THE LOVELY PRESSURE SITE IS DEFUNCT SO I'M PROVIDING THE TEXT OF THE ORIGINAL REVIEW
************************************************************************************


Single squad based strategy game. Reminded me instantly of the famicom
game Bososuka Wars(on a smaller scale mind you). You have your main
character, and direct a small group of fighters that fight along side
you in real time. A fairly unrepresented style of strategy game I believe,
as I can only think of the one similar example. The game opens with a short
story sequence with decent, though the quality jumps around a bit, art,
followed by a brief in game discussion to get things going. The graphics
are simple, which is a common theme in QB games, but there are some decent
effects, when you get a kill, the blood splatters out, and there are a few
magic attacks to use. The game has PC speaker sound effects which was
pretty much bleeps and bloops for contact in battle(I ended up shutting
it off).

Gameplay is a bit cumbersome. Everything is mapped out to a different
key, and there are a decent number of commands. In the middle of a fight,
its hard to manage your characters effectively, while battling on your
own, and they don't do much of a job managing themselves. There is a
small amount of enemy types to deal with, some faster than others, or
perhaps using magic, but with the exception of the magic users, they're
all handled the same way. Content to merely get near the enemy and strike,
they trade blows with every hit, and their life falls rather quickly.
You also keep the same group of people throughout the entire game, so
it is risky to bring them out with you. Also, in between rounds, you can
purchase spells and give life back to all of your characters(who also
eventually earn their own special attack. . .rather quickly).
The amount of "money"(was it called something else?) you have to do this
with depends on the kills that you get yourself, not with your soldiers.
So it is better to do as much as you can alone, and use your men to pick
up the scraps with you. While this is fine for completing the game, it is
not cool for the whole real time war style this game was supposed to be
presenting. Instead, you're reduced to slowly getting individual enemies
to become active and kill them off one-by-one(multiple enemies doesn't
make a difference if you can get them all coming from the same direction),
or you can take your army out with you, and after they die, slowly get
individual enemies to become active and then kill them off. For me anyways,
the only skill I needed to develop was timing my attacks so that the enemy
would recieve damage and I would not. Defeated the purpose a bit. Using
magic in place of attacks also eases the pain a bit.

As it is, it is a decent game. Its short, and, at least, you should be
starting up a melee at the end of the campaigns. It betrayed my
expectations however. Using your soldiers through an entire level means
they will take damage(perhaps die), and get kills of their own, which will
leave you with less money to heal the people who were hurt more because
you made use of them. Forcing you to avoid the defining characteristic of
this game. Or rather, forcing me. Would be a fine game with a few small
changes. Good now to check out as a curiousity in the "what are they
doing in QB" column, at least. I didn't play the 2P mode. =\