Review 10: Battle for Wesnoth

Reviewing this game is a bit strange feeling, as it's one of the long time darlings of the open source movement, and quite popular already.

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However, for people who are new to linux, open source software in general, or just looking for something less hectic, it is worth a glance in any event.

Battle for Wesnoth is a turn based strategy game, in the vein of old games like the Warlords series. You control an army of various fantasy warriors, fight enemies, accomplish various tasks (usually not much more complicated than defeating the enemy ruler, but there are variations) and basically do what you'd do in any wargame you can imagine. Wesnoth isn't really about doing a lot of new things. What it does do however, is make the old things very very fun.

Resource management is mostly kept quite simple: You need gold to pay for your men's upkeep, and you get this by completing map's quickly and by controlling villages on the map you are playing. In the campaigns, you can recall old, experienced units, though this costs a fairly large amount of gold as well.

Review 10: Battle for Wesnoth

Each unit earns experience and receives upgrades to new unit types as you go. Often there are multiple choices, each leading to a separate path. This lends a bit of an RPG feeling, and planning out what path to take can significantly affect your overall battle performance.

While the units are mostly fantasy staples like elves, orcs and dwarves, they each play in very distinct and interesting ways, there's a wide variety of units, and you'll quickly find favourites that suit your play style. In multiplayer games, this can become a little "rock paper scissors" but overall balance is decent.

There are a number of campaigns to play, complete with branching paths, a variety of decent stories, interesting characters and some quite stiff challenges.

There's a solid, multi player component that can accomodate a large number of human and AI players, whether hot seat or online.

I am realizing that this sounds more like an advertisement blurb, than a real review, but this is a game I have played on and off for quite a few years now, and it's something that you can't quite review "honestly" at that point.
In my opinion, it's one of the better turn based strategy games out there, all the more impressive for being completely free. It's a blast in multi player, and for any fans of strategy or even roleplaying games, it's well worth a look.

Review 10: Battle for Wesnoth

Graphics:
Quite nice. The unit sprites are very cutesy and anime inspired. Terrain is very clear and understandable, and the interface is very simple and easy to use. The game does a great job at presenting information to you.

Sound:
Well made music that definately increases the ambience quite well. You can argue it's bit stock fantasy, and it is to an extent, but there's some unique pieces. Sound effects are functional if very basic

Controls:
Mouse driven. Everything is very straight forward, and once you've played the tutorial, you'll know all the basics.

Gameplay:
For a game with as much scope as you find here, it's hard to find many faults. The gameplay is polished to a mirror shine. The biggest concern is that you can get in a situation where a battle in a campaign becomes nearly impossible to win, because of previous performance, which can be frustrating.


In conclusion, while I feel that accurately scoring this game for me is difficult, if I would, it would be a solid 90%. It still captivates after 5+ years.