An Educational Doorstep into Tactical Games
Eldrador Creatures is a tactical game in which you use menacing beasts to battle it out in turns to win Victory. It is based off the Eldrador Creatures universe from Schleich.
Eldrador Creatures backstory is giant creatures that don’t like each other fighting each other to rule Eldrador. There are 4 different types of land which are Lava, Ice, Jungle and Stone and you can start from either of these and work your way through them as you wish. What Eldrador Creatures doesn’t tell you is that picking a zone will determine what creature you will fight for. I picked the Jungle world which meant I started with a 2-headed plant type creature, If I had picked the Ice World I would have had a Polar Bear. I don’t think the decision is difficult by any means apart from aesthetics as neither creature is more powerful than the other.
The combat in this game is one of the weakest aspects of the game, and there is little variation in attacks which is quite strange for a game with giants beasts, each beast has their own attack animations, and when you use a Skill, you summon a being which does different things depending on which, one can heal you, another will raise your attack power before you attack giving you an advantage. The way you get these skills is through previous battles where animations of packets will open showing you a minion which determines the skill you get. These are then added to a skill bar for future use in battles. For such large powerful beings, it’s quite strange that they don’t have the power of these abilities themselves and rely on Figurines to help them. Although that would defeat the purpose that these figures are a part of Schleich in which these creatures are also a part of. A Creatures health is displayed through Shields and attacking will deplete these Shields. Once the Shields are depleted it is game over, while the game is tactical and has elements to it, it isn’t that tactical at all for a veteran player especially. Creatures do a fixed amount of damage so unless you really don’t know what you are doing it’s really easy to win. Using Skills helps you win faster by increasing your attack or will heal you if you get overwhelmed which isn’t that often.
Eldrador Creatures is game that does start off incredibly slow and I didn’t find myself playing it to a point where I found it super tactical. It is quite easy to not make any turns and let enemy creatures come to you although there are a few times where you are forced to move just so you can step on a certain panel to lower a trapped Creature of your own or to otherwise create a bridge to get across. While these are features which are cool and haven’t seen much before they don’t make the game harder, they just try to add more depth but just come across as another unneeded obstacle. The maps themselves are bland and there isn’t much going on either. I do like the design of the Creatures themselves though although the fact they seem so weak makes them less appealing.
Eldrador doesn’t do much in the sound or music department either sadly. The most noticeable thing I found was the constant Voice over telling the player what is going on and what to do, thankfully not an annoying one, it sounds like David Attenborough narrating a video game rather than an episode of Blue Planet. This is a very basic game aimed at a much younger audience I think meant to teach, so I mean the voice works in that regard at least.
A Switch Review Code was provided by Bope
