Player UMC Reviews

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Description: * a description of the important things in the add-on, like played faction, kind of enemies, gameplay style, difficulty, etc; should not be copying the author's description or contain too many spoilers

Summary: * a subjective description of the things you liked and disliked about the add-on (and why you liked or disliked them), should also contain some kind of overall impression

Surroundings: * add your rating of the visual part of the add-on here (1-10)

Design: * add your rating of the general quality of scenarios here (1-10)

Story: * add your rating of the story's quality here (1-10)

Fun: * add your rating how much enjoyment did this add-on bring to you here (1-10)

Replay value: * add your rating about your tendency to play this add-on again here (1-10)

Player note: * add your overall rating here (1-10)

Link to review: * if you copied the review from the forums then add the related link here

Battle for Wesnoth UMC campaign / reviews

Reviews for Campaigns available in the 1.10.x stable and 1.11.x development versions.

After the Storm

Review by vultraz

Tags: fall, dungeon, elves

Description: After the Emperor of Chaos was defeated, the free civilizations of the Great Continent hoped that his followers would abandon the ongoing war. Meanwhile, Galas and his unlikely band of heroes head back to the northern lands to request aid for their next journey.

Summary: This campaign is, in my opinion, one of the very best UMC campaigns. It follows the story of Elynia and her band and their adventures following the events of Invasion from the Unknown. Since the campaign is divided into three episodes, I'll talk about each one separately.

Episode 1: This one starts out slow, but speeds up pretty soon. The first few scenarios capture your attention and want to make you keep playing. It features an appearance of Zocthanol Isle from Under the Burning Suns, which I find quite nice. The late scenarios feature, as in all the episodes, AtS's signature dungeon crawling scenarios, of which I am very fond. Sadly, two main characters also get killed here. My only complaint about this episode would be the third scenario, which is quite tedious after you build up a strong force. Other than that, a good episode.

Episode 2: This episode jumps in right after the cliffhanger end of episode 1, and finds Elynia 1 year into the future as a result of the explosion in Wesmere. We quickly jump right into the action, and discover a very important character in scenario 2. There are a bunch of nice plot points here, including the deal made with the demon lord, and Elynia's journey to the valley from the beginning of IftU. As before, the last few scenarios feature AtS's dungeon crawling, including a very large scenario 10 map. The episode ends on what I consider a beautiful cutscene, one which finishes with a perfect flair.

Episode 3: Shadowmaster truly saved the best for last, here. Several amazing plot points come into play in this scenario, as well as an introducing of many new characters and custom units. This episode brings together almost all the plot threads that had been laid throughout the previous two episodes and IftU and wraps them up in an elegant bow, while at the same time exploring in new directions. Gameplay wise, he managed to keep the scenarios interesting and fun after all this time. More dungeon crawling, and a gigantic final scenario followed by several cutscenes wrap up this amazing campaign. One little complaint might be about scenario 4, which I found quite hard to beat.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this campaign and its story. The maps, characters, and gameplay had me hooked, and I recommend this campaign to anyone.

Surroundings: 10

Design: 10

Story: 10

Fun: 10

Replay value: 9

Player Note: 10

Antar, Son of Rheor

Review by Dugi

Tags: loyalists, skirmish, dungeon

Description: A noble's property is attacked by undead, and he has to retaliate in order to stop the undead peril. In his journey, he passes through many other settlements, some of them are attacked by the undead too, some are just naturally hostile, some are corrupted by the promise of immortality the undeath brings and send undead legions to fight him. All of them seem to be just minions of a stronger force, but before he is reached, the end of completed part is here. 9 out of intended 17 scenarios complete.

