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Re: Freeware/Shareware review roundup: Strategy edition by Flavio 03/10/2007, 10:05am PST
Mischief Maker wrote:

Battle for Wesnoth (free):

Negative.

Yech. I've probably given this game 5 different chances. I really want to like it. Tons of work and love have obviously gone into it, the graphics and music are very respectable for indie standards, there are half a dozen included campaigns, and it's been ported to every OS the team can get their hands on.

Unfortunately the game mechanics are abstract to the point of being fucked. You capture towns and recruit units advance-wars style, but after you have a decent sized force your slow rate of income is dedicated to providing army upkeep. Units gain 1 XP for attacking or defending, and 8 XP for landing a killing blow. After somewhere between 40 and 60 XP they level up (sometimes in a branching fashion) into a totally superior unit. Your entire surviving army can (and must) be recalled in subsequent missions. Later in the campaign your enemies get the ability to create level 2 or 3 units from scratch so if you haven't diligently been leveling and protecting your forces, you're fucked. Is this what those Fire Emblem games were like?

The other screwy thing with the game is the attacking system. To make ANY attack, including ranged attacks, you need to occupy an adjacent hex to the enemy. Each unit type has a melee and possibly a ranged attack. Units hit back at full strength with the same type of attack so the only advantage archers have is that they can hit a unit who has no ranged attacks without counterattack. But when the enemy's round comes the archers are standing right on top of the melee guy who doubtless has a superior hand-to-hand attack. Hit points are so high and the chance to hit so low that it takes at least 4 archers to be able to take out a single melee unit in one round.

The whole thing is just too screwy and abstract for my tastes. This is more of a Final Fantasy fan's game than a strategy game.

War on Folvos ($20):

Positive.

My favorite missions in Advance Wars were the ones without factories, where you had to win the game with just the units you were given. Some dudes in Slovakia share my tastes and made this gem of a game. It's tactical Advance Wars with 3D graphics on a hex map.

The plot, which may be a subtle allegory, involves an intergalactic superpower discovering a valuable energy resource on an otherwise worthless desert planet and moving in to take control of it. The planet's government quickly capitulates and the superpower expects their takeover to be a quick and painless affair only to find themselves locked in combat against a guerilla insurgency.

The differences between the two sides are interesting. The superpower's units are one for one superior to their insurgent equivalents, but they all have shitty sight range and no dedicated scouts so they're usually fighting their way out of ambushes. This is even more important because howitzer fire not only does damage, it robs a unit of one of its 2 action points. It's like fuckin' Nam out there, man!

Other things of note are that infantry comes with its own built-in mechanized transports so they're faster moving than tanks and get extra bonus from defensive terrain. Air units can pass over and occupy hexes with land units on them. The other nice thing is that supply vehicles have guns. Shitty guns, granted, but at least they have something.

The only real complaint I have to aim at the game is that the lime green movement indicators are really hard to see against the yellow desert background. My other complaint is that I want more. You get 20 missions in the game total (and 3 AI difficulty levels) but I want some kind of skirimish mode.

Recommended.


These two sound and look EXACTLY like Fantasy General and Panzer General, right down to the built in mechanized transport and archer/melee mechanic.

Panzer General was fun at first but ultimately sucked because missions were unwinnable unless you did every single thing EXACTLY right, and you had to keep your units from the beginning and never lose them or the computer would get an experience advantage and slaughter you. This lead to retarded scenarios where the american army in 1942 North Africa were just as experienced as the troops you've had since Poland.

Fantasy General is actually very fun, and can be found on home of the underdogs. It fixes almost everything wrong with Panzer General. There is experience, but you're not absolutely fucked if you lose your units from the start of the game. The adajacent archer thing works as a way to soften up a tough melee unit before one of your own melee units attacks it. Learning from past Panzer General games, I set it to easy mode and the difficulty was just right.
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Freeware/Shareware review roundup: Strategy edition by Mischief Maker 03/10/2007, 8:33am PST NEW
    Re: Freeware/Shareware review roundup: Strategy edition by Flavio 03/10/2007, 10:05am PST NEW
        Oh. by Mischief Maker 03/10/2007, 11:14pm PST NEW
    Re: Freeware/Shareware review roundup: Strategy edition by Flavio 04/21/2007, 7:26pm PDT NEW
    Well if it's Frontpaged by Mischief Maker 05/16/2007, 7:05pm PDT NEW
    Folvos $1.35 on Steam this week NT by fabio 01/05/2015, 10:32am PST NEW
 
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