Game Reviews

World to Conquer

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World to Conquer
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| World to Conquer

The last decade or so has seen every gaming genre under the sun look for ways to shoehorn in some kind of role-playing element.

First-person shooters, strategy games, and even driving titles now seemingly can’t be made without slapping a few levels and stats onto everything the player does, desperately trying to hook them with unlocks and XP.

World to Conquer doesn’t need such folly to keep you glued to its turn-based screen. Instead, it relies on a combination of good old-fashioned tactics and sweat-inducing fear.

Got the world in motion

The plot centres around a mysterious attempt to start a huge war between the nations of a fantasy world, not too unlike that of the original Advance Wars on Nintendo DS.

The gameplay, too, is a little like Intelligent Systems’s magnum opus, revolving around moving and attacking with troops in a turn-based fashion.

But that’s where the similarities end.

Rather than use resources to buy units, every scenario starts with a pre-determined number of troops at your disposal, ranging from standard warriors and archers through to summoners (who can create monsters out of rocks and trees) and wizards (who can fire chain-lightning).

The scenarios are usually split across multiple battles, with any surviving member of your team progressing to the next fight.

Anyone killed in action is lost forever (or, at least, until you restart the entire scenario again).

Keep it together, man!

This fear of losing valuable units too early in a level is what gives World to Conquer the edge over similarly-themed turn-based strategy games.

These battles are well designed for playing on the go, too, with each taking no more than ten minutes at a time and the game autosaving with every turn, meaning you can quickly drop it in your pocket should you not have an iPhone/iPod capable of multitasking.

Despite the increased likelihood of some nasty difficulty spikes from lacking the right troops, the game never feels unfair or punishes you too much when you slip up, with most battles still winnable despite losing two or sometimes even three units.

You may need to think a little more creatively with the survivors should you get caught out early on, but it makes each fight across the well-presented battlefields one of thoughtful planning.

Bad intelligence

However, this planning can feel a little too random at times thanks to a combination of poor feedback and varying rules.

Enemy line of sight and movement range, for instance, is impossible to ascertain without learning through play, while ranged units can occasionally fire right through what would normally be an impassible piece of terrain, making reliably hiding wounded units a matter of trial and error.

A little more fine-tuning when it comes to these two areas would have made World to Conquer a more well-rounded title, but as it stands it still provides a quick and interesting take on the purer form of strategy game.

World to Conquer

A few interface issues aside, World To Conquer is a fun and quick turn-based strategy game that’s designed well for portable play
Score
Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).