Battlefield Commander: Ancient Warfare

Here in this place lies a man of war. His lives were many and his accomplishments great. His names and faces changed, but we can now lay him to rest, knowing he has served his final purpose. In honor of his spirit, we name all of his lives in order of which they were lived:

Χαρμόθεος Λυσανθίου

Κλεοδάμας Τιφωνίου

Μάντις Ἰσοκράτους

巫弋

Θεόλοχος Πολεμάρχου

Λυσίμενος Διονυσίου

Quintus Oppidius Strenuus

雷煊

Θεσπίων Εὐκλέους

Lucius Caristanius Victor

We recognize all these great men and their accomplishments as the works of one. His leadership and sacrifices led his people to unchallenged victory. His kills accumulated to 15,360 enemies, while only losing 2,320 men across all his lifetimes. He will be known throughout history as one of the greatest men to ever live. We wish you well brave warrior, and hope your soul finally knows peace in death that it did not find in life.

(My score may not reflect these numbers as I closed out without a comment by accident and had to completely rewrite this. 7/8. Some of the sentences get a bit long-winded while not being run-on. There are some grammar errors scattered about and the last battle had a negative warriors killed value for some reason? Maybe a bug. Otherwise I was greatly entertained throughout.)

This game was fun to play and enjoyable to read.

I liked the concept of this storygame, which places you in several historic military campaigns. It was written fairly well, and did a good job of describing the situations that these generals faced. Also, one is not always placed on the winning side in these campaigns, which also adds to the historic realism.

Each campaign is like a short story all in itself and the games design is to obtain the highest overall score on all campaigns. Because of the way it is set up, there is not one single narrative developed throughout.

I think the story does a good enough job of characterization in each of the campaigns. You really only need enough information in order to try and make a good choice in the upcoming battle, however, I never really felt drawn into the story part of this storygame. I did like how this game and the stories helped give some color to major historical figures and their part in the battles/politics of their time.

Overall, a very good game that is fun to play and presents a greater understanding of some of histories great battles.

- .... . / .-- --- --- -.. ... / .. ... / .-- .... . .-. . / .. / .- --

Very well thought out game. I like the way you don't "lose" your progress. That's pretty much it.

Other than that: 7/8

It was ok

Fun game! I liked all the generals and their clever strategies, though I kinda wish that Alexander's campaign was a bit longer (while he was still alive, that is, spoilers tho). I'll definitely be checking out the Edutainment tab more!

a lot easier than it looks

I achieved the highest score so far! I'm surprised that I hadn't found this game sooner. Oh well, no time like the present!


Good:

1. I enjoyed the educational content. Like the story category suggests, this game was more informational than one made purely for entertainment

2. I personally loved the historical settings and war simulation genre

3. There was a substantial amount of complexity in terms of how the campaigns proceeded based on previous outcomes

4. The length of the game, in terms of number of campaigns, felt just right

5. The plethora of outcomes and campaigns gave this storygame much replay value


Bad:

1. I found myself wanting for more details in the descriptions for each scene; the battles in general could have been fleshed out more

2. I wished I could choose strategies and tactics for the campaigns and battles rather than merely which part of the fighting force to join

3. Punctuation


Ugly:

1. My WKILLED showed as -70 at one point in the Roman/Carthage campaign. I don't think that was supposed to happen

2. Daliang was given as the capital of both the Wei and the Qi on separate occasions

3. A few of the battles contained no information or clues as to which choice was best (it was like, join the left, center, or right, with no indication as to which was best), so those choices felt random

The hidden gameplay objective was basically to pick the most crucial part of each battle, which wasn't made readily apparent at first. Overall, I enjoyed this game, and found its 5.5 rating to be an accurate one. Off to try the previous episode!

fun

The game idea is quite original for the website : a tactical battle simulator. However, in some battles, the choices could be better introduced in the sense where there results can feel a bit random. Overall, great game !