Anyone who likes strategy games will love this game. There is also a interesting story involving strange and terrifying shadow-creatures from a evil realm. The gameplay is great and I love turn-based strategy games like this and if you like the sound of this you should get it :)

Edit: l found myself spending many hours trying to complete and destroy the enemy, though a element of the game can make it difficult as the main hero gets sent back to the capital or nearest great city making taking out the final city potentially difficult, but if you have enough units you can crush it multiple times since the hero doesn't get more powerful and if their units have been destroyed, they don't get that.

This classic Age of Wonders title has amazing charm to it and colossal variety that feels like a fantasy proto-stellaris (which makes sense, it's by Paradox), combining RTS with grand strategy in a vast fantasy world brimming with content and customisation. It remains my favourite 4X game.

You play as one of 15 different fantasy races each with their own units, structures, and tactics. You play across the surface world, the underground, and a new Shadow Realm vying for dominance against the other races. There is the campaign story which explores the appearance of the new Shadow Demons and the Syron races, or you can start a custom campaign.

The custom campaign has insane customisation, allowing you to shape the style of game, length, if it's more magical or melee, and the ability to turn off most features. You then select a race and build your leader selecting which elements of magic they are the master of, and which skills they have giving them unique abilities.

Whether you're playing the campaign or a generated map the world is beautifully detailed in a classic pixel art style and scored with an iconic orchestral soundtrack. There's a huge variety of biomes to explore each with different native creatures to fight or recruit and of course points of tactical interest such as magic wellsprings that generate mana each turn, treasure hordes to be liberated, and locations of interest like inns that house heroes for hire.

The gameplay pairs 4K kingdom management with strategy. At the highest level you're managing gold and mana, political relations, and your magical 'domain' of influence. At the city level you build structures to unlock units, defences, and features. Then there's the RTS side of things. Units are built by cities, can be led by heroes, and take on other units in a turn based battle that zooms into the hex and generates a battle map based on the terrain, be it wild lands, a structure, or a siege warfare map against a city where its defences come into play.

Overall despite the static content there is so much to explore, each race and magic element combo create different play styles, and every turn feels like you have lots to do at each level. I've spent months playing this game and while the newer ones add new features or update graphics, it's tough to out do this iconic classic. High marks for sheer content and variety, combined with engaging deep gameplay, and beautiful art and music.