Summary: The scenarios are designed very well, assuring that you will not get bored. Many events take place in the middles of scenarios, making scenarios less usual and different from others. Although this is a nice feature, you are frequently surprised by many elements you cannot expect and it breaks planning. There are a few special units, who have special AMLA or some special abilities, that have an unusual and very practical use on the battlefield. It is balanced quite well despite its incompleteness. The story didn't impress me, though. It is very usual, a group of loyalists going to stop a rise of a lich lord whose dreams of conquest are a endangering anyone is classic. Do not expect anything from minor events neither, the encounters in scenarios are pretty mainstream story-wise as well. Unexpected end in the middle of campaign is a really unpleasant surprise too. There is a little need to replay it, because you will know what will happen, and many of these encounters are easy with proper recruits, but maybe a few years will provide a decent amnesia for that. For short, it is a campaign strongly focusing on interesting gameplay, but if you seek heavy challenges or a deeper plot, this is not what you want.

Surroundings: 7

Design: 10

Story: 6

Fun: 7

Replay value: 7

Player Note: 8 (if I forget the missing end, and assume that these scenarios are like the existing ones)

Review by tribes55, dean

"Tags:" Adventurous,Intriguing

"Description:" You play as a limited Loyalist faction, and are mainly fighting Undead, Orcish units and goblins. You have alliances with Dwarves and Elves.

"Summary:" I liked how the campaign required thinking outside of the box, but I didn't like how on the first scenario there was VERY limited strategies you could use to win. Most scenarios are not like this in this campaign, though.

"Surroundings:" Your surroundings are constantly changing, but the maps are always interesting and in some scenarios rewarding for exploring them. 8/10

"Design:" The scenarios aren't repetitive and leave you wanting to play the next campaign. 8/10 Story: Seeing as the story is what makes me want to play the campaign, and this one kept me to the very end of the currently limited scenarios I'd give it story a 8/10.

"Fun:" * Very rarely was I bored. 7/10 Replay value: * Some scenarios challenge you to do the Scenario in a more efficient way which would make me want to replay the campaign and see what I could do better this time. 7/10

Player note: * Overall rating would be 8/10.

Fate of a princess

Review by Paulomat4

Tags: elves, rogues, riders, skirmish, dungeon, RPG

Part I: Baldres, a notorious robber baron, flees Wesnoth with his followers and sets off into the northlands to evade the kings justice. The barons deeds and misdeeds are to change the balance of power between orcs and non-orcs throughout the northlands, and will carry consequences long after his eventual death. Part II: The Greenwood elves face a crisis which demands the return of the queen's estranged half-elven half-sister, Baldreds daughter. Two brave young elves must make a perilous journey to find her and bring her back to her former home. If they fail, the whole northlands will be engulfed in war with the resurgent orcs...

Summary: Nice story, which is composed of two parts. In the first part you mainly fight with bandit knights, and often have to rush from one point to another. in the second part, gameplay consists of elves, and various other races like drakes or saurians or dwarves. You will fight various races in the first part, and mostly orcs in the second. The campaign feature many custom units, and some your heroes will even have AMLA advancements. Also you will be able to collect many items through the campaign, which may cause some units to be overpowered but this is also bound to storyline reasons. The story reveals a lot about the northlands and their different factions.

Surroundings: 8

Design: 9

Story: 7

Fun: 9

Replay value: 8

Player Note: 8

Invasion from the Unknown

Review by Dugi

Tags: elves, undead, skirmish, dungeon, puzzle

Description: Starting with usual elves in forests and deserts, quickly adding the undead faction in a battle against several custom factions, evil human army, mysterious Verlissh, sinister demons, robotic automatons and dreadful, biomechanic Shaxtrals, that progresses through caves and steppes into the mysterious Dark Hive, where the Shadow Master dwells. 30 scenarios. Complete.

Summary: This campaign has a good and interesting story, enough long to develop an army of recalls an use it well. You will encounter many new kinds of enemies, assuring that you will never get bored, even if you aren't a fan of the default era. Its gameplay is unique in many ways, frequently, the enemies are just coming, and you have to pass through the area instead of defeating some leader. Another speciality are boss fights, when you can defeat a boss only using some special technique. The campaign is also balanced pretty well, easy difficulty is to enjoy the story, hard difficulty is really challenging. However, almost all new units lack animations of any kind, that harms the visual part of this add-on. Also, some elements of the storyline are too exaggerated. But these little problems will not spoil anything.

