Final Verdict

Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria doesn’t live up to its illustrious predecessors. So many changes has cost the game its identity. Warlords III set the stage perfectly, transporting you to a fantasy realm that seemed almost real. Warlords IV is more like My First Turn-Based Strategy Game, and feels about as generic as it gets. It may be easy to get into, even easy to appreciate when you consider the somewhat elegant simplicity of the whole package. But the entire experience starts to get dull after no more than five or six hours of play. It’s a chore to even think about finishing the single-player campaign. More limited exposure with one-off skirmish maps and online play fares better, though even there it’s hard to stay interested for too long.


Most of all, the game seems like something of a wasted opportunity. I can understand why Infinite would want to go in new directions, especially after six years of the series languishing in limbo. But so much of this design is one-step-up and two-steps-back. Even if you appreciate the stripped-down style of play, there are real flaws to the presentation that limit the game’s audience. And the sheer speed in which scenarios develop and you crank out disposable unit after disposable unit makes me wonder if the developers somehow felt they had to apologize for being a turn-based game in a real-time world.

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