Missing pieces

If Battle for Wesnoth would be first person shooter with similar level of quality, it would be quite likely be lot more popular. Now it's excelent fantasy role playing strategy game that doesn't look bad compared to commercial alternatives. Sure, there's no fancy 3D graphics, but that's not so important in genre like this.

So what is it about? From the strategy game perspective, movement happens in hextiles and game is turn based. Different units can move different number of tiles in a turn, depending on terrain. There's certain about randomnes in combat, but there are also number variables that have effect on the odds. For example some units are much better in open terrain and some in forest. In addition units are more vulnerable to certain kind of attacks than the others. For example undead are normally tough, but are very vulnerable on holy attacks. Time of the day also gives some kind of units advantage. Orcs and undead get bonus during night. Odds are presented before doing the actual attack, so you can only blame yourself getting good units killed because odds were not in their favour.

From the role playing side, every unit has experience points and two random special features, for example unit can be intelligent and strong. In Wesnoth intelligence means that unit gets experience points more quickly. After unit gets enough experience points to advance to next level, it gets better attacks for example. Some units have different choices what to advance to. For example mage adepts can advance to red or white mage. Red mages are good against most units, but white mages have holy attack and undead don't stand much change against them. Choices are sometimes tough.

Basicly gameplay usually goes like this: You start in camp and buy some units. Once gold starts to get low, you have to occupy some villages to get more gold to maintain your army. Running out of gold means just that you can't hire new units, so existing ones don't start a strike. If odds look good enough you can go and defeat the enemy leader. Usually there's some slightly superior units that must not be killed as allies. So using them is bit risky, but usually worth it if you're careful enough.

Most common fault in freely available games is that there's not much to play, at least with single player. Wesnoth doesn't seem to have that problem. There are few campaigns to play and it could take weeks to play them all, of course depending on how much you play. To me, easiest skill level seems mostly be hard enough. And for extra challenge, there's sometimes bonus goals too. Campaigns have also plot and sometimes there's multiple choices, that affect for example what allies you get. Sometimes it's just not possible to please everybody. So plot is not in the way, actually it makes campaigns much better.

What about graphics then? There's not much to complain about them, maybe some unit portraits might be better. There's even some variation in tilesets, so every mission doesn't look the same. Sounds are also good. I don't remember much about music as I usually turn it off in games like these.

So if you're not allergic to strategy games, Battle for Wesnoth should be worth a look. It's available for number of operating systems, such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.