Best Mobile game ever! Most addictive! A value for the money! Rivals some pc games in terms of complexity!
Ancient Empires is the game that restores my faith in mobile gaming! I was afraid of getting another shoddy "lite" version, as they don't tell you what version they are giving you(or that there is different versions at all) and a guy on gamespot reviewed this saying he only had 6 of the 8 levels advirtised and no skirmish mode. Well I was estatic, when I loaded it up and shore enough it was a complete ver. 1.0.2 game with skirmish mode have 20some map (16 that are locked until you get further in the campaign they unlock!) and a full campaign mode with 8 levels, story, different play styles and objectives, sometimes you have to take over a certain number of castles, retrieve an artifact, kill all enemies, survive an ambush, chase, and more.
The Campaign is in depth, with story, and units that have complex stats, and they level up during each seperate map(doesn't keep to next map, as that would make the game too easy) Archers become Elite Archers at level 3, Soldiers become Warriors at level 3, both get stat increases by level, so after a unit earns enough xp to be level 2, its attack and defense increase, every other level is a promotion of rank and title which gives more bonuses. It's a nice touch to the game and makes you want to save your units, by healing them in houses'/castles. The units you get are archers, soldiers, beholders, sorceress, catipults, water elementals, and dragons. Each has their own specila abilities, like the soldier can repair and occupy houses to collect gold. The sorceress can resurrect corpses, etc... You also have your commander, your hero, with big stats, he can level up too! There are demon lords that are enemy commanders, if they die you can ressurect them at a castlr for a hefty fee, that gets more expensive each time you resurrect. You loose the game by having your hero dead and no castles to resurrect him.
The skirmish mode is cool too! With so mayn maps to be unlocked, and some provider differnent amount of players! there is even 4 player maps! 4 human players could play be passing the phone back and forth each turn, And if you don't have the players you can have the cpu take over, you can even assign teams say you play a 4 player map and you can make it 2 on 2! Or make a cpu an ally then take on the 2 enemy cpu players which fight amongst themselves also, because they are not in teams. The game has so much versatality and replayability. Itlooks and sound great for being on a mobile phone. I haven't played enough to see the big boss battle sequences(in gamespots screenshots, has verticle spli-screen) yet. This is my highest rated mobile game, and it is a instant classic! My Advice is to buy it if you like mobile games, even if you don't like turn-based strategy(why you wouldn't like tbs games is crazy but to each there own) it is a must buy period! You won't regret it!