Str: Leylines [by Crystal Shard]

Game Review:  Leylines
Release: November 26, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Developer: Crystal Shard
Publisher:  Game Thoughts
System Requirements: Windows 98/2K/ME/NT/XP and DirectX 7.0+
Players: 1
Price: $15.00


My swordsmen are doomed. For too long I have force-marched them on their way to battle and now the plague has stricken their ranks. For them there is no future, either die of plague now or die laying siege to the enemy stronghold. But even death offers no release; for I have been raising an army of undead warriors – fearsome ghost and skeletons –and for every man who dies there is an unfeeling, unthinking beast of corruption that takes his place. Alive or undead, they will fight for their cruel master!

Yes, being a medieval warrior would really suck! Nowhere is that more apparent than in Leylines, the new fantasy strategy game published by Game Thoughts. Leylines lets you take on the role of a god-like wizard, building your own kingdom and battling up to 8 computer AI opponents or fellow human players via hotseat or e-mail games. The overall goal is total domination of your opponents and there are a number of ways to win, from straight out conquest to specific construction or magical achievements.

The game play is a turn-based system that anyone familiar with the Civilization series will immediately recognize and, like the Civ games, Leylines requires you to tackle multiple levels of strategy at once. Each turn you must perform basic management of your cities including selecting build projects, balancing citizen tasks and making sure your kingdom remains profitable. You must also send scouts to explore the surrounding countryside, troops to attack enemies and defend strategic points, engineers to build roads, and much more. Lastly you must also develop your own magical powers by gaining mana and researching new spells.

The two primary currencies in the game are gold ducats (money) and mana (magic). At random locations on the map there are Leyline points, areas where mana spawns into the world and gold mines, where money comes from. Mana is used to increase the speed with which you create and cast spells and ducats can be used to purchase mercenary troops that appear for hire, rush building projects or to bribe your enemies into leaving you alone for a few turns.

When combat occurs a separate screen appears that allows you to position your units to either the front line or rear and to select their targets. The attacks are turn based and continue back and forth until one side either flees or dies. Again, it is a system that anyone who regularly plays fantasy strategy games should be familiar with.

Ultimately, Leylines can be seen as a compilation of the best elements from other strategy and kingdom building games. The developers don’t necessarily offer anything new to the genre but they have made excellent choices in what elements to bring into the game and what to streamline out and the end result is a highly optimized and rewarding fantasy / strategy experience. With only a few bumps in the presentation it looks like Leylines has the potential to be a new star in the genre.

Graphics: 7
The graphics in Leylines aren’t likely to blow you away but they are more than enough to draw you into the game and give a clear representation of what’s going on. The map is hex-based which is strange since troop facing (the whole point of hex maps) is irrelevant but otherwise everything from the menu layouts to the troop icons are clear and easy to understand. The in-game menus for city maintenance and magic research are clean and easy to navigate and some of the images for selecting your avatar are truly gorgeous.

The only real downside to what is otherwise a quality presentation are the map tiles themselves. At a glance I found the flat colors caused green tiles like forests and jungles to visually “chunk” together while other tiles clashed severely. There are no transition tiles between extremes of terrain and the cumulative effect is that the game looks old, like something you would have played back in 1996. Strangely, the map graphics seemed clearer and actually looked a little better with “high resolution” turned off.

There are some animated tiles and the maps show seasonal variations and weather effects. These seasonal touches along with the occasional animated spell effects do quite a bit to bring up the overall production value of the game.

Sound: 6
The music seems to be made up of annoying midi-style tracks that grated on my nerves and I was forced to turn it off completely after only a few minutes. There are just enough ambient and unit sounds to keep the game interesting but I was hoping to hear more environment sounds like the birds chirping in peaceful grasslands and the subtle clanging sounds of armored troops on the move. Given how diverse and engrossing fantasy environments can be, I found the soundscape in Leylines a little sparse

Gameplay: 8
Like all indie games it really boils down to the game play and Leylines is a surprisingly rich experience for fans of either strategy or fantasy games.

The entire game is played using mouse control and despite the depth of the city and unit management the GUI never overwhelms you. Keyboard shortcuts are available usually by hitting the first letter of whatever order you wish to assign a troop but they were entirely undocumented and not covered in the tutorials. A “go to city/location” function would also have been especially useful for moving troops around.

The enemy AI provides a good challenge even on the moderate difficulty setting and the game balances both the management and strategy aspects very well, without forcing you to favor one over the other.

Options: 8
Leylines gives you basic on/off audio control for sound effects and music as well as a volume setting for the game. Resolution control is limited to switching “high resolution” on or off and you can also switch “details” on or off to improve performance on really slow machines but I found it unnecessary as the game ran fine even on a PIII 500.

Value: 10
There are numerous single and multiplayer options available as well as the ability to create your own maps or play on randomly generated worlds. You can adjust the number and difficulty level of your enemies and choose to work either in teams or as every wizard for themselves. You can even be so foolish as to give yourself a “handicap” to make the game tougher! These options and the ability to choose an avatar and magic specialties for your wizard throw an interesting RPG element of character creation into the mix that I enjoyed. Overall, there is plenty of variety in Leylines to keep you interested – we’re talking about months of replay value for less than $20 bucks!

Fun: 8
I keep drawing the comparison in my mind with Civilization and I think it’s an accurate one, in both the good and bad sense. In the good sense Leylines is a game that deftly mixes combat strategy, troop movement and resource management and sucks you in for hours at a time. You know a game has you when you look up and realize that you’ve been playing for two and half hours, your dinner has gone cold, your drink flat and your bladder is about to explode from neglecting bathroom breaks.

In the negative sense, the game can seem slow at times while you try to build up your starting cities, explore the world around you and amass some sort of army. There is a quickstart option that gives you a few starting cities with troops ready to command but the management and especially the initial exploration of your kingdom can be tiresome. I found myself wishing for pre-made scenarios that I could play rather than always building up from scratch. However, this is a shortcoming common to all games of the genre and not a specific fault of Leylines - so consider it only a minor gripe.

Overall: 8
Leylines takes the civilization management sim a step further and gives you an active role to play in the shaping of your kingdom and the destruction of your foes. While there are some weaknesses in the presentation and the documentation could certainly be beefed up, it’s hard to find fault in a game that offers so much variety and entertainment value. Leylines is certainly recommended for fans of both strategy games and fantasy RPGs.
Added: May 3rd 2004
Reviewer: Kyle Nau
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