Nice Try
The Real TIme Strategy part of the game is fun, but lacks a few things that could of made this game great. First, you start out with troops, and do not have the option of creating more. No defensive buildings, unique characters that make one side an advantage, nothing. You're also limited to one group against another, so don't expect battles to span out over a decent amount of time. Plus you're limited to only 3 types of characters, and you can easily win an entire battle with just archers. It does have the option of upgrading your soldiers after battles with reward points you earn from winning, but I didn't seem to notice much difference in performance during the battles. You can also spend your reward points on an assassin, but it seemed like a waste of points. The game does do a good job of keeping parts of it challenging by putting you into situations that are hard to win. But almost everytime I managed to win.
Some parts of the game allow you to try and negotiate before you fight, but this rarely works. At certain parts of your turn, you jump into one of four mini games that keep the game a bit more interesting, although each of them are a piece of cake after you figure out what you need to do.
Graphics in this game are decent, with room for improvement. The mini games look great, but the RTS part of the game could use a little variety in colors.
Sound in this game is great. You can hear clashing swords and guys being hit by arrows.
The other main thing that this game suffers from is difficulty. Yes its easy to pick up and play, but overall, you can beat the entire game without losing a single battle. The length of the game is also fairly short. I beat both sides of the game in a few hours. If the game had included around 4 or 5 more civilizations to play as, it probably would of had a higher replay value.
I havn't had the chance to play this multiplayer, but it's probably a decent amount of fun and challenge compared to the main game.
Overall it was a decent attempt at a RTS game and if you're a fan of RTS games I'd recomment picking it up as it's the only RTS out for the DS as of now. Not as in-depth as it should have or could have, but its still fun to play.