Thank you GamersGate for sending us this game to review!

Warlock 2: The Exiled is the latest 4X strategy game based in the Majesty Empire.  The new exiled game mode puts you in a shattered world where you must travel across the various realms to find your way back to Ardania.  Once there, you have to conquer the mage that put you in this predicament in the first place!    Before you can get to him, there are four other mages that have to be defeated first.  Instead of annihilating them right off the bat, you can wage war or make peace or non-aggression treaties until you’re strong enough to overtake them.  After all, this is a 4X strategy game.

For those who are unfamiliar with the 4X Genre, 4X stands for: explore, expand, exploit and exterminate. The map is built up with hexagons, which serves as a grid. The grid is used for movement and to display the property that is under the leadership of your opponents. When you need to move a unit, you set the destination on the grid and your unit will move towards it each turn. When your city population expands, you will be able to control more land. When you stumble upon enemy units or cities, you will be attacked unless a diplomatic action has been taken.  

You are encouraged to build cities, but having too many of them will cause unrest.  To get around this limitation, you can convert your cities to special cities that can still pay taxes, but won’t allow you to expand or deploy units from it.  Another option is to dedicate the city to a certain god which will grant you favor with them and generate a resource like mana, food, or gold.

Like many strategy games, everything has a cost.   Every infantry unit requires gold and food to maintain.  This is after fulfilling the building requirements to hire them in the first place and the gold to pay to train them.  While you can directly influence mana, gold, and food production by building structures to promote them, you cannot control the population rate needed to expand cities to add more structures.  

There are many structures and some can only be built on specific and rare ground types.  For example, pumpkin farms can only be placed on preexisting pumpkin farm hexes.  Regular farms can be placed almost anywhere, but some places are better than others.  Some hexes will give you production bonuses or penalties, so plan your property placement wisely.   As they say in the real estate business, location, location, location.  

As you explore you will discover portals to new realms which will have new monsters, terrains and possibly other civilizations that need exterminating.  In order to have a chance you’ll need a strong army and lots of spells researched.  As you gain favor with the gods they will unlock new spells to be learned.

Magic is heavily used in this game to attack, summon forces, to bless and to curse units and property.  There are undead zombies and skeletons and lots of ferocious wildlife to contend with.   If you have enough gold, it’s worth hiring legendary heroes when given the random opportunity to do so.  They are much better than the standard fare archers, clerics, rogues, and mages.  All the units can level up and when they are defeated, that experience and effort is forever gone.  

Like many things, buildings, spells, and units take multiple turns to acquire.  Planning ahead is essential!  Warlock 2‘s interface is nice enough to alert you of inactive units allowing you to utilize them before ending your turn.  The AI moves pretty efficiently and comes in multiple difficulties.    A typical match will take several hours before you even realize you’re getting your butt kicked.  Up until that point, it’s fun though!

Multiplayer is available and I have seen people online and willing to set up and join games. There are multiple winning conditions including exterminating all opposing forces, or by capturing all of the holy grounds.  The single-player sandbox mode lets you determine the game and winning conditions as well.

Like many games these days, Warlock 2: The Exiled tries to nickel and dime you with various DLC packages for $2 or less.  I was able to pick up an alternate voice for The Advisor for free.  There are new spells, races, and starting locations available if you like to buy DLC. 

The Majesty series has good voice acting and humor sprinkled in.    There’s a Lord edition of Warlock 2: The Exiled available for $10 more that comes with the soundtracks for both games.  Not a bad deal if you enjoy the music (I did).

For the asking price of $29.99 there’s a lot to like if you enjoy strategy games in general.  Owners of the original Warlock: Master of the Arcane game may be disappointed with the lack of new content, but newcomers to the series will be pleasantly surprised.  This was my first attempt at a 4X strategy and felt comfortable on the relaxed difficulty level.  With the multiplayer and harder difficulty levels, this game should keep strategy gamers of all levels busy for hours on end.