Battalion Wars

Reviewed by CL on 3/22/2007

For some reason, a lot of gaming sites give this game fairly high scores. In my experience, I found this game incredibly cumbersome and frustrating. This is a game which doesn't know if it is a 3rd person shooter or a real time strategy and in the end, it doesn't do either aspect well. In many missions, you have an entire battalion of troops to command as you try to achieve your mission. In addition, you can personally control any unit in your squad. This sounds like a lot of fun, but in practice, it is an awkward situation. The other units can only do one of three actions. They can follow you around, they can be placed in guard mode, or they can attack enemies that you specify which are in your field of view. The majority of the time, they are following you around so your entire squad just travels as one big mass. You can't send one squad of troops to attack from the rear while the other squad attacks from the front. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that your allies have worthless AI and will frequently group up and stand around while getting shelled by enemy forces. Combine this with the fact that events unfold in real time and you have one giant mess that produces more frustration than fun. there were several missions that I had to redo multiple times because of these problems. It was so bad that I considered just quitting the game and never playing it again. The game also has no multiplayer at all. Battalion Wars tries to combine two genres which are usually fun when played alone and fails miserably. Don't waste you time with this game.