No Man's Land is CDV's latest offering from a crop of real-time strategy games developed in Europe and later released in the US. The company's titles tend to be relatively realistic and historically-based, and No Man's Land appears to be no exception, at first glance. The various factions and artwork are reflective of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, but, in fact, there's a lot of mysticism and historical inaccuracy in the game. This results in placing the game in its own "no man's land" between historical authenticity and fiction. Additionally, it falls victim to lackluster gameplay, thus preventing it from being recommendable to RTS fans.

The campaigns are loosely based on real history, with a few creative and sometimes absurd twists.

No Man's Land takes place in North America from the 1600s to the 1900s. There are six factions in the game, including Native Americans, Europeans, and American settlers. There are three campaigns in the single-player mode, but they don't follow any kind of chronological order. Instead, the campaigns show how various factions were related to one another. The first campaign follows a Spanish man as he investigates a sudden drop in gold production in the New World. You'll end up in the Caribbean fighting some familiar foes of Spain during the time period. Next, you'll play as the Iroquois Indians, who are fighting for survival in their woodland homes during the founding of the American colonies. When you finish this set of missions, a character explains that other Indians are having problems with the "pale faces." You then jump to playing prairie Indians who are fighting the settlers in the Midwest as they arrive on trains. The third campaign starts with the English arriving in America on the Mayflower, which, if you recall from history, arrived in 1620. It's being escorted by warships, and they come under fire from...the Spanish? Interestingly, the Mayflower was a religious voyage, not a military one, and the Spanish never even made it that far north. Anyway...

As you can imagine, No Man's Land isn't going to replace your history text. The story varies from being somewhat believable to just plain ridiculous. To give another example, in the first campaign you're fighting someone named Drake. This is plausible because Sir Francis Drake attacked Spanish ships for the English crown. Oddly, you then you encounter an Indian shaman who can summon animals from out of thin air! The game just feels trapped between trying to adhere to reality and making copious use of creative license to the point where the proceedings just make no sense.

Each of the six factions has its own unique buildings and units, although these units are all functionally equivalent. There are weak combat units, stronger but more expensive fighters, and units with bonuses against cavalry. Depending on the faction, these units feature ranged or melee attacks. The cavalry is also composed of the three described infantry units, but, in contrast, the cavalry units are merely--and obviously--on horseback. The European nations can also build cannons and warships, while the Native American tribes are limited to canoes. As you might have guessed, there really isn't much variety to the game's military might, so, in turn there isn't much strategy in the game. Battles are won through sheer force rather than tactical decisions. All you really need is a big group of the weak fighters to be fodder for a big group of the strong fighters.

Grass Wing's throwing knife is so strong, it will take out this wooden tower with ease.

The main differences between factions are the elite units, which are the game's version of heroes. They are units built from special structures. Some of them are story-specific characters, but they are all are much stronger than the standard units. They have increased hit points, stronger attacks, and special abilities, and they can regenerate hit points. Some of their special abilities include being able to instantly kill other units or being able to cast whirlwind magic that inflicts heavy damage on buildings. Some of the heroes can be obscenely overpowered to the point where you can solve campaign missions with just the hero unit alone if you are patient enough to let it heal.

However, most of the time your heroes will die because they'll run themselves into an enemy base due to the game's poor artificial intelligence. There are behavioral settings for units, but there are some problems with these settings. The aggressive setting is fine, as it will cause your unit to actively hunt down enemies that come within a specific range. The hold position setting is also fine because sometimes you want your units to fire from a given spot. The problem lies with the defensive position. In most RTS games, a defensive-minded behavioral unit will move to attack a unit that comes within its range before returning to its original spot. In No Man's Land, units placed on a defensive setting will only attack an enemy if they are, themselves, attacked. So, if a group of riflemen are set to "defensive," they will not attack an Indian spearman if he is attacking only one of the riflemen. This behavioral setting is, therefore, practically worthless, so you can either pull your hair out because your units blindly run into an enemy base, or you can pull your hair out because your units won't track down an enemy because they are set to "hold position."