Legends at War

Real time strategy game, Legend of War is now available to download on both the App Store and Google Play. Whether you’re flanking opposing legions, wreaking havoc with spell and weapon-based siege attacks or building up your own empire, this title’s going to keep you busy.

As Ron Perlman aptly puts it at the start of the popular post-apocalyptic RPG series Fallout, "war never changes."

The same can be said for nearly every game set within the confines of war. After all, there are only so many scenarios you can play through before you've seen and played through every pivotal battle in every war ever.

So, it's down to the History Channel licensed game Legends of War to bring something new to the table. Surprisingly, it manages to achieve this without treading on the toes of what's come before.

As most mobile games either revolve around turn-taking or small-scale battles, we strove to create a game that offered a large-scale battle on a small device. Pair this with the unique catapult firing system used throughout the game, probably never before seen in a strategy game, and Legend of War is in a league of its own.

The biggest challenge was getting a lot of animated characters on the screen while preserving a decent frame rate. We overcame this by combining all of the meshes into a single mesh and animating it as a whole.

With regards to complex elements, the A.I. is one of the most advanced aspects of Legend of War. We wanted an A.I. that acted like a human player and couldn’t easily be fooled by using simple techniques. For example, when attempting to lure a legion out of its defensive position, the A.I. will be smart enough not to go on a wild goose chase.

Dependent upon user feedback, there are a number of options here. Most likely, is that we will start by developing a new batch of characters and fine-tune the Guild War, which is currently in its infancy.

But this doesn't quite work as intended, because you pretty much don't care who's who until you begin to upgrade your units into more specific roles of Paratrooper, Sniper, Bazooka trooper, and so on. Even then, their profile thumbnails are all identical within each class, so it's hard to form a bond.

While History: Legends of War's combat isn't as tight or complex as XCOM's, the tactical side of battles is handled very well. It's great fun to position troops behind cover, popping out to take down Nazi forces as they come into your line of sight. And thanks to a generous and simple movement system, you can plan attacks and then revise them easily on the fly.

It is a little strange that Slitherine hasn't made use of the Vita's touchscreen, which lends itself perfectly to the strategy genre. It's stranger still that it hasn't even factored in the right stick for camera control, instead making it a fiddly procedure with the left stick and shoulder buttons.

That said, it's still a solid and highly enjoyable tactical game that will satisfy almost any urge for some portable historical fun - even if it does lack a much-needed online multiplayer mode.