Publisher: DreamCatcher Interactive
Developer: World Forge
System: PC
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

Attention gamers: we have a mistitling in aisle five! The real-time strategy game known in America as Great War Nations: The Spartans should actually read The Fate of Hellas, as it does in Europe and the rest of the RTS loving world. This correction should clarify any confusion as to why a game apparently about Spartans also includes a Macedonian campaign. The reason for this can only point to something to do with name recognition and perhaps Gerard Butler, yet for World Forge’s inability to title correctly, they’ve managed to cobble together a respectable looking war.

GWN: The Spartans is a reasonably priced strategy sim with a pretty face and everything else gamers have come to expect from the RTS genre. Two decidedly different campaign settings are available, one encompassing Agesilaus II’s Spartan shenanigans and the other focusing on the future conqueror-to-be, Alexander the Great. The two crusades offer seven missions apiece, each with its own set of goals, which is usually the eradication of the opposing army.

In both cases, you start out as low man of the land, tasked with building an army as well as managing your fortifications, lest the enemy make a coup against them. Of course, the ever present demon of resource gathering is in attendance, too, forcing gold extraction, lumberjacking and agricultural cultivation to keep the fires of war stoked. It’s plenty to do for one measly cause, I’d say, but then again, we ought to be used to this dance by now, as every RTS does it!

Not that I have a solution to solve it, but at least GWN adds the element of weapon collection into the jar to break up the monotony. Simply send a slave out after any battle to scavenge armaments left behind by the dead and either sell them or put them to good use in the unit designer, a unique feature that allows the player to customize troop sets and store them for later use. Perhaps spears and shields for the front phalanx and javelins a few rows back for support! Ahhh… Gotta love made-to-order bloodshed!