Surroundings: 7

Design: 10

Story: 9

Fun: 10

Replay value: 7

Player Note: 10

Review by Dugi

Legend of the Invincibles

Review by Raijer

Description: A huge campaign that will be 10 chapters long (9 chapters currently), and will have more than 200 scenarios. This campaign follows 2 heroes that find a way to eternal life, going through times, before and after the Fall, and witnessing some of the most important events in Wesnoth's history, like the raise of the second sun.

The player will be able to use humans, elves, but also undead and some special units, and will fight against basically anything you can imagine, going from orcs to demons and passing by some robots. It includes an item system, with enemy drops, crafting and gears, giving additions to units' normal attacks. The history permits to get a huge recall list, with level 4 units in the main races used and new AMLAs possibilities.

Summary: This campaign has a really long story, which explains some of Wesnoth's history that wasn't talked much about in other campaigns. Despite its length, it actually never gets boring because the story is well-done, stays really coherent, but also because of the scenarios' diversity, having huge battles but also some dungeons, and special objectives. I really like how this campaign makes a mix of Wesnoth's turn-based system and the basic RPG's system, like spells, items, crafting and more… But also because it creates new strategies that can't be found in normal campaigns, thanks to the item system and AMLAs that weren't really used in other campaigns, while keeping Wesnoth's basic way of playing. The difficulty is pretty much standard, as easy being easy for everyone, and hard being really hard and most likely a huge tactical challenge. Though some scenarios in normal can be seen as really easy or really hard.

I'm really happy about this campaign because it permits to personalize your units depending on what you want them to be able to do with the AMLAs, but also with the huge item bank. I also liked the story, because i don't like how some part in Wesnoth's history are left unexplained, and this campaign goes through Irdya's history, filling some blanks. Finally, i would like to say that this campaign can be played again and again, as there are some secret scenarios, but also infinite possibilities with the items and AMLAs, which make each time completely different.

The bad sides: the item inventory is slow (seems like it will be fixed), can be really annoying in the later parts. The leaders can seem overpowered to unacquainted players though it changes as you advance. The balance isn't complete yet, but it most likely will be done as soon as the story itself is finished. There still are some bugs around, but none that stops from playing as far as i know. And last, big problem: THERE'S ONLY 1 CHAPTER LEFT BEFORE THE STORY ENDS!

Surroundings: 7

Design: 7

Story: 10

Fun: 10

Replay value: 9

Player note: 10

Review by bumbadadabum

Description: (quoting Raijer) A huge campaign that will be 10 chapters long (9 chapters currently), and will have more than 200 scenarios. This campaign follows 2 heroes that find a way to eternal life, going through times, before and after the Fall, and witnessing some of the most important events in Wesnoth's history, like the raise of the second sun.

The player will be able to use humans, elves, but also undead and some special units, and will fight against basically anything you can imagine, going from orcs to demons and passing by some robots. It includes an item system, with enemy drops, crafting and gears, giving additions to units' normal attacks. The history permits to get a huge recall list, with level 4 units in the main races used and new AMLAs possibilities.

Summary: I didn't like this campaign a single bit. The scenarios feel like they've been designed 'in a hurry' without paying any attention to detail. The lack of variety or events in scenarios make them very boring to play, and often made me want to just :n and be done with them. The scale of the scenarios is completely blown out of scale, and this makes it extremely tedious to play, as everytime you press the end turn button you have to wait for the literally hundreds of enemies to move. The maps are not horrible, but far from mainline level. The story (which is one of the most important things in a campaign for me) is perhaps one of the worst things about this campaign. The dialog is badly written (in places where it is present. There isn't much dialog outside of starting dialog) and feels completely emotionless. The characters are paper-thin and not very well developed, and that only contributes to my thinking that the entire story is only there to tie the 185 scenarios together. It feels ridiculous and sometimes made me wonder what I was doing with my life, after I read another dialog. The art of the campaign consists mostly of bad frankensteins or horribly drawn units, with the exceptions of the portraits for Efraim and Lethalia, which actually look pretty decent. Overall, I feel like the pretty good idea behind the RPG engine, which in my opinion is also poorly executed, has gone to waste by it being in this campaign. I think this campaign is bad and doesn't deserve any of the praise it often receives on the forums. I would not recommend this campaign to anyone.

