How free-form is Fallen Enchantress?

I was thinking about purchasing a new game and Fallen Enchantress has interested me for awhile now, but at the same time I'm looking for a game that supports a specific play style, that essentially being : can you literally just do "whatever" in FE?

In more specific terms, can you play as more than a ruler? Are you able to align yourself with a faction and aid the faction from within? or even can you just play as a lone adventurer?

The games that I'm trying to find something similar to are the games in the Romance of the Three Kingdom series, which of course did let you play as a ruler but also had you managing many things internally from friendships with others to personally fortifying the walls of the city you were placed at. Of course this was just done through a bunch of menus and screens, but it still was really enjoyable to me. You could do these things regardless of if you were a part of a major faction or not.

I'm not looking for a exact comparison of course since FE and ROTK are way different in many ways, but the main thing I am interested in is a sort of free-form play, is FE a good fit? I honestly couldn't find much information regarding if this aspect of the game exists at all but for the most part FE does seem really free-form, I'm just curious about where it's limitations exist at.

Also if FE isn't the game for me, are there any games with a heavy emphasis on free-form game play? I've been directed to Mount and Blade, and Crusader Kings 2 on another forum, both of which are sort of interesting (Mount and Blade moreso) but I was hopefully looking into one in more of a fantasy setting.

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coyote303

Join Date 03/2008

While I highly recommend FE, it may not be the game for you. I'm not familiar with ROTK, but from your description, it sounds like a lot of micromanagement. And if FE was that type of game, I wouldn't be playing it!

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

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The game isn't free-form at all. There is a fairly linear progression to each game. Step 1: Clear out monsters, expand. Step 2. Consolidate, begin diplomatic manouvers and warfare with other factions (attack wildlands also). Step 3: Mop up remaining opponents and win.

So let's say you just want to play with your RPG characters. There's not really anything stopping you, but it is quite obvious that the game wasn't built around it. You don't establish relationships with anyone other than enemy factions. There are very few quest chains and the progression of characters is limited to stats, abilities and items.

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It really doesn't have a lot of the things you mentioned from Romance. My name and pic comes from Xiahou Dun, so I'm pretty familiar with those games.

FE is closer to Civilizations than it is to Romance. Although in FE you will have a ruler, and some champions, they don't interact with each other, or have any personality at all. In Romance, you could have family, rivals, friends, and sworn brothers. And those things were meaningful.

FE is a great game, but it's more random map city building like CiV than Romance.

Mount and Blade: Warbands is a fantastic game. I have it and according to Steam, I have put in almost 500 hours. It is more historical, it takes place in a non-historic kingdom in the middle ages, but there are no fantasy elements in it. It does have a lot of the elements you mentioned from Romance, but they are not very deep in the game, but you can pursue a very free form game style, and be anything from a merchant trader, a mercenary, to a King. You can form rivals, get married, recite poetry to your sweetheart, have companions...it's a great game and might be close with what you want. Also there are a couple of fantasy mods created that might interest you.

Crusader Kings 2 is pretty much a game about court intrigue. You have to play a ruler of some kind, even if it's just a lowly count. But no other game offers the level of choices for interaction. Rivals, factions, religions, heresies, incest, assassination, infanticide, regicide, kin slaying, the game has it all in that department. Truly a great game that doesn't pull any punches about how dark and dirty court life was in the middle ages.

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