The reviews for Ino-Co's and 1-C's  Fantasy Wars continue to trickle in, this one from a strategy-oriented sight a bit more positive. Unlike some of the reviews posted, Strategy Informer  doesn't find the game overly difficult, and gives the turnbased title a 7.2 overall score:

 Remember the first time you ever saw Battle Chess? I recall fiddling with that game for hours to setup fights between each unit so that I could see the animations for all possible combinations of opponents. Eventually, though the game lost its allure and was just another chess game. Fantasy Wars is much the same...

All in all Fantasy Wars is a solid game. It’s very pleasant to play, it’s easy to both play briefly and walk away, or to completely lose track of time in the “just-one-more-turn” scenario. The graphics are pleasing and enjoyable, the AI is frustratingly dumb at times and nothing stands out as a jarring or grating game. It’s solidly average. If you are looking for a fun turn based strategy game pick this one up – it won’t change your world but you won’t regret your time with it. If you are not a turn based strategy fan give it a miss, Fantasy Wars isn’t going to make any converts but it won’t drive away anyone who enjoys the genre either. 

2404 has posted their review of the fantasy strategy/RPG-ish title from Ino-Co, Fantasy Wars, this one with a positive slant and a final score of 7/10 :

Despite my lack of experience with the turn-based genre, the gameplay was exactly what I had anticipated. The only difference between this and other games in the genre is the inclusion of a couple of role-playing elements... In addition to experience, the other main role-playing elements in Fantasy Wars are the unit skills and abilities. As your units are gaining experience they’ll gain new abilities...

For this reviewer the main drawback of the game, other than its generic storyline, is the difficulty level, and the conclusion is the game is not for everybody:

Fantasy Wars is an addicting strategy game that I enjoyed playing once I found the cheat codes. It suffers from being too difficult and very generic – practically replicating a storyline from The Lord of the Rings. As far as replay value goes, there are three full campaigns, which would take many hours to complete, and there is also a multiplayer component. If you’re up for a big challenge and really enjoy the TBS genre, then I would definitely recommend Fantasy Wars to you. For the average strategy fan, however, I urge to exercise caution.

Jolt has a review up for Ascaron's and Ino-Co's turn-based fantasy strategy title, Fantasy Wars, giving it an overall score of 5.3/10:

...And, ultimately, everything about the game is basic to average at best. The good implementation of the strategy makes up for what would otherwise be a pretty unimaginative and uninspiring game that would at best be described as a homage to a much loved aging genre. At worst one could assume that it’s too little too late and way past its sell by date. We’ll opt for the former and offer this up as one for the hardcore orc battling fan boys out there who don’t want hack and slash but prefer their orc slaying to be a little more thoughtful. Fun while it lasts, which for most people won’t be long.

IncGamers has posted a review of the fantasy TB strategy title from Ascaron and Ino-Co, Fantasy Wars, and are much more positive about the game than the last review we looked at, giving it a 7.5/10:

 At first glance 'Fantasy Wars' is just another strategy game to add to the seemingly never-ending list of titles of the genre. In a market that is arguably saturated with strategy titles, why would any gamer out there want yet another of these games added to their collection? Well, rather than simply churning out a game that is a carbon copy of every other strategy title out there, Ino-Co have decided to shun an RTS-based gameplay and opt for what I feel is a more cerebral experience...

The idea is to use your existing units as strategically as possible; this is not a game where you spawn dozens and dozens of units and participate in a war of attrition against the enemy. As such you are rewarded for tactical deployment of your troops. Each unit accumulates experience and when they earn enough to level up they can gain special abilities...

Final verdict:

A refreshing title that admittedly has its flaws, but will reward the persistent player with a highly enjoyable experience. 

Fantasy Wars, the fantasy strategy game from Ascaron and Ino-Co we've covered for RPG overtones, gets a short, blistering review at ComputerandVideogames.com, who call it 'farcical' and give it a 3.5/10:

I would tell you the whole story, but there's no point - it's exactly the plot you'd imagine from a game called Fantasy Wars: some man wants to save the kingdom, there's a council that thinks he's reckless, and somewhere in the middle he has to kill a load of orcs or goblins. Mix in some magical weaponry and whoop-dee-doo, it's Fantasy Wars.

