The turn-based strategy genre is feeling a bit dated nowadays; many gamers favour the instant action of real-time games such as Empire Earth III and Homeworld 2. I too am turning to RTS games more often these days, yet I live in the hope that there is still life in the old turn-based genre and that possibly it can be taught some new tricks. Approaching the frontlines to arrive early next year is Fantasy Wars, developed by Ino'Co and 1C, the latest addition to the ranks of the turn-based strategy. Was my hope of renewed life in vain? Most definitely not - Fantasy Wars is one of the most enjoyable turn-based strategies I've ever played.

The centrepiece of Fantasy Wars is its gameplay, both simple - due to a wonderfully easy-to-use and well structured interface - and complex, requiring intelligent strategies to achieve victory in battle. The straightforward interface is aided by the simple battlefield layout - each map, most of which are relatively large and detailed, is divided up into hexagons, making it really simple to move units - just click on a unit then click on a green hexagon without any impassable terrain problems. To make things even simpler, each unit only has one movement phase and one attack phase per turn - of course, you are free to move then attack or attack then move, but you don't have to perform both actions if you don't want to. Moving then attacking or attacking and then moving adds a basic strategic element to the game; do I move my Orc stabzas to attack those weak peasants or do I attack the archers next to me and then move to safety from the battalion of troopers afterwards? Obviously the order in which actions are carried out is not enough to determine the outcome of a battle, as any good strategist knows that the correct positioning of troops can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Each hexagon on the battlefield has its own terrain type and many give defensive bonuses or attack modifiers - handily displayed when you hold your mouse cursor over a hexagon. These bonuses increase or decrease your chance of victory in battle - initiate a charge from higher ground and you will do much better, but get into a fray when standing in freezing water and death is almost certain.

Continuing on the strategic theme, a typical mission begins with a deployment phase, allowing you to place the units you have chosen on the field. Units can only be placed on hexagons that are adjacent to controlled towns - there are only a few to start with, but more towns can be captured later when you decide to end deployment. Capturing towns is actually a critical aspect of the gameplay and the major way to make money - there's no boring resource management or endless ferrying of troops to and from gold mines here - this is war! The money looted from towns - the usual gold - can be used to train more units or fill the ranks of squads whose members have fallen in battle. Surprisingly even human towns have ample Orcs to refit squads - a bit perplexing but understandable to keep the flow of the game.

The best way to keep a game flowing is good narrative content with nothing too far fetched or confusing - and Fantasy Wars does not disappoint in this aspect either. The story is a three-pronged affair with a separate campaign explaining how each of the factions - Humans, Alliance and Orcs - view the conflict. Orcs seek only to bash things, leading to centuries of fighting between rival clans. Seeing this in-fighting for what it is - pointless - Hexers (Orc mages) send the biggest, meanest and cleverest Orc they can find - Ugraum Grableg - to reunite the clans and give the warring Orcs something sensible to kill - humans! Unfortunately, those pesky humans have a nasty habit of fighting back and the army of Captain Derrick Pfeil takes the responsibility of defeating them once and for all. Defeating the Orcs in the Human campaign and successfully bashing humans until death in the Orc campaign unlock the third campaign, focusing on the mysterious and fragile alliance between Dwarves and Elves.

Having a separate campaign for each of the three factions makes each campaign a bit shorter, but greatly benefits the game by not forcing you into playing one faction at the start - I'm an Orc man at heart and don't want to spend hours playing as the goody-goody Humans - at least not until I've had some skull-smashing fun first! Even though the campaigns are separate they all relate to each other by telling the same overall story - albeit through the eyes of each faction - which gives a kind of cohesion and sense of purpose, making the plot a lot easier to follow. In addition to the excellent narrative structure of these campaigns, a huge advantage over existing strategy games is that each is continuous - you start with an army and end with that same army. In many traditional strategy games, campaigns are too spread out, seeming far more like individual missions instead of a single power struggle - you are given fresh troops that come from nowhere and heroes are resurrected by unseen forces at the start of every mission. In Fantasy Wars every man, unit, creature and decision you make matters - lose a squad of cavalry and they aren't coming back - providing a sense of realism to the action.

Whilst the action seems real, the setting is obviously not intended to be, as is evident in the cartoon-like yet slightly realistic visual style of the game - similar to Warcraft 3 and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - which works remarkably well. The Orcs and Goblins are far from the disgusting, slavering monstrosities depicted in many games, driving would-be commanders away - in fact, they are actually rather comical and inviting without being overly silly. It is not just the units that benefit from this visual style either - battlefields look stunningly realistic, with lush, green grass, tall forests and tactic-changing murky swamps; even villages and towns look welcoming, not that you'd want to live in a town infested by Goblins! This brings me to one disappointment with the game - the towns, and more importantly capturing them, are just not enough fun. Towns, castles and other encampments are too small scale for detailed animation, like the to-ing and fro-ing of inhabitants, but I would have liked to see attackers crushing city walls before storming in to dispatch defenders. Instead of proper sieges, towns simply disappear when attacked, allowing the attackers to walk through their walls.

