[General Topics] Menneisyys:
All serious Pocket PC gamers know Orions: Legend of Wizards, by far the BEST Turn-based strategy game for the platform, of which I’ve published a Strategy Guide HERE. The homepage of the game is HERE. Unfortunately, there's (still?) no trial version; hopefully, this will be fixed now. However, I think you'll be absolutely pleased with the upgrade, even if you can't play the trial: for $9.95, it's quite a bargain. That is, just go and purchase the update - you won't regret it.

The developers have announced the forthcoming expansion pack, Orions: The Second Age, in late July. Since then, I’ve been waiting it really with anticipation pretty much comparable to waiting for Starcraft’s expansion set, Starcraft: Brood War. Thanks to the developers, I’ve received a Release Candidate version of the expansion pack. And, yes, I LOVE it. It’s REALLY good. (Note that the reviewed version is exactly the same as the final one.)

First, let’s see what has been introduced (The Good), what is (still) missing (The Bad), what has been changed and, finally, I give you some very useful tips and tricks. All this with TONS of screenshots.

The good

A LOT of (THIRTY!) new cards, most of them having GREAT spells (abilities), further increasing the game experience. Now, the game is really like playing chess or a similar board game!

The Campaign mode has been greatly enhanced; for example, the feature requests of Doug Goldring and Ben Stanley have (almost) all been implemented. For example, now, you receive bonuses in your chosen element; you can quickly teleport between words and you can buy any card on “card black markets” any time. (Screenshots of the latter in all stages of pre-building, building and using: 1 2 3 4)

The Dual mode (the one that I play the most) has been enhanced a lot, mostly as a response to my feature requests / complaints. For example, now, you can select between a smaller (4 cards) and a larger (6 cards with spells enabled and 5 without) desk, whether the deck should be uniform or not (in size; non-uniform decks vary in size - some elements can have even 7-8 cards, while others only 3-4) etc. I'll elaborate on these questions later.

There are some welcome game balance improvements; most importantly, Life / Chimera has been made much more expensive and a bit weaker and Life / Cerberus a bit more usable.

The bad

Unlike with, say, the Starcraft: Brood War update, there isn’t new music. Not that it’d be missing – the in-game music is REALLY great (and, if you don’t like it, you can just change it to anything else if it’s a .MOD tracked module file).

The game isn’t compatible with MS Smartphones (WM Standard devices - that is, devices without a touch screen). It wouldn’t be very hard for the developer to create at least a QVGA (no real need for 176*220 conversions any more, I think, as those low-end models are quickly phased out, except for some current models like HP's new iPAQ 514 Voice Messenger) Smartphone-compliant version as the game could be easily played with the D-pad / the Action button and/or the dialpad.

No hi-res (W)VGA support (it'd be GREAT to see the hand-drawn artwork of cards in their full glory on VGA devices - even without the (absolutely gorgeous) particle effects & other animations!)

There's no option of decks bigger than 6 (without spells, 5) cards. I'd certainly welcome even bigger decks - even ones that have ALL the cards.

TCP/IP multiplayer still only supports direct IP connections and there's still no central server (Game Lounge)-based solution like that of battle.net in Blizzard's games. This also means you won't be able to play if both of the would-be players are NAT'ed / behind a firewall.

Unfortunately, there's no LAN broadcast discovery either in order to quickly find your opponent either - that is, without having to look up her or his IP address and entering it directly. Fortunately, the title, once you enter the IP address, will remember it next time you start multiplayer mode; this is definitely good news as, in general, Bluetooth PAN and Wi-Fi peer-to-peer IP addresses don't change if you the same Pocket PC's participate in the local peer-to-peer net.

I REALLY hope the developer WILL (also - keeping direct TCP connections are also important to make it possible to play over Internet connectionless LAN's) introduce a game lounge so that you'll be able to

1, find other opponents to play if, for example, your friends aren't available to play against - just like on most other multiplayer gaming lounges like Battle.net

2, you try to play a remote friend but both of you are firewalled / NAT'ed and, therefore, no direct connection can be built up in either direction.

I also hope he'll add in-game chatting.

(See the Multiplayer Bible for more info on all these questions - why for example in-game chatting can be useful, what LAN broadcast discovery means etc.)

There are some (minor) bugs: for example, Earth / Giant Spider's Spider Web (another pretty useful spell to make a given enemy card unable to attack in the next turn) costs, in reality, three Earth elements - as opposed to what (two) the help page suggests. Also, Water / Leviathan, as opposed to what the card description states, can cast Curing (the price / performance ration-wise, best owner HP increasing ability of all) any time - even when the number of your Water elements is only 1 (which is less than 6). This will work even with Water = 0 because of an internal bug. That is, if you DO have Water / Leviathan, make sure you increase the HP of your owner every time you can do so - against, this is the cheapest way to do so. And, don't forget you can do this even when you otherwise have no Water at all. You can easily make use of this bug if you have at two Leviathans on the board and use both to heal your owner every turn: if your Water is continuously staying at 1, you can gain 8 health for a mere one Water element. (Or, even more, if you have even more Leviathans.)

There's no option of giving the SAME cards to both players in Dual mode. This, while certainly makes duels much more boring (not knowing at first what cards the enemy has adds a lot to the game - for example, if you go for, for example, mass-low level cards and it's only later that you're faced with an Earth / Quicksands spell, your (initial) strategy may turn out to be fatal), may be required by some: mostly people that want to avoid losing just because they were unlucky to get some worse cards, while their opponent got better ones – I know well enough from my (Star)Crafter past that even the slightest game balance nuances like this can result in a LOT of difference in a game between two very good players