You are Conrade, a young man who was orphaned when he was young because an evil man named Damien killed them. It is your 18th birthday today and you have just learned that the people that have taken care of you for so many years are not your parents, but that your real parents and brother was killed. This is were you begin...
Playability: 3.5
Conrade's Quest is a fairly easy but still very fun campaign. Although there is a bug in the third scenario and the story isn't quite creative this campaign might give you a few hours of nice gameplay. Most of it is done decently. There is not much unneeded stuff and exploring the map will hold both: risks and chances. You should like fixed force battles with a handful of units otherwise you could be disappointed. Anyway, I liked playing it although it could have been a little bit more fast paced.
Balance: 3.5
This is probably the "worst" point of Conrade's Quest. Scenarios one and two a pretty easy, the third one is bugged but still if it wasn't it would be hard. I managed to kill the army but I had to free the priest (using my villy to cut away the trees). I am not sure if this was meant to be played like this. The last scenario again is difficult but it is beatable. Since I wasn't motivated as hell I simply killed two doubles and then made home run. If you save before attacking and then try out one after the other you will win. But beating more than 2 armies is not that easy, so better save before attacking.
Creativity: 4.0
Your family has been slaughtered by an evil general. Now you're taking revenge. Sounds familiar to you? Well, for me it does because one out of two scenarios here holds about the same story. But story is not everything and here you are supposed to fullfill different quests. Twice you have fixed forces and in the first two scenarios you can build up a camp. There is always more than just two players on the maps which makes them more realistic.
Map Design: 3.5
The maps are old but somehow pretty. Espacially the cities are good. I don't want to say that they could compete with the top ones but there is some eye candy here and there and there are even swaps out there. The oasis was also well done. Still there is much work to be done at this point because the forests looked rather boring, and the terrain was too plain.
Story/Instructions: 4
The story was not very creative but it was lovely written. Some errors could not prevent me from recognizing that the author put a lot of efforts in here. The instruction maps were great although you have to rearrange the directions. The hints were useful and the objectives have always been clear to me. Good job!
Additional Comments:
download recommendation: Yes. Give it a try if you like to get a little campaign with decent design.