Athena Crisis review

Imitation is, as they say, the sincerest form of flattery. And in gaming terms, if you are going to borrow from or indeed mimic a super-deformed military turn based strategy title, then Advance Wars is the inspiration you would most likely wear on your sleeve. Athena Crisis looks so much like the Intelligent Systems classic that you would be forgiven for believing it is from that very series, at least on first glance.

Like its inspiration, this one involves moving military personnel around a cutesy map, and completing missions that vary from simply destroying all of the opposition units, or capturing their base, to surviving a set number of turns or carrying out escort-style scenarios where you have to use your turns to expertly guide your team to safety.

Every unit in your squad, and in that of your enemy, has a specific number of spaces it can move on the map before attacking or performing an action. You are able to test the waters by clicking on any unit, either friend or foe, to find out these parameters and work out the best approach. The key is to ensure that you maximise the moves and both destructive, defensive and evasive capabilities to stay one step ahead. Gung-ho tactics of just launching an all-out assault will more often than not lead to crushing defeat as you leave you units prone to attack or stranded in against-the-odds situations.

There are also modifiers like the always-loathesome fog of war, which provides a tricksy veil of cover for your prey to hide under. And Athena Crisis isn’t afraid to take things to some pretty bonkers places, too. Expect to see some interesting fantastical enemy types crop up, including Jurassic Park-esque dinosaurs and minions of the undead. There a nice little variety of map types, and everything looks bright and colourful, like a turbo-charged 8-bit title.

Like Top Trumps or Pokemon, all of the units in Athena Crisis have their own strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited. It is up to you to find out what works best using your common sense. You also get to unlock special skills that can be equipped to aid your battles, which come off like a CO Powers-lite. Don’t expect any cataclysmic screen filling attacks here, more stuff like being able to purchase new units during a level for less bunce, or buffs to attack or defence.

Athena Crisis moves along a lot quicker than any Advance Wars title as it dispenses with the attack animation sequences and instead shows the little pixel units smooshing each other on the map itself. It is also quite difficult with it soon becoming apparent that the CPU is quite nifty even at the earliest stages, capable of seeing through your game plan if you aren’t bang on the money tactically. If you have played stuff like Advance Wars or even Fire Emblem before then this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, however newbies may like to spend a bit of time with the in-game tutorial which dispenses some crucial, if a bit lengthy on the dialogue, advice on how to play Athena Crisis.

Being open source, and with the ability to cross-play and save across different platforms, there are also some cool features that Athena Crisis boasts including a level creator and the ability to create and share your own custom missions, maps and campaigns which can be played in multiplayer with like-minded military strategists around the internet. This gives it an advantage over the games that preceded it in terms of longevity and potential staying power and online community. Even at this early stage there are loads of wild efforts out there to have a go at, including, rather bizarrely, direct attempts to copy stages from the original Advance Wars games.

There is plenty to enjoy here for fans of the genre, even if it does lack the tauter design choices, better storylines and world-building and general bombastic flair that made the Intelligent Systems run on GBA so memorable. But there is a ton of variety in units and environmental modifiers to really let your own creativity run wild, and a plethora of ways to play that mean this is an excellent all-round effort that will provide turn based wargamers with hours of good clean fun.