Empire of Ember

An underbaked and poorly-optimised game that needed at least another year of development time

Looks like a small studio and as such the visuals of the game are appealing. However the balance needs tweaking. Even on normal difficulty the dungeons are tough. The game heavily focuses on having minions in battle but forgets that you dont get any in a dungeon. Also - WHAT IS UP WITH MANA?!?!? Trying to be a spell caster in this game is extremely tough - you get crap for mana, it takes FOREVER to replenish - and if you get hit, run, or perform any action regeneration stops. It forces a magic user to rely soley on the wands and staves. And its also terrible for ranged and melee builds. I open up with a barrage of nearby barrels, and then basically forget about magic the rest of combat. Occasionally in small battle breaks I'll use summon undead but that can only be used 3 times a battle?! Stupid. I havent really tried using bow and arrow yet. Regardless melee and magic users shouldnt be penalized. Also there isn't alot of variations yet in the game, but its still an early ...

I like the game, it needs allot of work tho. Town building is very limited at the moment, you can do decorations and a couple of income buildings for wood,metal and gold at the moment and buildings that unlock some unit types that you can recruit. The combat is a bit wonky, the melee attacks dont hit exactly where you are looking. The magic wand seems to be the best weapon as you can run away a little and fire magic bolts at enemies. Commanding your soldiers in first person or in overview mode is also pretty wonky, the unit command wheel shows up while saving the game in the tower and giving commands would work better if it used mount and blade system of the F1-F12keys instead of the command wheel we currently got. The overview command is pretty slow, making it hard to give quick commands to selected troops giving the enemy time to attack you while you are trying to organize your troops. I played on normal difficulty and lost a couple times to careless hits by the enemy mob, but most o...

The game in a few words: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic meets Mount and Blade. TLDR: The Wizard lord simulator I have been looking for. You manage your wizard tower, recruit troops, and go on missions with or without your troops (they won't help you in dungeons). I think the game nailed the interactions between these different parts very well. You do feel like being a wizard in his tower, improving your settlement and recruiting fireball fodder to buy you time to annihilate the enemy. The action is split in "days" between which you will heal and restore your mana, and either investigate leads (about secondary quests), bolster the economy of your city through alchemy, or prepare enchantments to make the next battle easier or more rewarding. You have storyline missions, side quests, and roaming hostile groups to deal with. Combat can be pretty brutal as you don't have a lot of mana or hitpoints, and even less ways to recover your hitpoints. I spent my 10 hours playing a mage (I did...

Extremely clunky, poorly optimized and a bit unbalanced I think the game is exactly what I'm looking for in terms of what it wants to be but unfortunately it is not close enough to an acceptable state right now. I will probably keep checking on this game to see how it improves but for now I can't enjoy it as is.

Checked and found this game was out of EA, so I went to give it a play. Unfortunately, I could not finish the game, as it is so broken that it is impossible to complete, what a shame

Having just gone through part of the tutorial, it may be a little early to dismiss a game, but the combat is pretty terrible. This close to release, that's a pretty bad sign. Items thrown at you will hit regardless of whether you move out of the way, unless you actively dodge. Everything feels slow and clunky. I don't mind the graphical appearance of the game, but it could use some help and will easily not appeal to those that are looking for a more modern look, or high detail.

It takes forever to grind for a level, with only 2 stat points per level, and a drought of equipment to help your surviveability. With only 1 new spell choice per level, limited mana per dungeon/battle, no potions to heal HP or mana, and every spell you cast drops your total mana for the rest of the dungeon/battle. The enemies throw out debuffs like a mother ----er. Reducing your movement, spamming you with hits making it so you can't even get within range to try and hit them once, and the list goes on and on. Oh and because time moves so quickly, your fighting battles in pitch black, and I mean it's so dark that you can't see 2 feet in front of you without the Magelight spell being cast. Yeah, this is a 'Dark Souls-Mount & Blade' kinda game, except there's no horses to use in battle, and an 'Old school Ever Quest' style of corpse recovery. Now with all those "cons" listed, it's not to say it's a bad game. In fact it's a really good game. But I can see how that kind of difficulty w...

This game... is very special. Mount and Blade style fantasy game with combat sorcery of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. With randomly generated dungeons and plenty of way to play. You have Melee, Archer and Sorcery, they all have there own skill trees and a player levelling system. (You get 2 points to spend on stats per level up.) To top it all off you get a rather simple town builder that you have to defend. There were a few issues at launch with the game not loading the Wizard tower correctly and the melee not being that great but those have been fixed. The game is still in early access and still has a few niggles and optimisation issues. The Troop Command wheel works fine with controllers but is rather sluggish with Mouse and Keyboard. The combat is fun using Telekinesis to yeet barrels and other objects at your enemies, or push over towers with Archers in! You can be creative with how you approach missions and have decisions to make in your kingdom. Be a good guy or a bad guy t...

I cant recommend this game but i refuse to refund. I see the work and ideas coming together. Its a really good idea and i wish it to succeed. Give it a try; if your PC can handle it, you can get past its unfinished menu, and see whats been slapped together here its almost a strounghold warband(with wizards)(not really strounghold more of the castle building part..). Anyway with alittle optimization and control changes i think this game will be in a better place