Gates of Troy vs. Legion - a critical comment

[vicousvic]

Dear Ian, dear forum-guys,
I played strategy games for years, including titles like euII or hearts of iron and also the mainstream stuff like shogun, rome etc.
Not expecting too much I ran across a cheap copy of "Legion", my first encounter with slitherine (i guess) so far.
The game got my interest easily, i liked the simple but still motivating style, f.e. building up a more and more experienced army, a good A.I., even the battles I found motivating enough to play 3 campaigns all the way down to victory. So I thought, I give slitherine another try and figure out a more modern game, ending up with gates of troy a couple of days ago.
First, all was nice: a bigger management system, nicer maps, more story, a nice handbook (not written for 13year old boys, but for adults, which I, being 33, appreciate), etc. A lot of elements nevertheless I easily rediscovered from legion, but that was OK, since I like that game. But then I started my first game and eventually came to the first battle-scene: What a dis-illusion!!! The troops run around like a bunch of bees, everything is in motion but it looks so ridiculous. As soon as the armies clash together, everything is just like a big heap of blinking bytes, no order any more, no atmosphere at all. I mentioned my interest in legion before to make sure, you don??t misunderstand me as a graphics fanatic. But the way these battles are shown in gates of troy is just so uninspired, that I couldn??t convince myself playing for hours to build up a decent army, just to see them looking all more or less the same and - over all - running around in a glibbering, porridgle-like style. (sorry, my english is not the best - I am german). I can get a lot of fun out of a game just by my fantasy - when the game allows, like it did in legion (oh, yeah, those 4 squads of hoplites with level 6 experience that won my heart with their withstanding power..), but this was not allowing me to have any fun out of the battles. I don??t know if this comment is of any help or if you guys out there think the same, but I hope for Legion II to be a) not overcomplicated just for the sake of pumping up the game-features.
b) having a motivating (no need for high-end graphic) battle engine.
c) please, please remember: sometimes, less is more (how many sequels of games do I know that just killed the game atmosphere by pseudo-enlargening everything? - hundreds I guess)
Apart from that: again my appreciation for legion, I still find out nice features of this so simple looking game. Tomorrow I hope to get chariots of war in my favourite store. So you see: I still have hope.
Mike

[IainMcNeil]

Thanks for the feedback. Have you tried playing in 2D, as that makes the game look almost exactly as Legion did.

In Legion Arena we have worked on the unit cohesion & now squads behave much more realistically.

[efthimios]

First of all, welcome!

If you want to get a picture of how the battles are in Legion II, go to 3dgamers.com and download the video of the game Legion Arena.

CoW is closer to Legion (I guess) than Spartan+GoT, so you might like the battles there more?
One of the things to remember that might help a bit is that though the units lose all cohesion in battles in GoT, any factors like position, terrain, orders to flank etc, do count. You are just not able to see it clearly.

[anguille]

I play Spartan/Gates of troy with the 2D on as i am not very fond of the 3D battles either.

[therlun]

I play Spartan/Gates of troy with the 2D on as i am not very fond of the 3D battles either.

same here.