Surroundings: 4

Design: 2

Story: 3

Fun: 3

Replay value: 4

Player note: 2

Panther Lord

Review by taptap

Panther Lord is one of my favourite campaigns and on higher difficulties one of the most challenging. Unlike many campaigns with an anticlimactic end (Northern Rebirth, Heir to the Throne etc.) it is unrelenting from start until the end (I suffered more than 140 casualties during its 14 scenarios). Velensk is a good player and it shows.

This is the showcase campaign for the Era of Four Moons, while Salt Wars is a short and much easier introduction. The Era itself is well balanced, with many novel ideas and no elves. Admittedly, at first I shuddered at the idea of playing "half-naked wild with dark-coloured sprites" - I was quite troubled that it might be a collection of racist stereotypes, but playing with it, it certainly didn't feel so. (Much better indeed than the typical association of orcs in Tolkien-esque fantasy with mongols / turks.) There aren't only tribal Darklanders and Highlanders, but Sea States and Imperialists as well. Each of them plays very differently, none of them is depicted as timeless or "always chaotic evil", even the Imperialists, the enemies in the campaign, get the opportunity to declare themselves. It certainly benefits from the background world (IALFA developed by the maintainer of the campaign) even if you only see a glimpse of it.

The hero of the campaign is a mercenary outcast of his own Darklander civilization. When learning about plans to raze and colonize the jungles of his people by the imperialists he starts the quest to rescue his people. His friend the Panther spirit, to whom the campaign owes its name, always at his side, he is rallying troops and mercenaries around him, but soon he has to realize that change is inevitable. Changing their ways they may have hope to withstand or else they will be changed by force and subjugation. But how to convince his own people when he is an upstart at best, a traitor and spirit-friend at worst?

While the campaign is centered around Darklanders, the player has the choice of hiring (and recalling) a limited amount of highly useful mercenaries of the other factions of the Era. The campaign features small scale to a few large scale battles and puts different territory to good use encouraging the use of mercenaries and different unit types. I omit the numbers, but this campaign is certainly recommended.

Swamplings

Review by Dunno

Description: Swamplings is the name of goblin tribe living in swamps, banished by orcs. In an unfortunate turn of events, those goblins get tangled up in human affairs and must fight for their very survival. The player also learns how goblins started riding wolves.

Summary: It's a decent, finished and stable campaign with interesting plot. There are many humorous scenes and some serious ones, there are standard battle scenarios and various original missions. There are also some high quality custom sprites, and maps are very good as well. It won't make your jaw drop, however, it's just a modest, enjoyable campaign.

Surroundings: 7

Design: 8

Story: 8

Fun: 9

Talentless Mage

Review by Dunno

Description: A humorous story about a mage who managed to learn only one spell in his life and who takes command of N.O.O.B.S. (Noticeably - Optimal - Outstanding - Brilliant - Soldiers) squad. N.O.O.B.S. advance through amla with basic options like melee attack, melee damage etc.

Summary: this here is Wesnoth parody at its best. The campaign mocks the common cliches in Wesnoth campaigns and overused events, like loyal units coming out of villages, random magical items scattered around the map and low quality frankensprites. Very absurd and pythonesque at times, you will keep smiling and laughing through the whole story.

