Player Comments on Battlefield Commander: Ancient Warfare

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.

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 !

its ok im judt confused of the names

this story was kind of short and and boring but i really truley like it it was the best story ive ever readed i give it a 10 out of 10 definetly read it it was awesome will you consider reading it please!

it was fine.

it was ok :)

This is a simple game that gives you several options for ancient battles to fight. There's no real strategy to it. You have a thousand men in every battle with no specific type (light infantry, heavy cavalry, ect) You get more points for killing the enemy and lose points for losing men.

Each battle you get to choose where you are going to set your troops in the battle field. That's it. After you set your troops casualties are counted and the battle is over. That's the whole game. The author did a fair job researching the battles, but gives you an extremely vague idea of the battle field.

It's a super simple game, very little to it. The plot here can be found by reading the chapter heading in a history book, and I think that might be what the author did. It's not a bad game by any means, but in my opinion there just isn't enough here to make it a good game.

I like how in some campaigns you will lose more warriors no matter what.

Some inaccuracies but good

great job pretty tricky.

I liked it

I liked it.It was nice that it contained Greek battles.And the thing with the "difficulties" was pretty clever.You could just don't have numbers on every page.

While the strategy wasn't in depth, it was an interesting story-game and is recommended for history buffs. While in some campaigns, the reader felt detached from the battle and instead focused on numbers, it was a good read.
As a request, can you do another one in this series like on the Second Punic War, Alexander's Campaign or the Battles of 1066 (Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings).

way way too short

It was short and really didn't go into depth but was enjoyable. 8/8

While this game doesn't have a lot of depth, and isn't very entertaining, it definitely IS chalk full of information. After reading this, I did a little research, and found that you seemed to have done your research too! So kudos to you. There surprisingly weren't very many grammatical errors, which was most certainly a plus, but work from you usually doesn't fail to impress. This is a good example for someone to use as sort of their own study guide for a test in their history class, concluding the information in here are fact (as far as I could tell).

6/8

This game is awesome i like it.

T'was fun!

honestly a little boring you just do a decition and a the warrior and enemy variables change. i like theidea of a game but it is WAY to simple mabye a recruiting option would be good so you could have archers or something for example an archer or catapult would be good in long range but a sword or axe man would be good in close range

@Victim

That's realistic though. Maneuvering your own lines to protect your weakest point and break through the enemy's is pretty much all warfare ever came down to, from ancient times till the Civil War or so when advancing technology started forcing new strategies.

The writing is pretty captivating, but the strategy aspect seems somewhat lacking at times. The correct choice is almost always to attack the weakest section of the enemy line, which you are plainly told.

I really enjoyed this game! As a military strategy buff, this sort of thing was right up my alley and I enjoyed the effort you put into making the battles realistic. The routes that typically had you losing the least men were the lynchpins of the strategies that were discussed so the more instrumental the position you took was for the victory, the more you were rewarded. This would definitely be a learning experience for what made these strategies so effective.

I liked it but I would like longer campaigns for next time

It is quite an interesting concept for a game, but... I would rather have an additional option of selecting the troop type to be deployed in every battle, and the number of troops to deploy instead of having the computer do that for me. :)

i liked it and turns out i am a good general i did 2 campaigns Sparta/Thebes+Greece/Persian

Well, this was great fun. It was cool learning about military tactics, as well as all the interesting tidbits of information there, like the Collosus of Rhodes' origin, although I'm super curious as to how to remove someone's kneecaps in ancient China.

The story was interesting and fun with a cool variable use to track kills and soldiers and that. The choices were all pretty straight forward and if you were paying attention you'd have been able to figure it out easily, like not using Roman Calvary against the Carthagian elephants when you used elephants to massacre Roman Calvary in a previous campaign, or accompanying the strong in the right flank rather than trying to hold the left. There was a few bits where a bit more information would've been helpful in making a choice, but that's neither here nor there.

I really enjoyed the story and learning about bits of history that isn't really focused on a lot. Really, on all regards its another classic game from Will, and it was a pleasure playing it.

I haven't made it through all the battles yet but this is something refreshingly different and fun. Another great historical game from Will.

Personally I would have stuck a variable in there to make readers play through at least three battles or so, because depending on which you pick (especially if you start with an Easy campaign instead of going in chronological order) you can reach that End Game link in an eyeblink.

And even though I get that it would have expanded the work required by quite a lot, I kept feeling like this could use a map and glossary or a few details like that just to put the scenarios in context for people who aren't really familiar with these areas of history outside of movies.