Game Overview
They are right though, Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria is a brilliant blend of role playing and turn based strategy, for those of you who are yet to encounter turn based strategies just imagine playing a board game but with virtual reality figures! That's the simplest way we could put it without confusing ourselves as well as you!

You set up your warlord choosing what they look like, a name and their abilities, then commence battle, if your warlord dies then it is game over so make sure he is a beast!! The idea of the game is to defeat the enemy, you do this by building your army up, combining Orcs, Knights, Demons, and Dwarfs etc etc. Different species have different levels of abilities but take longer to create! All the "troops" take a certain amount of time to be trained, your standard spearman takes 1 turn to create but die a lot easier whereas Knights take 4 turns and are better in battle and will take a bit more of a pasting than the wimpy spearman!

Warlords IV is quite a long winded game, it does take a while to build up your army, it's a bonus when potential allies want to join you because you don?t have to wait for them to be created. Once you have a small army send them to close by villages and buildings to battle the army that occupies them, once you defeat them you have control of that complex and you have another place to create warriors, and if you are lucky they will be a different and more deadly species to what you already have, gives the game a bit of variety!

The game play, like we said, is a little long winded, it takes a while to create your army and it does get a bit tedious only being able to move your army a certain distance during your turn, but if you could move them for an unlimited distance the game would be over very quickly, it does make the game a little bit more tense and as it is turn based it does make sense.

The problem we found with this game is that a lot can be automated, chose what troops you want created and then keep clicking end turn until they are created as there isn't much else you can do until you have some warriors. The battle scenes when you are trying your best to defeat species of a similar kind to yours are very "board game" like i.e. nothing much happens, you can click auto battle and your fighters are selected automatically which really takes the fun away from the game, ok so don't click auto battle but when the game starts repeating itself that auto battle button gets more and more tempting.

Our Conclusions
Don't get us wrong though, in conclusion we would say that Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria is quite a good game, being on the Mastertronic Mad Range you are guaranteed a good game for the money you pay, for this one though we will leave it at, if you like Lord of the Rings and you like turn based strategy games, it's right up your street!

Overall Score: 7/10

Thanks to Chris Swanson (BlokesOnly's King of Games) also big thanks to Lisa at LunchPR for making this review possible!