A failing 3D clone to advanced wars
This is a game that obviously wanted to be comparable to the Advanced Wars series. In other words, this is a turn-based strategy game, settled in a close-to-contemporaneous time, for which you get soldiers and bases to control. Your units are of a given type (tank, grunt, chopper, submarine...) and they have attacks versus infantry, vehicles, airborne units and naval units.
The only difference between units you will control is what battalion they belong to. Each troop has its own specificity which is triggered by a certain quantity of damage inflicted & suffered. Some example are to increase move range for a turn, or damage for a turn, etc.
The one original point in the gameplay is that you have airborne units & naval units all represented in 3D in a way that allows you to stack an air unit over a ground unit.
Moving units is done fairly easily, once a unit has moved you access a menu that lets you tell it to wait or to fire etc. You can transport troopers or ground units on some of the vehicles / on choppers / on a transport boat.
It could be nice... except when we come to how it feels to play.
First of, using 3D should add to the look of the game. But actually it deserves it to some extent, at least because the zoom level chosen makes the units small on the screen. This is coupled with the fact that some elements are hard to distinguish (for instance a bazooka from a grunt, a factory from a headquarters).
Add to this that the 3D that the game is using is obviously slowing it down a great deal. To the point that when you switch between your units, you should expect a 1s load time one time out of 2. Thus if you are moving the cursor on the map, the movement is not flowing, it is slown down every now and then due to small load times.
On top of that there are a couple of small details here and there that mar a bit the realism of the 3D - such as a trooper in a river - looking a bit as if it were floating on the surface due to the water being too transparent - or fog of war being drawn only exactly on top of the ground, but you can see from an angle and thus high buildings are not fully covered by it if they are on the border of the map. Still overall the 2D is not faulty.
Thus the feeling during battle is that of a game that wants to do big but delivers half-way.
As far as the scenario is concerned, well I yet have to see 2-thirds of the game but I can already tell that it feels like "you(re getting briefed by people you meet at the time the scenario starts, and you face CO's that vary a lot and that are introduced during briefing"... such that you're going to feel you are after "yet another CO in yet another battle". Not enough coherence between each battle.
Still the presentation is nice in that we have voice acting, a couple of well-done movies, good ideas to present the CO's etc. Note for non-English versions: the subtitles flow too quickly for you to stand a chance to read them, so make sure you understand spoken English. (You probably do anyway since you are reading this. ;)
Music... falls short. Down to the word actually, since most of the scores are very short and very soon get repetitive. I personally turned music volume down as soon as mission 5.
So let's summarize: looks good but is slow, and gameplay is not original and missing humour, scenario and atmosphere as exist in other games. I had read the review to this game and was really disappointed.
Due to the price the game is sold, I personally advise you to spend your dollars on something else. Punto.