Etherlords II

tried to get into it a few times, but this game does not respect your time. its basically heroes of might and magic where instead of turn-based battles, you use watered-down magic the gathering system. sounds good on paper, but game is reaaaly slow.

Compared to the first game, I got this one to work just fine on my windows 11 pc. Ok, so, after installing the game, as I started it up I got “Cannot clear primary surface” error, so I fixed it by going to Config (which is located in game’s main folder), unchecked the Full Screen box. But this wasn’t enough, I had to change my monitor’s resolution to 1024x768 or else the game was running in a small box at top left side of the monitor. P.S I also set it to run in compatibility mode on Windows XP service pack 3, and run it as admin, not sure if those are important but better safe than sorry. With these changes I was able to play normally without even a crash up to campaign 3. After that I quit because the game hitting me with some long damn battles and quenched my nostalgia thirst. Now that I grab it again, I sure wished it had a speed up function. It does have an Accelerated Mode, but it doesn’t appear to do anything in combat. I gotta say, before I tweaked around I did try to give it a proper high resolution, but changing the resolution in settings.ini at 1080p resulted in messing up the HUD/UI during gameplay as well as menu; making it unplayable. I also tired that wide-screen …

A surprisingly fun mixture of Magic the Gathering, Warcraft and Might & Magic. Game's a little buggy but if you set it to Windows XP compatibility mode and run as admin it solved 90% of the problems for me.

Etherlords II solves the dilemna of non-creativity in card games, from classic TCGs to rogueli?es : In these games, there usually are clear and few METAs, because you want a single deck that can deal with most of the situations you might encounter. In the Etherlords II campaign, instead of a one-deck-fits-all approach, each of the enemie's decks are very strong against certain strategies and weaker against others, making each fight a puzzle that you must solve with the right deck. Even if some are more versatile than others, it's not about how strong a strategy is, it's about whether the enemy is vulnerable to it. Thanks to this, the game features plenty of relevant and balanced strategies that are more busted than what you would find in any other CCG, and that you will actually want to use in your playthrough.

Etherlords II, developed and published by Nival, takes the experimental foundation of the first game and reshapes it into something more focused and approachable, trading some of the original’s grand strategic scope for a tighter, more character-driven experience. Instead of trying to balance two equally dominant systems, the sequel clearly prioritizes its card-based combat while streamlining the surrounding structure, resulting in a game that feels more cohesive, even if it sacrifices some of the ambition that made the original so distinctive. One of the most noticeable changes is the shift in how progression is handled. Rather than juggling multiple heroes across a large strategic map, you now follow a single protagonist through a series of interconnected missions. This design gives the game a stronger sense of continuity, as your character grows steadily over time, carrying abilities, spells, and equipment from one encounter to the next. The experience feels closer to an RPG than a traditional strategy game, with exploration, questing, and gradual power progression forming the backbone of the campaign. Combat remains the centerpiece, and it’s here that Etherlords II truly exce…

It has not aged well, but if you want a game that lets you do a sort of fucion of RPG and MTG-style combat, this might be for you.