Battalion Wars Review

Battalion Wars Review

Battalion Wars was the first installment in the series. With the ability to swap units to meet the situation, Battalion Wars puts an extra layer of strategy into the common run and gun shooter games. Battalion Wars requires teamwork because each unit has an important role to play in each battle.

Intro

Story:

Campaign 1:
You start out as a Western Frontier grunt just learning the basic controls, but you soon discover that Tundra is spying on you. Now your army is behind enemy lines and you have to take back what you have lost. So you join a Battalion and take on the Tundran army. Once you defeat the Tundran army a new army appears from out of no where! They are called Xylvanians and they attack both the Frontier and Tundran armies. With a new common enemy, the once warring armies join forces to take down Xylvania.

Campaign 2:
You are now in the desert and trying to stop the Xylvania's fuel supplies. In the first mission you have to help Defend a fort that over looks the sea from an Xylvanian attack force. The Xylvanians use air transports to storm the beaches of the fort. When you expel the Xylvanians you go on throughout the campaign by first helping your Tundran allies and capturing and destroying key Xylvanian fuel supplies.

Campaign 3:
With their fuel destroyed the Xylvanians pick a fight with their age old enemy, the Solar Empire in the Coral Atolls. The Frontier race to the aid of the losing Solar Empire. When you get there you have to fight off the Xylanians and help turn the tide of the battle in your favor.

Campaign 4:
When you have successfully fought back the Xylvanians you must then venture into the belly of the beast. You must assault Xylvania! With little resources left to spare, the Frontier, Tundra, and Solar Empire go all out in a last ditch effort to defeat Xylvania. In the first mission you must capture four bases to stop the Xylvanians from destroying the only bridges that lead into Xylvania. The next mission leads to an unexpected twist, a NEW enemy appears and seems to be stronger than the Xylvanians! This new enemy is lead by Vlad's daughter and is called the Iron Legion. With this new enemy to deal with you must destroy the only thing that supports them, a tower that gives life back to fallen Legion troops. Once the tower is destroyed the only thing left to do is to capture Xylvania's last stronghold, The Vladstag. In this final mission you must capture three gates leading up to the stronghold, but you will have to fight through enemy fortifications and bomber support before you reach the final flag. Capture the flag and the game is done.

****The last parts of the last mission and the ending cut scene is in the spoiler!

Bonus missions:
The bonus missions are little extra missions that allow you to play as the army featured in that campaign. The campaign and bonus mission that goes with it are as followed:

Campaign 1: you play as Tundrans trying to destroy 8 Frontier heavy tanks.
Campaign 2: you play as Xylvania trying to destroy all Tundran forces before they escape.
Campaign 3: you play as the Solar Empire defending your 3 heavy tanks from Xylvanian attacks.
Campaign 4: you play as the Iron Legion where you attack the Xylvanians out of revenge.

Gameplay:

A video to see the gameplay (includes first cut-scene and gameplay from first mission... the Mission starts at the 2:00 min marker if you don't want to wait)

sorry if the quality is bad

Control:
Control stick: move
hold A-button: charge fire and fire
R-button: crouch and increase (down on control stick) and decrease (up on control stick) altitude (to increase and decrease altitude you must hold the R-button down)
L-button: lock on or cycle lock ons
L-button, B-button and control stick: combat rolls

Overall:
Battalion Wars has great graphics for a gamecube game (8). The sound is original and suits the game really well (9). The replay value is a little low, but obtaining those bonus missions will bring you back wanting to do the best on all of the missions (6). The value for Battalion Wars has gone down since it's release and gamestop is selling it for under ten dollars used, so it has a good value for fun gameplay (9). Overall Battalion Wars is a great game for those who love strategy mix in with third person shooting.