The turn-based action is a mixture of crippling boredom, mild frustration and a mild sensation of imminent doom - based on a huge, hexagonal board-game style map with gigantic pawns that you control scattered across it...

There is a chance, no matter how slim, that you may have seen this game and imagined a world where you owned it. Now, right now, you must unimagine this world, and create a new one in which Fantasy Wars does not exist.

1C-Ino-Co have released a map editor for their turn-based fantasy strategy game with RPG elements, Fantasy Wars. You can download both a European and North American version at the official site.

RPGVault does one of their trademark post-release wrap reports with 1C:Ino.Co's Project Lead and Director Alexey Kozyrev and Game Designer Max Bodrikov on their fantasy/strategy game with RPG elements, Fantasy Wars:

On being a smaller developer: 

Alexey Kozyrev: Fantasy Wars became the first project for Ino-Co, which was formed in 2004. The core team was formed from people who had already worked on a space RPG called Star Wolves, and who had experience working together for some years. We were a little more than 10 men, and when we founded our new studio, we set a goal to create the best games in certain genres. It was really thrilling working together with such an objective. We were lucky that we didn't spend too much time searching for financing. 1C Company, the publisher of Star Wolves, was ready to help us out.

At the beginning of development, we didn't have enough team members for such a big project as Fantasy Wars, so little by little we added more staff. Despite the intense work, I never wanted to hire, for example, several programmers part-time. Our guiding principle was to employ real professionals and pay attention to the human factor in order to be sure we could all work and communicate with each other. Such a point of view helped us to remain a team in the true sense of this word.

 On audience response:

Max Bodrikov: We are very happy that both players and game journalists enjoyed our title. The feedback corresponded with our expectations for about 80 percent. : )

The target groups didn't let us down, describing their positive emotions and favorite features in blogs and forums. That is amusing, but I noticed that players pay more attention to gameplay, while journalists concentrate on graphics. I thought that it would be vice versa, but I was mistaken.
 

Some negative emotions were expressed about the videos made with the game engine. This was a little surprising for us.... In our future projects, we shall focus on that aspect; we are now planning to release a sequel called Elven Legacy and additional mission packs

Fantasy Wars, from 1C/Ino-Co is looking a lot more like a straight fantasy strategy title, despite the developer's claims to RPG elements, but as we've been covering it, here is the latest review at GameZone, which gives the game a 7.5 overall score.

The strategy elements:

 Still, what Fantasy Wars offers is a solid-looking game that can’t help but draw parallels to chess. How? Well, the mapboard for the campaigns is cut up into hexagons. Each of the army pieces has movement limitations and attacking ranges. The turn each player takes is comprised of moving a piece and then attacking any opposition in range. Of course, the more units you have the more attacking power you have.

Defense is nice, but the game seems to revolve around strategic movement and offense, rather than fortifying positions and defending. Each segment of the campaign is goal driven. You move your army across the mapboard, defeating enemies (and yes, some are hidden until you happen up on them, but for the most part you will see the enemy as you get in range and can decide the best course of action), capturing or liberating towns (important in that you can gain gold which translates into being able to add to your army), until you get to the main objective.

And what might be considered the RPG elements:

There are no uber units that give one side or another a decided advantage. What does help, though, is that as you fight you gain experience, which is applied to all the surviving units. Skills are rewarded and fall into two categories – active and passive. (Active are the skills you have to trigger in the game while passive are skills that are always turned on.) Skills can apply terrain bonuses...

Conclusion:

While the combat elements of this title feel a little antiquated, Fantasy Wars still manages to be challenging with little room for error. Because it is turn based, you can consider a course of action, but bad choice are often gobbled up by the AI, especially if you are trying to get top scores for the mission level. The game is easy to jump into and play, so it should appeal to newcomers to the genre. While not a high-end turn-based game, Fantasy Wars is a decent title.

