“I’m too sexy for my armor… so sexy it hurts.”

Orcs and goblins are not usually known to be good-looking, but in Fantasy Wars from Russian developer 1C, they can appear downright charming. These rough, green-skinned creatures with jutting horns and teeth are decked out in their Sunday best, with interesting designs on their shields and a glint of madness in their eyes.

The level of graphical detail is one of the most immediately impressive aspects of this turn-based tactical strategy game. When zoomed out, the character units are represented by one large creature, but when zoomed all the way in, they separate into individual creatures with group fighting animations. They are brightly colored and stand out sharply on the battlefield. You can get right into the action and see the warts on the end of the goblins’ noses, or sit back and play it as more of an abstract strategy game.

These graphics wouldn’t be possible without some kind of restraints on the gameplay and environments. All the fighting takes place on hexagonally shaped tiles, which should be familiar to strategy buffs. You can move your characters only a few tiles at a time between turns, and then you have to wait for the computer to make a move and possibly attack your formations. When a unit is badly damaged, it becomes “broken”, and one more attack will destroy it in a ground-level cinematic.

Of course, all the animations can be skipped with a click of the mouse, but watching the tiny fantasy denizens duke it out is part of the fun. The game consists of three storylines involving Orc, Elf, and Human campaigns. There are several hero units with special modes and attacks, and these abilities can be changed each turn. Ugraum, the Orc chieftain, has a special move where he can do a forced march across the entire battlefield, or he can gain a bonus against melee attacks and send goblins flying with one swing of his mighty sword.

If you don’t mind being confined to a limited battle area, the turn-based strategy is pretty enjoyable. While it lacks the scope of a turn-based title such as Civilization, it makes up for it with unique character designs and animations that are reminiscent of real-time games like Warcraft 3. It is still unknown if the campaigns will maintain an interesting level of variety and challenge across the entire game, but we’ll find out when Fantasy Wars arrives in stores before the end of the year.