What you see is what you get. Much as I would love an updated version of Fantasy Empires, this is exactly the same as running the original game with DOSBox and a bypass on all the annoying late 80s and early 90s copy protection. That said, Fantasy Empires is as fun today as it was then, so it didn't need much to make me want to play it again. An inspired marriage of Risk and D&D, there's not really another game that can quite scratch the same itch. The music has also stayed with me all this time, and I still get a rush from hearing the epic score.
Some issues (with modern gaming conventions in hindsight):
Character creation was novel at the time, but isn't much to write home about today. You pick your name, the classic six D&D stats, a class, an alignment, a brief description for flavor, and from about a couple dozen premade portraits that one of the other NPCs is probably already using.
- Documentation on what exactly the stats bring to the table are sparse. From what limited information I've gathered, and I could be wrong, STR affects hero combat damage, DEX affects hero armor class, CON affects hero hitpoints, INT affects mage spells, WIS affects Cleric and Druid spells, and CHA affects how much income is generated. Just like classic D&D, some stats are more important than others, but that's assuming you don't just manually set them all to 18. A modernized version of this game would more likely use a point buy system and have better balance on each of their impact. (If someone can direct me to better information on how stats work, please do!)
- Classes are based on classic D&D, including favorites like Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Dwarf, and Elf. That's right, Dwarves attack at melee range, can take a lot of punishment, and are obviously nothing like Fighters which... do the exact same thing. You start every campaign with each class of hero in your army, all of which are half your level except the one which matches your class. So if you're a level 4 Cleric, you'll start with level 2 Magic-User, Dwarf, Fighter, and Elf heroes, and a level 4 Cleric hero. If your level 4 Cleric dies during the campaign, not to worry, the campaign continues as if he were just another troop in your army and you can build a new one, or ten if you want. That's about the only relevance to your choice in class. A modern remake might include fifth edition classes and less fantasy racism. Bard or artificer heroes could be interesting if they don't impose too much bloat to combat.
- Alignment is poorly implemented. Pretty much the only thing it affects is how much money you generate and what you can get away with during a campaign. That might seem like you're choosing between income or versatility, but there's a huge caveat. Your options are lawful, neutral, or chaotic - lawful generates the most income but you're penalized for casting Animate Dead or breaking treaties by having your alignment shifted toward chaotic. Behaving yourself doesn't seem to shift your alignment back toward lawful (correct me if I'm wrong), so pretty much all you can do is either behave yourself all the time or ultimately be chaotic. If you plan to cast Animate Dead and break treaties anyway, you might as well pick lawful and start with the better income. Honestly, though, it's better to just use your extra income from being a goody-two-shoes buying more armies than summoning undead minions, and don't even bother agreeing to in-game treaties. I don't think a modern remake really needs alignment, but if there's a need to include such a mechanic, I would hope it would be better implemented and balanced.
Combat is fun, but for anyone who didn't grow up in the era this game was made, it may seem limited and janky.
- First of all, automating battles is faster, but is calculated by seemingly mashing every attacker unit against every defender unit and subtracting the difference with maybe a little randomization involved. That means if your army is ten Orcs and two Elves, and your opponent's army is 320 fighters, you'll take down about a dozen of their fighters before you ultimately lose an automated fight. There's seemingly no swarm tactics in automated battles, they just kind of line up and fight each other one at a time like proper gentlemen. Conversely, if you play it out, your two Elves can kite the entire enemy army to death. It'll take a long time, but your opponent can't do anything to stop you other than turn tail and retreat all 300 of his other Spartans. There are plenty of other ways to ensure you lose zero troops, but pretty much all of them involve manually guiding combat.
- Your caster heroes can cast spells pre-combat, but there's almost no reason to cast Magic-user's confusion other than because you can and you don't have anything better. For about half a second, supposedly enemy troops will attack each other, but for how long it lasts, they pretty much have barely enough time to turn and face each other, let alone swing a sword. Otherwise, you want to cast Cleric's Bless or Druid's Control Wind's if the opponent is heavily reliant on ranged attacks.
- Catapults, Ballistae, and Battering Rams aren't worth it. For the amount of time they take to craft, the cost, the frequency you'll come across fortifications that warrant their use in the first place, you're better off recruiting Elves or Magic-users. Siege weapons are pretty much only good in niche situations, situations that would cause them to go to enemy lands and immediately become lost after winning combat because you didn't have time to build a keep before they wandered off. They also can't reposition nor retreat with the rest of your troops if things are going South, so consider them one-time use no matter what. There may be rare moments when Elves and Magic-users aren't available, so I'm glad to have more accessible alternatives, but I'd hope something so massive and bulky would be less ephemeral.
- This game was made at the tail end of predictable processing power, before delta time became standardized for consistency between frames, hence the current need for DOSBox. Even with DOSBox, though, in combat, your game will seemingly speed up when you're alone on the battlefield and slow down to a crawl when a bunch of entities are simultaneously on screen. I'm pretty sure that's one of the main reasons your field of vision is limited to a few grid squares. As a ranged attacker, it's difficult to tell if you're hitting anything unless its three squares in front of you, practically in melee range, and you're only able to attack in eight cardinal directions, so if you want to hit something two squares to the left of you and one square up, you're gonna have to move instead of just aiming West by Northwest. Even tabletop D&D wasn't this strict.
- Currently, multiplayer is achieved via hotseat, and combat is split screen. You'll have to really trust that your friends aren't going to try to take a peek at your regions between turns, and good luck if you don't have a controller because otherwise both players will have to use two sides of the same keyboard in combat. Obviously any modern remake would have online capability and none of this would be an issue.
If you like D&D, turn-based conquest games, and don't mind retro gaming, this game is a highlight of its era and worth giving a try. I wouldn't pay ten bucks for what's essentially a DOSBox configuration, but I could see someone going to fiver to get someone to set it up for them, or just to have it on Steam where it's organized and easily accessible, and where they can leave a cheeky review to entice others to share the joy with them.
