a domino effect in the game where in the beginning it may take several years to capture a couple provinces, but once you have conquered a third of the provinces it quickly rolls into conquering 3 -4 provinces a month and acquiring a unique magical artefact for your heroes once a year. This saves the game from becoming mindlessly monotone with the micro-management.
If you find that you don't enjoy the combat you can instead take the path of diplomacy and slowly annex kingdom after kingdom. The only downside to the game involves the spell system. It was a great concept to use runes to cast spells, but they never give you the correct combinations in the manual, which leaves you spending huge amounts trying to figure all the given combinations of runes.
A definite must buy game with infinite replayability with all the different starting heroes and methods of conquest and diplomacy.
