Review of Battles of Prince of Persia

Battles of Prince of Persia is a turn-based tactics game for the Nintendo DS, released by Ubisoft in 2005, and takes place between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Although it was a couple of years ago that this game was released full price, it sank into obscurity fairly quickly, but as it now seems to be popping up in the budget bins of computer game stores, there's no time like the present to pick up this old warhorse!

The game is unusual in that it combines mapped based strategy with deckbuilding and card-gaming. Each round of the game (called "hours") you draw a hand of cards from a thirty card deck, which you can then use to give orders to your troops, or to activate various special effects. You then have to use the troops and cards at your disposal to attain certain objectives, and score Victory Points, with first-past-the-post claiming the win.

Deckbuilding

Rpg.netters will no doubt have played a CCG or two in their time, so the concept of deck construction will be nothing new to them. As with a CCG, cards vary in rarity, and the game has a set of 200 cards to draw from. The game has a certain number of cards provided to you from the outset, and you can expand your collection by playing campaign or multiplayer games. This is quite satisfying, as it gives you all the buzz of opening a booster pack of cards without having to spend any more money!

Having said that, there are some flaws in this aspect of the game. A lot of the cards in the set are very similar in effect, and many are simply superior versions of others. This smacks of sloppy design - anyone creating a CCG in this way would be accused of poor game balance and lack of playtesting. Also, two hundred cards isn't many, and even the ultrarares turn up pretty frequently, so a couple of plays through the campaigns will have you with a fairly complete collection, and no incentive for further collecting.

For those who are looking for the collectible aspect of a CCG experience, this game is a little disappointing.

Gameplay

The turn-based strategy is somewhat reminescent of Advance Wars, but lacks the complexity of that title. There is no ammunition track, and there are only a handful of unit types. Core to the game is a two tier paper-scissor-stone mechanic. The first tier is that light beats heavy, heavy beats medium and medium beats light. The second tier is similar, with arrows beating pikes, which beat swords, which beat arrows. This makes tactics pretty simple on the small scale, but with the addition of other small complexities (facing, buffs and debuffs, command radius and morale) the overall strategy is slightly more complex.

Experienced wargamers will have little trouble tearing apart the game's AI, as computer-controlled opponents will often make ill considered moves, and in the later games of the campaign rely on material advantage rather than oncreasing tactical prowess to account for increasing game difficulty. Despite this, there is some challenge to be had out of the single player, and if nothing else the sheer size of some of the battles makes for an illusion of complexity.

Where the gameplay shines is in the multiplayer. With each player bringing a different deck to the table, and with a myriad of options, the game feels very much like a good game of chess. Attacking and counterattacking, clever use of formations, and attention to small tactics and sweeping strategy all give the claim sufficient depth to make multiplayer worth a good few replays. Also, even though the CCG mechanic is somewhat limited, the feeling of reward from receiving a "booster" of cards from a victory adds a lot to the fun.

The main problem with multiplayer and campaign alike is that the victory points system can end a battle before it reaches a satisfying conclusion. Though this can take out some of the tediousness of mopping up, it often seems that battles end very abruptly, with victory being awarded when you pick off a routed unit rather than when you achieve a significant objective.

The last thing to mention is that the control interface is somewhat wonky. While using the stylus to give orders is intuitive, there are no useful "keyboard shortcuts". If you want to scroll the map you have to hold up on the d-pad, and scroll with the stylus. If you want to change facing, you have to tap an on-screen icon. There's the feeling that the control interface could have been more efficiently designed to speed up the flow of the game. Getting good tactical information is something of a pain too, with left and right scrolling through relevant information, but with the need to hold down L1 if you want to query things. A transparent pop up box might have been handy.

Presentation

Battles is not a great looking game, even by 2005 standards. The battle animations are somewhat basic and repetitve, though they do give you a far visualisation of what is going on. The unit icons are stylised rather than representative, though they are efficient and to the point.

This is not a game to buy if you are sold on visuals alone.

Story

The story, predictably, is not engaging in the slightest. The Prince of Persia himself comes across as being petulant and unlikeable, but then as this is a prequel to the much-reviled Warrior Within, this is hardly surprising. The campaign is also a little short, with 24 scenarios taking a serous gamer no more than a week or two to work your way through, and with little replay value given that you can't change your force composition, your faction or the scenario. Even die-hard fans of the story of the series will find that Battles adds nothing worthwhile to the chronology.

Summary

Battles is satisfying in ints own way, and if you can pick it up for the price of a pint of beer or a Starbucks latte, then its definitely worth getting a copy. It's no Advance Wars to be sure, but the CCG components (though limited) do add another dimension to the game that will appeal to most rpg.netters.

If you like CCGs and you like turn-based strategy, you'll probably get some weeks of fun out of this game.

As a video game, however, it is somewhat deficient, and it isn't worth getting if you're only going to play it single player.

So if you have all the Advance Wars and you want to play something slightly different, or if you have a friend with a DS who already has the game, pick it up. Otherwise, stay clear.