Fantasy Empires

Year 1993, rain pattering outside, a floppy disk rattling in the drive, and a map with castles and forests slowly rendering on the monitor. Fantasy Empires arrived completely under the radar — no big fanfare, no box screaming from the shelf. And yet this Silicon Knights game managed to devour more hours than was healthy.

The setting is classic domain fantasy — the world of Mystara, back then well known to Dungeons & Dragons players. You're one of several rulers vying for dominion over a map divided into provinces. Dungeon Lord throws down the gauntlet and you pick it up, because what else was there to do in 1993. The story pretty much ends there, but that's not what you expected from this type of game anyway.

The core is turn-based strategy on a strategic map — you build structures, recruit units, occupy provinces. That alone wouldn't be enough to remember. What set Fantasy Empires apart was direct RTS control in battles: when two armies clash, you switch to a tactical view and command your soldiers in real time. You have knights, archers, magical units, and various types of monsters under your command, each with their own properties. You can skip it all though and let the battle play out automatically — a pragmatic solution for those who wanted strategy without micromanagement.

The turn-based layer runs smoothly, the tactical battles are more chaotic than you'd expect, and the AI is no masterpiece. Those are the concrete weaknesses. On the other hand, the combination of two modes together was quite unusual in 1993 — few games back then mixed strategic planning and direct battlefield action so naturally. Graphically it was a respectable average for the era, the Sound Blaster music had the right medieval weight to it, though after the tenth loop it started to lose its charm.

Today Fantasy Empires looks like a fascinating historical artifact — a game that knew what it wanted to try but didn't have enough room or budget to sharpen the edges. It reliably evokes nostalgia, and frustration from the tactical battles too. Anyone who loves turn-based strategy from the pre-Heroes of Might and Magic era and doesn't mind an interface that assumes you'll read the manual will find a pleasant retro evening here. Everyone else can simply watch how it all looked back then, before the genre really took off.