Wizards War

Wielding a magic wand in a battle between wizards is the stuff of epic fantasy, yet Wizards War makes this imaginative scenario feel routine, slow, and quite frankly boring.

It puts you in charge of a wizard, battling it out in an unpredictable turn-based battle, conjuring up creatures and flinging spells at each other in the hope of the being the last man standing.

It’s also not very good, trading excitement for poor strategic balancing and a single-player campaign for less valuable local multiplayer matches.

There’s no campaign, story, or online multiplayer mode - Wizards War is solely about playing one game at a time against up to three other human or computer-controlled players.

Your wizard starts alone in one corner of the battlefield, with enemies in the other corners, sitting inanimate like boardgame pieces. Each player takes it in turns to use up their five ‘stars’ (moves) on specific units around the board.

Between you and your foes is a series of mana wells (my own name for them as the help screens are poorly written), which, once claimed, create extra spell points to be added each turn. These points can be used to summon other units onto the board next to your wizard, or use the man himself to send some nasty spells towards your foes.

If your last well is captured, or the big man himself chokes it, it’s Game Over.

Right off the bat there’s a problem with this setup: there are only five stars/moves per turn. This makes any unit past number five practically worthless to the battle as they spend most their time sitting still.

Not that there are many to choose from in the first place, mind. Rather than have a selection of units, each with their own special skill/advantage, Wizards War offers just the two - Archers and Warriors - with the obvious ranged/weak, melee/strong combination.

While there are a few spells your wizard can cast on top of this, they’re almost utterly useless in practical terms.

In the end, every game of Wizards War plays out the same - each team hot-foots it over to the enemy wizard and keeps hitting them until they die.

Thanks to the turn limit, mana builds up to ridiculous levels in the interim, making the ‘wells’ almost completely pointless, and the computer AI is too stupid to properly counter any attacks.

There is the option of roping in up to three mates to have a pass-the-handset game, but this isn’t very appealing given the flimsy amount of tactics on offer.

While the presentation (bad translations aside) and general idea behind Wizards War is sound, it doesn’t have the magic to make it more than a lightweight strategy game.