Battle for Wesnoth

IV. Game on

There are several methods of play, and depending on the chosen game, the amount of gold, available units, location, map, player turns, and other variables changes. The methods of gameplay are: Campaign, Scenario, Multiplayer, and Hotseat.

* Campaign

This is the original intention of the game, and offers the most advantage to level up your charactersnd units.

* Scenario

A single battle between the player and ai. Multiple scenarios can make up a full blown campaign, depending on the creator's design.

* Multiplayer

Can be played online against other players via the game's server, and can even be played in single player mode, where a player choses a number of AI players to compete against.

* Hotseat

A cool way to play multiplayer game using only one computer. While there's a option to use an additional "remote computer", the term itself is pretty much self explanatory. Each turn, the player takes the seat (aka hotseat) to execute unit commands.

V. Complex simplicity

In any of the game methods, it's essential to recruit units and even recall all or some of your more experienced units. Recruiting and recalling can only be done inside a Castle Keep, i.e. you can't just do it anywhere on the map. However, there are instances in the game where you can encounter friendly units with which you can control. Some of these units are controlled by computer AI and you can't help them directly, though you can influence the outcome of the AI strategy. For example, if a friendly AI decided to attack, you can use additional units to soak up damage or send your healers to keep them from dying.

However, the game isn't just recruiting and recalling units. There's a bit of economy to game as well, which is just as essential as developing the units you control. This adds more sense of strategy to the game since Villages need to be captured to generate the needed Gold (which is the currency/money used in the game). The more villages captured, the more Gold that can be earned, and the better chance to recruit stronger units or recalling veteran ones. The game's complexity never ends with controlling Villages and building army, it also involves an upkeep. This ensures that you can't just build a powerful army without regards to how you can build it. If you can't support your growing army, then you'll eventually lose Gold and without Gold, you'd better not get any of your units dying or replacing them will be impossible.

And there's the scheme of managing the units. Each units can only level up so much, so there will come a time that they will reach their maximum level. Using veteran units can turn the tide of battle, however, it can also hamper the advancement of other units. If veteran units will be used to kill enemy units, lesser units can not scale up well. It is important for lesser units to be used in the battle as well, and at times, some needs to be sacrificed to gain an upper ground.

All of these, and more (and much much more if I may emphasize), makes The Battle for Wesnoth a very interesting and fun game to play. As mentioned earlier, this game is completely free. Guilt-free playing, that's how a game should be played. And what's even more, there are many supporters that are making and developing even more scenarios and campaigns that are, like the game itself, free for download. This ensures that you'll never always have new campaigns and scenarios to spend hours with. And of course, if you always like to just duke it out with your friends and other players in multiplayer on-line game, then no one is stopping you to do so. In fact, I always join the server, but only as an observer. Oh yeah, this is a very nifty feature, you can join an already on going game as an observer and see all the on going slaughter.

VI. Closing words

I have been playing the game for more than a year now, maybe two years already. And the game always offered me that same magical feeling. I have played the original campaign (Heir to the Throne) for about 4x already, figuring out other options of the game and how it affect the succeeding scenarios in a game play. I have also tried varying degrees of difficulty, and well, the easiest option (Figther) should best fit the true blue noobies, but for the more experienced player whether you have played this game or not, medium (Hero) difficukty offers the most balance. Hardcore players should play the game in Champion mode which is the hardest difficulty. I know the Champion mode is really hard, I haven't beaten the Heir to the Throne campaign yet and I have given up beating it in this mode.

Finnaly, I'm rating this game based on my experience. I will try to give specific score for some of the popular categories such as graphics, sounds, etc. but my overall score will not be the average of the scores. I believe that doing so will severely impact a particular game, not based on their actual merit and may falsely gave a sucky game a good score or a great game a poor score.

Individual Rating (1=Lowest, 10=Highest)

Theme: 9.0 (Genre of the game)
Graphics: 9.0 (Eye candy)
Originality: 1.0 (Revolunationary or Evolunationary)
Sounds: 2.0 (Captivating audio effects)
Compatibility: 10 (Stability with OS, number of supported OS)
Replayability: 8.0 (One time shot, or Long time wonder)
Price: 10 (Pricey or cheap, or even free)
Fun Factor: 9.5 (Boring or Exciting)

Overall Rating (1=Lowest, 10=Highest): 9.5
_{Note: If individual rating is used to get the Overall Rating, a poor score will be
garnered instead. While the game isn't original, and sounds are very basic, it's not reason
enough to give this game a poor rating. I actually came to appreaciate the sound quality
as it offers ample effects while still maintaining the size of the file to manageable
downloadable size.}

If you still haven't started downloading the game, I suggest you start doing it so. The file size shouldn't be very scary, even for those who have slow-speed DSL (sub 196Kbps). However, it can still be a bit large for dial up users though, and if you are on dial up, better get download managers just in case you get disconnected.

Dowload: The Battle for Wesnoth