IndieRPGs.com Checks Out Discord Times

Ever since checking out the early beta of Legends of Eisenwald last month, I’ve wanted to compare and contrast it with Aterdux Entertainment’s earlier title Discord Times (which sounds like a newspaper, but is decidedly a video game). Legends of Eisenwald is basically an unofficial sequel to Discord Times, so I figured it’d be interesting to take a step back and see how the titles differ. Here is what happened:

Some brief thoughts after playing:

• Legends of Eisenwald is obviously a lot nicer-looking than Discord Times. On the other hand, Discord Times has a lot of interface niceties that make it easier to figure out how to play the game. Eisenwald will improve dramatically once Aterdux Entertainment adds those in.

• Combat difficulty in Discord Times seems excessive given that units do not recover health at the end of combat. Legends of Eisenwald seems to be doing a better job than DT on that front, though it still suffers from occasional encounters with overpowered enemies. The developers could alleviate this issue by allowing you to scout the composition of a particular group of enemies ahead of time. I would also love to see them provide a means of escape if a battle goes poorly.

• The Discord Times combat system is intuitive and familiar; I found it far easier to grasp than Eisenwald’s. I usually love grid-based combat systems, but Legends of Eisenwald’s system has such restrictive and arcane rules on unit positioning that I’m not sure it adds enough emergent tactical depth to make the accessibility trade-off worthwhile. I’ll need to give Eisenwald a second go before I make up my mind on that.

These are, of course, just my first impressions, and are subject to change with extended play. I am still very much looking forward to seeing how Legends of Eisenwald turns out.