Surroundings: 6

Design: 8

Story: 9

Fun: 10

The Library of Kratemaqht

Review by Wesbane

The campaign is about genesis, course and outcome of civil war in empire of Anaktoron. Surroundings: The way campaign looks. How it feels and uses game engine is simply amazing and unseen before. Maps are nicely done although many parts of a map serve for story (decorative) purpose only what is not always good. You will travel through wealthy and populous kingdom which is torn apart by war. To create this impression in most of maps there is a lot of villages and they are placed in large groups, but map look doesn't suffer from it. More over you can feel destruction in game world as never before. Campaign features custom burning houses which are not only mere visual effect but have impact on battle course. It is one of most cinematic campaigns if not the most. Cutscenes are packed with action and take place in several locations. Also game transition fluently into cutscene and cutscene into game. What makes it even more interesting since you will never know is it just a cutscene? In terms of visual effects it also features the best epilogue ever. As it was not enough you can experience a true wesnoth dragon. It is so unusual that it need separate mention. Dragon is fully animated and have some nice custom sounds. Some of it animations are purely character play. Like roar and feasting. And last, but not least it preserves original wesnoth dragon concepts. It attacks with fangs and tail. Although it primary weapon is ranged magical fire breath which works as AoE attack when used offensively. There is one little bug with its animation, but it can't be noticed during playing it anyway. In short this campaign surely establish new standards for wesnoth in department of visuals. Design: Scenarios design is good. All levels are playable. Objectives are clearly formed, so it is known most of the time what to do. There are several minor bugs and one bigger that affects game to some degree. However they do not make impossible to play and enjoy campaign. Campaign is using default units although sometimes with unusual traits and abilities. Custom units are also present, but only as much as they are needed. Which is a great thing since it proves designer skill at using available resources. Beside that I really can't stand campaigns introducing many user made units. I liked much idea of premagic era and weakened magic users. Unfortunately any extra mages aren't useful since you have already better characters of this class. In fact after my recall list was cleaned up after Jevyans Return I never bothered to recruit them again. Gold carryover system is custom which is not a good choice for classic style adventure. Twenty percent instead of forty. Most probably this is caused by slightly overpopulated maps. Campaign is very easy, except two scenarios: Refugees and Loyalty's Cruel Reward. There is no moderately difficult scenarios. The huge difference between average level difficulty and hardest level is just to big. Most difficult scenarios are Refugees and Loyaltys Cruel Reward. Story: Amount of delivered information is enough. Writing style is good. Beginning is terrific. Switching between protagonists is cool, and quite innovative idea. Overall concept is nicely executed and creator skillfully merged a lot of facts from mainline into own story. To fully appreciate this playing The Rise of Wesnoth is recommended. However ending I found disappointing. It seemed rushed and unconvincing. Also few details don't match to reality of Irdya. Fun: Campaign is definitely entertaining. Well done battles. Good dialog. And full of fresh ideas. You can play as good and bad in a single campaign! Although I have nothing against being awesome most of the time enemies fell way to easily to my taste. Replay value: Campaign is nicely done and straight forward. Although there is nothing that would reject you from playing it again, there is nothing that would encourage you to do that either. No hidden secrets, no tactical challenges, no extra levels. No satisfying ending.

Summary: Overall it is well made, really great, easy campaign suitable for beginners with story explaining some events from The Rise of Wesnoth. Bringing new standards in design, especially visual ones. It story is shown from several angles what is unique feature, but unfortunately potential of this solution wasn't used at all. If you are looking for deep plot, and tactical challenge you won't find it here.

Surroundings: 10

Design: 6

Story: 7

Fun: 7

Replay value: 5

Campaign score: 7

Player note: 8

Link to review: [1]

To Lands Unknown

Review by Dunno

Description: This campaign tells about Mehir, a Summoner, who's working on a great quest of making the biggest magical circle ever made. If he and other summoners succeed, activating the circle will bring them to the Abyss, the lands unknown.

Summary: The main idea behind this campaign and the Era of Magic (used by To Lands Unknown) is to take Wesnoth graphics to an entirely new level. Maps are no longer simple, repetitive hexes, instead many maps are absolutely mindblowing landscapes. In addition, all units are well made and animated. The story and gameplay, however, could have been done better. The campaign is quite long, and at times battles get boring.

Surroundings: 10

Design: 7

Story: 5

Fun: 6

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