There are quite a few games which started out on the PC or console market and have been transferred to your pocket. Sometimes this is a total success and other times it can be a little bit of a headache and Medieval: Total War Mobile’s somewhere in the middle.
Unfortunately as powerful as mobile phones have become in terms of processing capabilities, they’re still a little way off where they need to be to offer you a totally convincing turn-based RTS game but in fairness Medieval: Total War does make a pretty good stab at it.
Although it doesn’t quite have the same depth or scope as its original counterpart, the slimmed down version for your mobile does offer some good challenges and stays pretty true to the cause.
Rather than using a balance of diplomacy, military prowess and tactics, this game mainly focuses on the battle elements of the game. True you can send emissaries to pay tribute to other countries to ensure they are loyal towards you, and more importantly unlikely to stand in your way, you will get a lot more from the game by being a blood-thirsty warlord than a polite royal.
The aim of the game is to pick your country from a list of six possible realms; France England Spain Europe and beyond.
In total you have 40 battles to play out across seven territories – meaning you have quite an epic game in the palm of your hand. What’s more, if you’re familiar with Risk – this part of the game will appear terra-firma to you.
The battles themselves may appear a little repetitive at first, there are enough subtle differences to give you quite a variety in playing the game. Whether it’s starting out in a forest and using the terrain to your advantage or trying to simply defend your stronghold from the advances of your enemy. You will need to be adaptable on the battlefield to become victorious.
As you may expect all six empires have their strengths and weaknesses. For example the English have a good ranged attack (longbow men) and a quite fast and strong pike-man unit, however they’re not good with horses so quick ‘rush’ attacks or vast advances around the battlefield are out of the question. So from the start you have to master your forces and play to your strengths against a variety of opponents – who’ll take no prisoners!
If you don’t want an epic war-fest on your phone, then you can play the battle mode against either the computer or against a human player to take it in turns to defeat one another. This means you can have a quick game and resolve the question of who’s the better leader by the end of lunch!
The battle interface is a little laborious and seeing your units on the map isn’t terribly clear at times. It is always worthwhile taking extra care in looking around the map just in case you’ve forgotten to move a unit before ending your turn – I found myself losing units by being too hasty in ending my turn.
Overall then, as I said to begin with, this is a pretty good game for your mobile which will challenge you tactically as well as on the battlefield. It does suffer from being stripped down to just the battle element and the graphics in the battle mode are a little squashed on a mobile screen. However, there’s a lot of action and fun to be had from this particular title and you could certainly do worse than buying this.
Rating 84%
Positives
Plenty of action and battles to test your mettle with
Skips all the boring diplomatic stuff and goes straight to battle
Lots of different units to use to their advantages
Negatives
The battles are pretty tough – especially if you’re not familiar with your units and the oppositions’ unit’s strengths and weaknesses
Graphics are a bit of a let down
Controls during battle take a fair bit of getting used to and aren’t as great as they could be
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