XIII Century: Death or Glory (PC)

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Naturally, it's unjust to penalize XIII Century because it's not Total War, but it's hard to enjoy the game when scenarios don't scale up in difficulty through the campaigns. The custom battles are a poor training arena because the maps have none of the terrain variety of the historical scenarios. You could drop into "arcade mode," but that feels a little like cheating.

Beyond the extreme difficulty, which some people might enjoy, there are other reasons to skip this title altogether. Even though the battles play differently, they all look the same. Every side has generic pikemen and generic swordsmen, with minor variations in cavalry or support troops. Their colors don't stand out, so the only way to tell whose army is whose is through the icons that hang over their heads. If that unit is routed, you're left with a tiny sliver of blue or red surrounding a white flag. The faction list for custom battles reveals that most of the Western European armies are identical except for their leaders. The Moors and Mongols get some cool soldiers, but Castile's army is no different from that of Germany. If your pikes and swords start mixing it up with enemy infantry, it's nearly impossible to single out your men for new orders.

Not that they'll listen, anyway. For a game that emphasizes the importance of controlling troops and getting them in the right place, XIII Century makes that very hard to do. Your cavalry usually have a default setting of "offense;" forget to change that and you'll see your precious knights rush at the first forest of pikes that comes into range. Grouped units will sometimes change their facing when ordered to move, forcing you to drag out and rotate the formation you want. They rarely keep the formation they are in, changing from a shallow block to a long column almost on a whim, even in an open plain. The interface is sticky, too. Selections don't always take, and movement orders sometimes seem to get lost as troops shuffle about.

Ironically, this stuff wouldn't matter as much in a turn-based game. The level of difficulty rewards careful planning, something you won't have much time to do. With less pressure to get your beaten swordsmen out of the melee, the fact that they are represented by a slightly different colored icon wouldn't matter. All the numbers that describe your units' status would be more interesting and important if you didn't have to make a decision that very second. (Though you can pause to give orders, this breaks whatever flow you've built up.)

With a different structure and a little more personality, I could recommend this game to the curious. There are some great ideas here, but the package doesn't come together to create anything compelling. There is surely a place in the market for vivid, 3-D historical battles, but they have to be livelier than this to justify their existence. You can't skimp on color or sound like Unicorn Games has, even if the historical model is accurate and the material inherently interesting. XIII Century does little to seduce even military history wonks like me, people who are predisposed to love a man in uniform. Even knights on horseback and Mongol archers can't close the deal.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game purchased by the reviewer.