Big, Compelling Fantasy Battle Game with Virtually Infinite Replay
At its base, Battles of Norghan is a miniatures-like fantasy battle game, in which you command armies of diverse fantasy races and unit types in "i go/you go" turn-based combat. But unlike other games that do something similar, Battles of Norghan overlays a sport league metaphor; initially, you are competing for the trophy of a minor league, and ultimately strive to build up both the power of your units and the reputation of your team until you can strive for and win the ultimate "Cup of Glory."
Consequently, rather than playing through a series of set-piece, custom designed battles, you have an enormous amount of control over what sorts of units you deploy--and you never know quite what you'll go up against in the next battle, because your opponents' forces are governed by AI choices and a degree of randomness.
Together with the fact that there just an enormous amount of stuff in the game, in terms of different races, unit types, equipment, and magic, and you have a game with virtually unlimited variety--and new things that can surprise you as your strength (and the strengths of the opponents you face) increase over time.
Indie games, given the smaller resources used to develop them, often have to make compromises in terms of content, play time, or depth; that isn't the case here. To be sure, this is a 2D sprite-based game, not a RTS 3D extravaganza--but in terms of actual gameplay, amount of content, sheer variety, and "just one more turn" compulsion, Battles of Norghan makes no compromises. For what's basically a one-man effort, it's a major accomplishment.
The developer says:
Battles of Norghan is a unique fantasy turn-based strategy game with RPG and team managing elements. Recruit mercenaries of 22 different fantasy races and many classes to fight for your clan from one turn-based battle to another in divisions and cups while training, teaching spells and buying equipment from a very broad selection for the clan's mercenaries.
In Battles of Norghan, you manage a clan consisting of members and mercenaries of many different fantasy races and classes recruited by you from the mercenary camp on an auction basis by offering one of the five types of contracts with a better pay than what the competing clans have bid for the unit if they have.
You buy them equipment, spells, train them and get prepared for the next battle while viewing various ranking tables and statistics. Those battles are mostly between clans in the same division or cup and sometimes even challenge battles. Battles are based on turn-based strategy and you and your enemy take turns to issue commands to the units.
In battles you move the creatures with a mouse or hotkeys, attack enemy creatures with one of the ranged or melee attacks and use spells to aid your own units, summon creatures or to kill- or weaken enemy units. Your members and mercenaries will learn to fight better as they improve their skills in battles and in the training camp.
The maps are randomly generated with realistic algorithms and they contain all sizes and shapes of rocks, flowers, plants, bushes, trees, rivers, ponds, lakes and bridges. This means that every time you have a battle, you will battle it out in different terrain ("map"). There are four very different terrain themes; grass, lush grass, dirt and desert.
The ultimate goal of the game is to get to the premier division and win the division. You start from the 8th division and if you win enough battles during the season your clan will get in the next division. You lose if you are the last clan in the 8th division at the end of a season or if your gold debt is too high to the supporting noble.
The game is quite complex and features a lot of neat details, making the game hard to master but still being easy enough to learn for even the less experienced players. The design part of this game probably took about as long as making it. This means that a lot of thinking, time and balancing were done to even the smallest parts of this game.
Features
- 3 different very long and exciting single-player modes where you can play with 1-6 clans, choosing from a large number of difficulties, in which one is guaranteed to match your skills. It takes averagely 70+ or even hundreds of hours (in game mode C) to reach the first position in the premium division when playing with the normal difficulty. Note that Battles of Norghan doesn't even really ever end but you can choose to end it after you've achieved the first position in the premium division. Still, there are a lot of other goals than beating the game along the way like winning the grand cup, advancing to division X etc. so you can define some shorter game goals as well if you like.
- Multi-player mode with 1-6 players playing the normal game mode on the same computer with the abilities to battle against each other and computer controlled opponents.
- 22 playable fantasy RPG races or different types of units available for recruiting from the mercenary camp. Each race or unit type has a rival of which they can't be in the same clan with so you will have to choose which one of the rival races' units you recruit. The unit classes are ranging from rangers to mages or fighters and anything in-between.
- 42 unique spells, featuring Destruction, Enchantment, Restoration and Conjuration spells.
- 200 very-well balanced, unique items. Including one and two-handed melee weapons, missile weapons, shields, armor, helms and magical staves.
- Great replayability, because you can never use all of the features of the game by "beating" the game once and you will most likely want to "beat" the game with harder difficulties and choosing different races/types of units and equipment for your units.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) controlled clans have four very different intelligency levels, while the worst one is quite easy to beat the AI 3-4 levels are so intelligent that even skilled players will find them hard to beat in fair battles. The management part is also handled by the higher AI levels about as well or better than even the game's developers can do without calculating their every decision. The AI controlled clans are made to choose a random intelligent decision in all appropriate places and/or to calculate desirability values (just how intelligently it calculates desirability values depends on the AI value) for each available action and then to pick the best action available. The differences between the four AI intelligence levels are noticable and significant.
Reviews
"Battles of Norghan is a strange combination of tactical combat and management sim. You control a "clan" of various warriors, wizards, monsters and mythical creatures. You hire them (under a range of contracts), train them, buy them equipment and spells and choose which to send into battle. You then play a series of battles against rival clans in your bid to become the champions...definitely aimed at the more thoughtful, strategy inclined gamer. Once you get into this game, you're hooked."
- 78%, Bytten
"All too often people make the mistake of assuming casual and indie games are all simple and showy and lacking in any depth. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard my “hardcore” gamer friends dismiss a title just for being casual. Well, Mitorah’s game, Battles of Norghan, is a swift kick to the teeth for all such statements, and proves just how hardcore, and awesome, an indie game can be. "
- Casual Review
Awards
Silver Star Award, Bytten
Our Review
Battles of Norghan
Submitted by DrJ on Wed, 2006-12-13 22:32. The WordMagical Mystery Tournament
Review of Battles of Norghan
By Dr. J.
The marriage of a sports management-style game with tactical combat seems like a natural. To be sure, it is more difficult to accomplish than a pure management simulation, but for those of us who are control freaks, it’s extremely satisfying to actually command our ranged units (wizards, mystery archmages, and archers) on when to let their missiles of destruction fly and to order our heavy-duty (knights, black knights, giants, and minotaurs) into melee after the magical and medieval artillery have softened their targets.
Battles of Norghan (BON) offers the features I like most about Colisseum from Stormcloud Creations. Players have the chance to assemble rosters from a pool of freelance fighters and must balance the salary and equipment demands with some measure of profitability. In many ways, BON is like Arcadia that Stormcloud Creations is currently developing. In this case, players recruit fighters into a clan, manage training and equipment, and recruit temporary fighters to meet needs during upcoming engagements. Although BON does not have the quest mechanism built into Arcadia, its training and equipping systems are significantly more robust. Plus, a new clan is instantly placed into the lowest of eight divisions so that it does not have to compete with the toughest clan in the game from the beginning.