Legion

Discount Price: $3.89

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

The Mediocre Legion [Posted on 2003-02-10]
I would recommend that you not buy this game for the following reasons:
1.There is really no attacking or defending. It seems like every battle is a meeting engagement.
2.Combat can get to be quite boring after a while. You usually know who will win when the battle opens and I was surprised to find that you can't control your units during the battle.
3.Cavarly units are very weak and their initial charge has no shock value.
4.In combat, units just march at each other and fight-there seems to be no tactical skill involved; the AI is exceedingly dumb,and the combat music can get very boring.

All this said, this title is an average game. You may like it if you are a history buff, and the patch 1.06 improves a little on the games original flaws.

Lots of Strategy, fun. [Posted on 2003-05-08]
First off, this game will not win game of the year awards or anything like that.

But it is a good game. Management of your economy, army, and diplomacy is simple and doesn't take very long to learn. The best thing about the game is that there is lots of strategy... Keeping it challenging and interesting.

One of my favorite things about the game is how battles are played out. You give your troops their orders BEFORE the battle, and then you have no control once it starts. It adds to the strategy as it is not a clickfest-- you can think about what your unit formations/orders should be, the position, and the terrain you want them to fight in.
It is also very realistic-- in Roman times, once a battle had begun, orders could not be efficiently relayed to the troops.

The economy interface is simple. There are 3 resources; food, lumber, and iron. You will need them to raise armies and build buildings. Some buildings provide the resources directly. Others improve your worker's productivity. And others add town defenses or military improvements. If you leave workers idle, the population will rise faster.

There are many types of soldiers you can buy. Different tribes can build different soldiers (Rome builds legions, and Celts can build fanatics), and there are building requirements to get certain units. Every unit has its own specialties. Some fight well in rough terrain, whereas others (such as legions), fight well in the open. Some fall easily to cavalry-- but hopilites will tear them up. In the back of the manual it lists the abilities of the units, and all this adds to the battle strategy.

The game is turn based. Each turn is a season, and each turn you can move your armies a certain number of spaces. In the spring, buildings you ordered are built and units produced.

The diplomacy is fine. You can declare war, offer tribute, offer an alliance, and check a tribe's standing with others. They can make you an offer, such as: "We will agree to the alliance if you give us 100 food and 200 lumber." Or they might beg for peace, and offer tribute if you will accept.

The graphics are NOT cutting edge. Rather, they are acceptable-- and this makes it so that the game will run on low-end computers. It runs perfectly on my G3 400 MHz iMac... And I am sure it would also work on even older computers.
There is no multiplayer either-- but as the game is turn based, multiplayer probably wouldn't work very well anyway.

This won't be the best game you buy, but I would recommend it.

Great Beer and Pretzels Game - High on Fun, Low on History [Posted on 2003-05-15]
When board wargaming was in its golden age, we called easy to learn, fun-to-play games good "Beer and Pretzel" games. Legion is a good game and poor simulation of ancient Roman warfare. If you want an accurate computer simulation of ancient warfare during the heyday of the Roman Empire, keep looking. If you want an easy to learn game with an ancient flavor, Legion works fine. I was put off by the basic graphics at first and limited strategic options, but once I learned how the game worked, I found the entertainment value worth the purchase. Buy this game for fun and entertainment, not for historical simulation.

Flawed game by with a few pluses [Posted on 2003-12-04]
Legion is a flawed game, but it is old and you can buy a copy for $7. The city growth is oddly limited, so no city can build every type of building offered. Why is this? I could not tell you. The Real Rome had every type of building the Romans could build; and all Roman cities were just a copy of Rome. It is worth $7, not $8, but $7 is a good price for this game. Wyatt Kaldenebrg

MB's Review [Posted on 2005-07-03]
excellent gameplay, nice graphics. However, the only problem is that it only has campaign missions and no "random map" scenarios.

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