AMN and N-Europe (formerly called Revo-Europe) teamed up last week at the Games Convention 2006 in Leipzig, Germany. Below, you’ll find N-Europe’s very own hands-on report with Battalion Wars 2. Enjoy.
Potential! Oh, Battalion Wars for the GameCube was so full of potential! It was such a promising game that so unfortunately ended up destined in that ‘not a must-have’ collection of titles for the GameCube. Seems for some, the controls were too complicated, the tactical aspects were too weighed down and the lack of a multiplayer mode was simply shameful. We were left dreaming of a Revolution incarnation. Excitingly then, our prayers have been answered with Battalion Wars II (BWii)? We checked it out in Leipzig.
There doesn’t appear to be many changes in the game on first glance. Bwii – developed again by the European company Kuju – looks quite the same as the GameCube version. The small graphical differences become clearer when you see the further detailed explosions, more grass and such added details on the grounds. The draw distances seem to have improved a bit too but trees and bushes are still disappearing and reappearing when moving around. Maybe this will improve in a later stadium, but for now the upgraded graphics aren’t something to get too excited about.
The big difference is in gameplay; the remote works as your pointer to aim and with the nunchuck, you control your current unit. One of the big downsides of Battalion Wars was that commanding different units was too complicated. The controls are much simplified in this new instalment. To let your fellow units attack, you simply press the A button to let them do what you do; attack the same unit, move to the same spot. Moving the nunchuck and remote lets your soldier do the necessary jumping and rolling around.
Selecting units is made easier in the game also which should improve the tactical aspect of BWii. Move the cursor over the overview of units in the left corner and simply select which units to command. In the original game it was hard – impossible really – to direct soldiers from one place to another without walking along with them. Apparently this has been made easier in BWii. With the map overview screen you can now direct units. There’ll also be tactical buildings in the game to capture, so that should improve the tactical elements tenfold.
Unfortunately though, the tactical element of the game didn’t come to justice in the multiplayer battle we played. It was more of a ‘rush into the enemy camp and shoot as many soldiers as possible, oh and some structures too’ kind of game. Our opponent was defending his camp while we were rushing in with airplanes, tanks and soldiers. Controlling units was indeed easier than before – and the game still had the same feeling to it – but the five minutes session was too short to check out all the details. Turning your unit around was one of the little problems we encountered. You had to move the pointer to the edge of the screen to turn. This was going just too slow – a problem also seen in other Wii games and might be something for the guys to work on because this truly can be annoying in the heat of a battle.
The lack of multiplayer modes in the previous game seems to be more than compensated in BWii though; you can play scenarios with or against a friend and at least fifteen multiplayer missions will be included in the game. Look at the fact that the game will have twenty single-player missions for certain and it’s clear that multiplayer takes in a prominent place. For the online mode (it feels good to talk about a Nintendo game and talk about online as a common thing) there are three modes confirmed; Assault, where the fighting element is superior, Skirmish, where tactic gameplay is more central, and lastly a co-op mode. If this is going to work with friend codes or not, we don’t know yet, but we do know that four player battles are included. Nice!
Battalion Wars 2
Although seas existed in the original Battalion Wars game, ships were nowhere to be seen. This complaint has been dealt with too. BWii will have frigates, dreadnoughts, sub-marines, transport ships and more so that fights can now take place on land, sea and in the sky. Characters of the first game are returning (please, let Betsy loose her ability to speak in this game!) with the introduction of new ones as well which is cool seeing as they add alot to the humour and tongue-in-cheek-ness of the game.
We’re not completely convinced that this Battalion Wars II game is going to be the game we hoped for just yet and for the moment, the game looks too much like its predecessor on first sight. It does however seem that the developers of BWii had a good listen to all the complaints and is trying to deal with most of them successively. It’s a shame we didn’t get the chance to check out the new tactical improvements in the game in our hands-on session, like the directing of troops via the map screen. If this works out well, the game might well get a bit more depth to it. All in all though, we can conclude that Battalion Wars II has enough – sigh – potential, to become a huge multiplayer hit for the Wii. Here’s hoping our expectations aren’t going to be squashed this time.
