Legends of War: Patton's Campaign review

Legends Of War is a rather pleasant surprise, it seems to have struck a balance between being both accessible for those with a passing interest in strategy games and compelling and challenging enough for experts on the genre.

When you first enter the game you are given the opportunity to start a campaign from one of five difficulty settings. From there the game then gives you a choice of playing a tutorial, or skipping it. Should you choose to do the tutorial you are given an in depth, but far from complicated. Developers Enigma have done well to cater for all levels of expertise. Something other games in the genre have struggled to do.

Legends Of War is graphically accomplished and the developers have squeezed some nice visuals out of Sony's ageing hand-held. Zoomed out and it is easy to see your troops and survey the area around them, the camera controls are easy to use and allow you to see around any potential obstacles. Zoomed in and the individual assets hold up very well. The menus  and visual aids stand out well without taking you out of the immersion.

Action is a solid mix of turn-based and real time elements. Movement is turn-based in the main, but should you encounter an enemy unit, you can attack right there and the game switches to a real time firefight, melee attack or range attack. This is a really well thought out design decision and works exceptionally well.

Changing unit actions are mapped to the face buttons, using Triangle to switch between movement and attacking options. In both of these cases the X button is used to perform the action, either moving to the location or using the currently equipped weapon. Square changes the unit stance and Circle is the weapon change. The controls are basic, but the AI mean that missions themselves do require the user to use a bit of grey matter and it is possible to find units cut off from each other when they become ambushed, or try to flank the enemy.

It is here that the the games major flaw becomes apparent. For some reason the developers decided that you can only select one individual unit at a time, move them, switch to another, move them, switch to another and move them. There is no way to select a group and move them all at once. The ability to choose individuals or groups would of really helped the game flow, instead if your units get split, it can be a long and tedious task to move them all into position. Sometimes you want that individual control, but at others you need to move multiple units across larger areas. It is frustrating rather than game breaking.

Legends Of War: Patton's Campaign isn't an essential purchase but it is a nice surprise for owners of a PSP. Fun and accessible without being condescending to experts. A worthy addition to your PSP library.