GameGossip: For our readers who don't know much about the game, what is ELII?

Yuri Markin: Etherlords II is an RPG with turn-based tactical magic combat in the style of collectible card games (Magic: The Gathering, for instance). In other words, you and your hero travel across the mysterious Etherworld, fighting with mysterious creatures, completing side-quests, collecting artifacts and powerful spells, while gaining priceless experience.

YM: Firstly, we are going to collect all player, journalist and publisher feedback that we can get - that helped us a lot while creating Etherlords II and definitely will help in the future. While doing this, we are going to pay as much attention to the game balance as possible - there are almost 350 spells in the game now and it is a hard job to keep them balanced - usually in a month or two some really deadly combos arise and it is important to fix them in order to keep the gameplay interesting and challenging enough. Also we are planning to use our master server as much as possible, so some worldwide tournaments are coming in the nearest future - do not miss them!

YM: The main difference between the original game and its sequel is surely a genre - the game now plays more like a real-time RPG-adventure, while the first game was more of a turn-based strategy. The change of genre made some changes inevitable - there is no good RPG without side quests, dialogs, non-linear storyline and, naturally a hero, which goes all the way through, growing tougher. And we did our best to make Etherlords II a great RPG, so you'll find all these elements and more in the game and all of them are new to the Etherworld. And by the way, do not forget 50 new so-called pale spells - they make tactical combat deeper and less predictable.

YM: You start your quest on an adventure map, which is a part of the Etherworld - from now on you are free to do what you want - firstly you may wish to find out what your quest is. While doing this (or instead of this) you explore the world, fighting monsters, who provide you with XP points and spells, talking with NPC's, completing (or not) their side-quests, discovering ancient ruins and shrines that may help you on your way. As soon as the main quest on the map is completed you may move into the next chapter and so on� While traveling and exploring you will find out the cause of major changes that take place in the Universe of Ether.

The journey mechanics have changed much since Etherlords - as you click on any point of the map your hero goes there and the game only counts the days spent on the journey - this makes the adventure much more dynamic and gives a player more time to explore the world (in the first part of the game your heroes had an amount of movement points which were refreshed at the beginning of each new turn). So it is not a strategy mission with a fixed objective and tons of heroes and resource management- it is truly an adventure, where your main quest is to have as much fun as possible.

YM: Our main goal while creating Etherlords II was to make the games interface as easy and useful as it can be, while making adventure and combat more saturated that they were before, that's why we cast aside the global spells interface, runes system and the strategic part itself and introduced new spells, an artifact constructor, spell charges and buildings that affect gameplay on the adventure map as well as the modified adventure-RPG system itself. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the result.