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Review - LegionReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.6 Review Date: May 26, 2003
I've always wanted to start a review out with a Bible verse, especially one referenced in a Gamera movie. I've found that the best sermons at Grandview United Methodist tend to be the ones where the parables involve giant flying turtles. Until Sunday, however, I'll content myself with writing my review of Freeverse Software's Legion, a strategy game set during the Roman Empire. Now, I don't know so much about the Romans. I remember that the Roman Empire scenes in Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I were the funniest in the movie, so that's my view of the Romans; they were funny. Oh, and horny, since I also saw Bob Guccione's Caligula.
So, Legion. It's a strategy game, but one that should have been relegated to a tabletop instead of a computer. It's entertaining enough, I suppose, in that the strategy element takes full command. Unlike your average real-time strategy titles these days, Legion is almost 100% planning, leaving very little room for the furious clicking and pausing required to win battles in games such as Age of Empires II, Stronghold, etc. Actually, a more fair comparison for Legion would be to Castles: Siege and Conquest. That Castles was published in 1995 probably doesn't speak well for Legion, but it's really not a bad thing. Castles was simply that good, and was one of my favorite strategy games for its time period. The comparison stems from the fact that both games are mainly about building an army, then sending that army out to battle. Win, then move on to the next battle ad nauseam, or at least until Britain, Hyspania, Italy, and others are all conquered
The same goes for military personnel. As usual, the town needs to make money pay the soldiers' salary, and certain buildings need to be in place to create certain types of soldiers. It's all fairly standard, although more rigid. For instance, buildings can only be completed in the spring. It doesn't matter when they're started. To complete a building, you'll have to forward ahead to springtime in order to take advantage of that building's products. I guess the Romans weren't quiet as handy with an ax and saw as, say, the Amish. Each turn requires that salaries be paid, so you can't just select a building to be constructed then click through to spring. This is a strategy game, remember, so your decisions must be calculated in order to stand any chance of winning. That being said, Legion doesn't overburden the gamer with ridiculously complex micro management issues, as mentioned earlier. You can focus more on the military campaigns and less on how close your lumber mill is to your fletcher or whether or not your civilians are at least 50% satisfied. Now, the battles. This is the element that will make or break the game for individual players. Me? I'm the kind of guy who, when playing those new football games for the consoles, prefers to play as the coach. I don't want to be bothered controlling the quarterback and finding the open guy, only to switch to said open guy when the ball's in the air, ending up the play as the lineman who has to come up to make the tackle after the pass is intercepted. I'd rather just call the play then the players do their own thing.
That's good, but I quickly learned why game developers make strategy games more complex than this; if they don't, they quickly become too easy. Or, rather, too monotonous. After I became good at deciding who should attack who, when, and from where, it all became pretty cut and dry. The drama wore off, and the game fell into routine. I wonder if that's what happened with the real Romans. Slitherine must've realized this could happen, as they provided six different campaigns in which you can play any of the available tribes. You can also choose to play an historically accurate campaign or with alternative settings that allow you customize the scenario. You can choose which nation type you want to play, which nation you want to control, and in which nation you want to fight. As they point out in the manual, you could control the Romans fighting the Romans. Does this offer enough variance to hold the attention of strategy gamers? Well, it provides for some interesting campaigns, but it all ends up feeling the same in the end.
There are also two problems with the game that were kindly pointed out to me by Freeverse's Colin Smith. First, hitting the escape key on your keyboard exits the game. No warning, just done. I never did this accidentally, but it could prove disastrous for someone who's been playing for quite some time. Which brings me to problem two. Apparently, after playing Legion for four hours or so, the game will slow down drastically. Saving the game, quitting and restarting will solve the problem. I can't verify this happened to me, though, as I never played it for four hours straight. These days, my marathons are reserved for episodes of Mr. Bean and Fawlty Towers. Now, I've been pretty hard on this game. That's because I wanted it to be more. More attention could have been paid to the graphic and audio details, and the resource management could have gone through a couple more development cycles. Instead, it seems that most of the time developing this game was spent on historical and military strategy research. So, there's your audience. If you loved Civ III or Age of Empires II, Legion is not your game. If, however, you long for the days when strategy games were about strategy and not about flashy graphics or split-second mouse clicks, then Legion will be a breath of fresh air...for a while, anyway. I wonder, though, what Bob Guccione's version will be like...
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Neither of those Romans are the ones in this game. These Romans just kill a lot of people in a manner that makes odd squishy sounds. Probably more accurate historically, but not quite as fun.
Of course, no strategy game would be complete without resource management, so Legion starts you off with a city in which you must build various resource gathering structures. You don't decide where they go, only the number of civilians who will work in them. Once a structure is in place, it can later be expanded to improve production.
This is how Legion works. When entering into a battle, you're presented with the various solider types in your regiment and the terrain on which the battle will take place. You can't even see what types of soldiers your enemy will be throwing at you, although you can get a feel for how large and powerful the army is from the size of their flag. So, you select your squads and tell them how to behave. Have your auxiliary archers launch an immediate attack while your gladiators hold their line for a bit. A little while after they let lose, release your auxilia from the sides. Again, this is all determined before the battle, as nothing can change once the battle begins...you can only sit and watch. Considering my gameplay preferences, I found this made the game more enjoyable. Watching my casualties rise and knowing there was nothing I could do about it made for some very tense moments...and some educational ones, as well, as it was much easier for me to learn from my mistakes when I could pay attention to them as they happened.
The graphics in Legion are passable. I can't tell you why, but I like games that look like this...sometimes preferring them over the high end 3D graphics today. They're cleaner. Brighter. Generally happier, which is what you want when slaughtering Pictish peasants. The sounds, on the other hand are pretty bad. The music gets in the way, and the audio effects sound as if they were pulled from a bad royalty-free CD collection. The screams are unbelievable, and the squishy noises you hear in battle are simply goofy...as if from a parody of this type of game.