RPGVault  continues their coverage of 1C and Ino-Co's strategy title with rpg overtones, Fantasy Wars, with a post-release interview with Alexey Kozyrev, head dev and Project Leader for the game:

Jonric: Since we know Fantasy Wars is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, what more would you like to tell us as an introductory overview?

Alexey Kozyrev: Fantasy Wars is much more of a wargame than many other turn-based titles. You don't have to build cities; instead, you constantly improve the role of your army and it abilities for various military operations. In a certain sense, our game is a spiritual successor to the famous Fantasy Generals. Such titles are quite rare nowadays, and I believe that players do miss this genre...

Jonric: What are the specific elements and features that you consider most likely to interest fans of the RPG genre?

Alexey Kozyrev: Since we pay great attention to your army's development, we decided to make the whole game in an RPG style. Each unit gains experience points and level-ups during battles. When a new level is reached, it gets one of three perks depending on its class. When moving from one mission to another, you can also spend money on a unit's upgrade and move them to other classes. That can be performed in a non-linear manner; for example, you can transform peasants into militiamen, scouts, archers and so on.

Heroes play a very special role. They fight along with other units, but can reach level 10, while other units are able to get to level 5 only. Moreover, heroes can carry three artifacts while ordinary units can bear only one. Yes, there are artifacts in our game. You can find them when going through missions or receive them as rewards for completing quests or performing a quick walkthrough.

RPGVault has posted their first diary entry with Ino-Co, developers of the fantasy strategy title with some RPG overtones, Fantasy Wars:

Fantasy Wars is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements. It consists of three campaigns that, unknown to the respective sides, take place within the context of a scheme contrived by a dark menace. The play involves actions such as castle sieges, village defenses, assault and reconnaissance operations, and swift raids. In order to triumph, players have to assemble their armies, upgrade their ground and flying units, discover various magical items, learn powerful spells, and employ the terrain to their advantage. The developer, Ino-co, provided some insights into the making of the title, which shipped in North America last week.

Alexey Kozyrev talks about some of the challenges the devs faced in the nuts and bolts aspect of game making:

Our engine changed from when we used it for Dawn of Magic, with many upgrades. It is now capable of showing the game map out to the horizon. That looks great, despite the fact that it did make our programmers literally boil while optimizing the game. The thing is that in Fantasy Wars, the real quantity of troops is represented in what you see. This means that when you zoom in the camera, you see real troops.

The problem was that since there can be more than 20 such units in one frame, the number of polygons to be processed in a frame can be from 600,000 to 1.5 million. That had a serious impact on frames per second, which created a terrible headache for the programmers. However, optimization helped us out, so the game doesn't remind you of a series of screenshots when you play it.

Gamersinfo.net has posted a preview of Fantasy Wars, the fantasy turn based strategy title with rpg elements from Ino-co and 1C:

Gameplay-wise, it's a pretty orthodox turn-based strategy affair with the occasional spark of ingenuity to perk your interest. The maps are divided into the traditional hexes, and you direct your various units around them, clicking on enemies to wage from either near or far. Elvish units can toss magic around the hexagonal portions of territory like Frisbees, and archers and ranged characters can launch attacks if they get within a predefined number of hexes of their prey.

Your units will level up with more battle experience, and you can choose one of three 'perks' every time this occurs in order to boost a particular statistic with a new skill or spell. It's also advantageous that you can take up a turn to rest your weary troops and replenish your health; otherwise they'll all be falling orc-wardly to the floor sooner than you can give them a slap with your sword...

...It's not a hugely difficult title, concentrating instead of decent rock-paper-scissors balancing between the various units and factions and encouraging you to think tactically without making your head hurt. It's by no means a walkover, especially when you crank up the difficulty - but it's not going to tax you if you're new to the genre, either.

RPG Vault hosts this short media announcement for another of the IC games picked up under the new Atari distribution umbrella. Fantasy Wars is a tactical turn-based strategy game being developed by Ino-Co for release this fall:

Expected this fall, Fantasy Wars is a hex-based tactical strategy game with some RPG-like elements. From developer Ino-co, publisher 1C and North American distributor Atari, it will offer separate Orc, Elf and Human campaigns connected through a story in which dark powers are unleashing an evil plot.