This problem with attacking towns only occurs with the view zoomed in to show individual units in a squad however. Individual units are grouped together in fixed size squads of the same type of character, even though they may look slightly different - a bit like Medieval II: Total War. For example, scouts are grouped in one squad while militia are in another, each occupying a single hexagon on the battlefield. This is not true for hero units like mages and Mr. Grableg himself however, who are so powerful that they're considered squads all by themselves. The fireball spell is a great example of the power of mages - in most games a fairly weedy ball of flame emanates from the caster's hands, but Fantasy Wars shows the true meaning of a fireball! Casting the fireball sees the camera zooming in to focus on your mage who's inciting the deadly incantation - spells are limited in number but have infinite range. Gobbledy-gook out of the way, the camera suddenly zooms out and positions itself over your prey as a massive meteor-shaped ball of flame hurtles down from the heavens. The burning meteor slams into the ground above the hapless aggressors, hurling many of them into the air and to their subsequent doom. Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire that was amazing - and only one of fifty-five spells available! The squads of usually many people appear as one enormous character when the camera is zoomed out, like the oversized characters representing armies in Civilization IV. These out-of-scale characters look a bit odd - you can turn this feature off in options to always see individual troops - but avoid clutter when getting an overview of the situation, keeping the individual identities of units visible so you can plan your next move.

Odd zoom features aside, you might be thinking that Fantasy Wars is all about raising armies and sending them into battle, but there's a lot more to it than that. The first improvement to gameplay to mix up the usual "you hit me, I hit you" formula is the addition of quests to complete, ranging from keeping your hero alive for the remainder of a battle to exploring a mysterious cave. The completion of these quests often results in extra money to finance your army or bonuses given to the completing unit, such as increased combat skills - rewards definitely worth going out of your way for. My favourite quest so far is the race for a bronze, silver or gold rating for a mission. The rating you get depends on how many turns you take to accomplish the main quests of a mission and obviously the higher your rating, the better the reward. Rewards generally make your troops tougher and more skilled, so the better you play, the better they perform - and because campaigns are continuous where every unit matters, you'll definitely want to get these rewards. This rating-reward system that depends how you play and results in the game's dynamics changing is truly wonderful design, providing the sense of urgency that other turn-based games lack.

Another feature that most strategy games, turn-based or real-time, lack is a role-playing element where an army becomes your army as opposed to a selection of generic pain-dealers. Each unit - not just hero units - is given at least one slot to store an item or bonus-granting artefact such as the Mummy's eye, which enables that unit to see invisible units. Unfortunately, there is no way to transfer items between units - if your scouts collect an item that you wish your hero had, there's no way to give it to him, which is slightly annoying. In addition to the uniqueness given to units by finding bonus-granting items, each one has an experience level that increases every time they kill members of an enemy unit, survive an enemy attack or complete a quest. Upon reaching a high enough level of experience you can select a 'Perk' or special ability for that unit. All perks are unique to the type of unit, giving an unprecedented range of customisation possibilities - you can even give the units personalised names!

Fantasy Wars has the biggest range of troop customisation I have ever seen in a strategy game and coupled with the continuous campaigns you need to think seriously about the consequences of your actions - sending your now super-powerful knights into combat with a well-placed hero might not be a good idea, because if they die then all the items they have collected and perks they have earned are lost. You really begin to feel like a part of your army and by the end of the game you won't want to leave.

When you do reach the end of the single player campaign then you're free to have a stab at the single missions - battles against the computer's fiendish AI (artificial intelligence) that don't really fit in any of the campaigns, and multiplayer against human players. Sadly, there aren't that many multiplayer or single mission maps available yet - hopefully more will come out for download after release or a map and scenario editor will be included for user-created content. There is also no online multiplayer over the Internet, although there is a nifty "Hotseat" mode where up to four players can take turns using one computer.

Maps and single missions aren't the only things lacking though - moments where sound should have been included are left soundless. One major missed opportunity is where units are selected and ordered about the battlefield - there should be a grunting "Take us to the fight!" from Orc mobs and "For the king!" when human paladins are given attack orders - sadly however, you are left listening to the background music or occasional clash of axes. Thankfully that background music is satisfyingly warlike, fitting perfectly with the atmosphere of the game, its cathedral-like tone brings to mind the worship of gods to grant favour and magical powers. A major benefit to the music is its suitability to the environment - playing on a grassy well-kept regular battlefield produces victory-inspiring tunes, whereas switch to a snow-covered winter environment and the music will become far quieter.

All the cut scenes are rendered using the in-game graphics to keep the game continuous. As an example, most campaign missions start with a Command & Conquer style flyover of that mission's main objectives and this must look the same as the actual game to work. However, the in-game graphics do not fare so well in the introduction cut scene, depicting the human champion slaying a foul demon that led to the shattered human kingdoms and eventual war. The snarling face of the demon proves the animation is up to spec - as it is in all areas of the game - but sadly, the in-game graphics seem a bit blocky for the up-close combat of these big guys.

Whoever said 'war is hell' was wrong, because Fantasy Wars is shaping up to be strategy gaming heaven! The interface is simple and easy-to-use, the game story is well structured to give meaning to battles and the army customisation is the best I have ever seen in a strategy game, making this one to watch out for next year. The current build of the game isn't completely flawless, but the problems I found are only minor - the missing sound bytes and limited number of multiplayer maps can easily be sorted before the February 2008 release. Either way, there's no question that Fantasy Wars is an example of how games should be made and will rekindle your love for the classic turn-based strategy.

Previewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).