The War of Eustrath HD

Wars in film, television, and games are exciting, quick, and brutal affairs. In reality, most wars throughout history have tended to be confusing and drawn out.

There's usually much more shuffling back and forth across the countryside, posturing, and waiting than there are outright victory cries.

In that sense, The War of Eustrath HD captures the feeling of a large war perfectly, with sudden bursts of enjoyable tactical combat punctuated by a long stream of less-enjoyable skirmishes and harsh spikes in difficulty.

The plot involves two warring nations – Eustrath and Kradion - who have gone to war because of a lack of food. They resolve the issue in the time-honoured tradition of a tactical role-playing game.

This basic backstory is just an excuse for the large cast of crazy characters to engage in banter between battles, which are filled with huge war machines called Gears.

It seems as though every stage introduces another new face to mock the plucky resistance, brag about an over-inflated title, or flirt outrageously with the female members of your squad.

While it's all meant in jest, the game's humour can only be described as an acquired taste. It's not necessarily going to be to your liking, but it does help flesh out the otherwise archetypal characters.

Fortunately, these personalities extend further than just jokey cut-scenes. Whereas most tactical role-playing games use terrain (i.e. rocks = defence) and elemental magic (i.e. water beats fire) to determine the damage each individual unit inflicts, The War of Eustrath HD is very much about the will of the pilot.

It's a numerical attribute that determines what a character can do. Most of the actions your motley crew can take across the game’s 30-plus stages are directly tied to this value, which rises and falls when they perform something they either feel good about or dislike.

At first it appears unnecessary: getting hit takes away will, while hitting someone else with a rocket to the face leads to an increase.

That is until you start to factor in the healer, Eve, whose submissive nature means she freaks out whenever anyone is hurt (including friendlies). There's also Sarah, whose arrogance means she loves nothing better than dodging attacks.

It’s a genuinely interesting system, especially as many of the strongest attacks require a minimum amount of will, but it’s regrettably under-utilised and unnecessary at the start of the game.

During this extended introduction, The War of Eustrath HD is a tedious, plodding game in which all the supposedly strong opposition can muster is a few hundred dull mechanical Gears that are about as testing to kill as a drunk mosquito.

There are also some horrible variations in difficulty once this trudging introduction is over, with stage 19 in particular causing much head-bashing as a single unlucky attack or unexpected defence can render it impossible to beat.

While it may not win every battle it throws up, The War of Eustrath HD's long, branching campaign and interesting combat does eventually win the war.