History: Legends of War Review

He sneaked, crouching, along the wall, carefully hugging the shadows. Looking over the wall he spotted an enemy stood by a building, thankfully, his back was turned. He slowly took aim with his sniper and silently took him down. Signalling his two fellow troops they stealthily made their way to the communication tower and set off the bomb, destroying the German camp.

This is how playing History: Legends of War made me feel. Not being much of a history buff, this game made learning about World War II fun for the very first time. More than that, I felt like General Patton himself, whom the game is centered around, and really lived the missions and events that were happening.

History: Legends of War is a turn-based strategy game which is essentially stripped down to the nitty, gritty combat. As previously mentioned it is set during the events of World War II, more specifically towards the end, and you follow General Patton and his command of the Third Army as he marches across France to stop the German forces.

Upon loading you will be presented with two modes of play at your disposal. There is the campaign mode, and the multiplayer mode. The campaign mode allows you to follow the missions, which are based on the real events that took place all those decades ago, and completing each scenario then unlocks it for multiplayer.

The campaign itself is linear and divided into four parts, or chapters. Within these chapters you have four different types of assignments; Attack, Infiltration, Defense and Sabotage, each one bringing something different to the strategic table. Attack is as it seems, an offensive battle in which you must defeat the enemy; Infiltration requires a stealthy advance to an important controlling point valuable to the Allies; Defense requires you to keep at least one unit alive whilst you are assailed by the enemy over a set amount of turns; and Sabotage bids you (with a limited amount of troops) to covertly disrupt the enemy's plans by planting bombs and the like.

There are five levels of difficulty, taking the game from, "so easy I could do it with my eyes closed" Picnic Day easy, to "I will never have the mental capacity to beat this" Legend of War hard.

Once you've chosen how challenging you would like your campaign to be, you are then treated to an eye-feast of ways to customise your game. First of all there is a section called 'Patton's Skills' which allows you to boost your troops performance. You can increase the damage they do, or their overall hit points, or how many shots they can take per turn, as well as how much ammo they have for each scenario, and how much prestige and experience they earn as they complete them. These bonuses are bought with skill points, which as well as prestige and experience are earned by finishing missions.

Prestige and experience come into play in the next section of customisation, 'U.S. Third Army', where you can recruit units by spending prestige. Which troops you can buy depends on how far you are in the game, and they unlock as you progress, meaning as you get further, you have loads more cool stuff to buy.

In this section you can also see all of your troops as individuals, right down to their names, how many enemies they have killed and how much experience they have gained (and loads of other fascinating statistics). On this screen you also have the option to use your accumulated prestige to upgrade individuals or to heal them if they become injured during combat.

There are many different types of units, and each kind comes with its own perks. There are snipers, who can shoot from a distance; bazookas, who are particularly adept at destroying tanks, and even transport aircraft for dropping supplies into the battlefield. Alongside medics and special Allied units like UK paratroopers, there are lots of recruits to choose from, and once they are in your army they can be chosen for missions. This means that each scenario can have real variation when it comes down to who you want to help you achieve a victory.

The actual operations in the campaign are very straightforward. Each one has a limited number of slots available (a maximum of eight, less for stealth missions), and you select the soldiers for the job. In the battle, every unit has a move action and an attack. There is no grid, so you can move wherever you like within you movement range. You can have your soldiers crouch behind walls to avoid being seen, or if an enemy is close enough you can make an offensive strike. Your men may have a choice of weapons at their disposal depending on how you have upgraded them, meaning attacks can have varying degrees of devastation determined by how you decide you want to damage your foes.

Tactically there are a lot of decisions to make during gameplay that will influence the outcome. You really need to consider what your goal is and how to avoid defeat. For example in a defensive operation, you need to avoid the attrition of your men, otherwise you will find yourself overwhelmed, so troop preservation is paramount; choosing when and who will strategically lash out at your opposers. It makes the game really interesting, as every situation can be played in another way.

Graphically the game is actually very pretty; you can zoom in and out, spin the camera around and even tilt, although the tilt was a little limited for me. It's not groundbreaking stuff, but there is certainly nothing wrong with the visuals, and they are very realistic, which plays well to the true to life setting.

The sound is nothing special, the voice acting when commanding a unit to do something is quite poor and unvaried, although I was quite partial to the music which was reminiscent of Stargate SG-1 and did wonders in helping connect to the game and what was happening.

Overall History: Legends of War is a surprisingly enjoyable game. It is basic yes, but accessible, and plenty of content to keep you entertained. Scenarios are quite succinct, which prevent you from becoming bored or overly frustrated with them, and keeps them fun. My only real qualm is that there is no game feature included to encourage replay. There is no 'try and best your time' option, or 'here is what your friends got' to draw out the competitor in you. Unfortunately that makes it the kind of game you will play once, complete and not really come back to; unless you have a friend that fancies playing multiplayer with you.

It's no XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but it is a good example of its genre, and managed to get me interested in both History, and military-only strategy, which is no mean feat. It left me pleasantly surprised.