[PC] Chariots of War

Chariots of War is a follow up to Slitherine's previous title, the little-known, Legion. That game, like its successor, was a 2D turn-based strategy game, which plays well at first, before you realise that it possesses little to no depth. It may sound like a bitter start, but this hit me after I had been playing for a few hours. I was initially rather hooked -- playing it for over 2 hours without realising how the time had gone by. However, upon loading the game up the next day, I became shortly disappointed. The reason? For the 1023rd time, I was viewing the same boring non-interactive battle sequence, watching my troops seemingly randomly win or lose. After a few hours, it felt like I had not got anywhere, and my determination to actually complete just one campaign had seriously depleted.


The main aim of the game seems to be, quite simply, to conquer as much as possible. Yes, there is basic troop recruitment, and building creation in your cities, but you can forget politics, economics, city micromanagement as, unlike many other turn-based strategy games (fingers all pointing towards the Civilization series), they do not feature here. This makes the game rather shallow, and is part of the reason why I lost interest midway through playing. However, there is an improvement in the field of city development over Legion, and that is the use of the months. This the name given to the turns (providing a proper concept of time, also seen in the dates used in the game), and with building and training taking x amount of months, rather than occurring just in certain seasons as in Legion, development can proceed rather more rapidly, providing more enjoyment than its predecessor.

After completing the tutorial exercise, you are presented with a range of campaigns to choose from, including the main one; "The Grand Campaign". Choosing this allows you to select one of a very large selection of Middle Eastern civilisations (including various Egyptian groups) to take control of. Although this seems initially very impressive, you will soon be disappointed to discover that there are very little differences between each race, apart from the obvious cultural and appearance. Four of the other five campaigns see events happening in specific areas of the overall game world, but unfortunately don�t provide any specific scenarios. The last of the six is a variation on the original Grand Campaign. No matter what campaign you choose, you are always presented with some great maps which feature small amounts of resources, as well as terrain that has an effect when fighting with certain troop types.

As said earlier, the game revolves largely around attacking your enemies -- with no opportunity to win without conflict. However, there is some necessary trading in order to obtain enough materials, or enough food, etc. The trading screen isn't brilliant, but it's workable for its basic purpose. What is rather surprising is that, despite the obvious push for conflict, that the game does not include more options for battling. When meeting your opponent in the battle screen, you are presented with a scout's view of your opponent's forces and formation; the degree of accuracy of which varies each time, and you are given a worded warning about the degree of coverage the scout could provide. From this you can then choose the formation your own troops, and apply one of the preset basic tactics; which are mostly ineffective due to the style of the fighting that takes place and the narrow battlefield. The most annoying part is that once the battle commences, you are given no options like the brilliant Total War RTS games, and thus can play no intervening part in the ensuing conflict.

The graphics are, quite frankly, rather dated. The engine has been updated in this sequel, allowing for the higher resolution of 1024x768, but still things look very basic in their 2D form. The overall world does not fair too bad, but the characters themselves, especially in combat, do look rather unimpressive.


Reviewed by Matt Bailey.

From: All About Games.