Fabled Lands is one of those games that’s really hard to classify. On one hand it’s a narrative RPG version of a series of ‘90s gamebooks by authors Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson, similar to titles like Sorcery or The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Then on the other side of things it’s full of deep turn-based hex tile combat like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or For The King 2. It straddles these genres smartly, and it just got even smarter thanks to a brand new update.
Version 2.1.0 adds two major new features to Fabled Lands that should both make the game tougher and more dynamic to play, as well as providing a way to keep track of all the horrible beasts you’ve encountered in your adventure – and you will be meeting a lot of them. While Fabled Lands is a huge open-ended game that lets you explore a huge range of options from court intrigue to dungeon crawling, it’s unlikely you’ll go a complete playthrough without hopping into some delicious combat straight out of the best turn-based strategy games.
When you begin a combat encounter you’ll feel instantly familiar if you’ve played any of those hex-based titles mentioned above, with your side on one end of the field and the enemies on another. It’s already pretty tough stuff, as your foes are capable of dealing damage and inflicting status effects that can end your story in ignominy, but this latest update has managed to find a way to make combat both more interesting and even harder.
That’s thanks to an overhauled enemy AI system, which will now be able to surprise you in battle, like certain monsters being able to hit you multiple times in a turn. Combine that with status effects like poison or bleed, and you’ll have to approach fights with new strategies if you hope to survive.
Thankfully you can keep track of all these enemies thanks to a new bestiary feature. This will give you all the details you need to know about every enemy you meet, with full stats, where you’ve seen them, and more all loading you up with info before you dive into battle. Admittedly you’ll only learn these things after fighting them, but at least future rounds of combat will be a little simpler when you’re armed with bestiary knowledge.
Fabled Lands 2.1.0 is out now on Steam. If you’d like to get the full lowdown, including the other quality of life changes and fixes in this patch, you can read the full notes on the announcement post.
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