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Turn-based Strategy: A Sordid Love Affair on Game and Player
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Turn-based Strategy: A Sordid Love Affair

Ed Kirchgessner  //  November 8, 2007


Innovation continues in this oft-forgotten niche genre.

I

n the land of Lazytown, I'm mayor, french-fry queen and chief of police. That's right, folks – seldom will you find a lazier person than myself as you travel from here to there. I guess it goes without saying, then, that someone as lazy as I would have relatively laid back tastes when it came to video games. Sure, I enjoy playing shooters and arcadey twitchfests – I log as many hours a week on Halo 3 as the next guy. Still, there's a particularly mellow genre which I hold closest to my heart. Despite the scant respect they get here in the States, I love turn-based strategy games.

Turn-based strategy titles are a far cry from the real-time strategy games which dominated the PC landscape throughout the late nineties and into the first years of this decade. Against the Zerg, I'm doomed. Place a rendered map in front of me and allow me to painstakingly deploy my units, however, and you should start counting down your days – because they are numbered. My love for the genre probably came about while visiting the homes of middle school friends as we laid out our Battletech miniatures on hex maps. Not too long after, games like Master of Magic and Space Empires brought all that "action" onto my parents' 386SX PC. Sadly, computer games like these wouldn't be too longed for in this world – we have the likes of Bungie and Blizzard to thank for that.

Yet somehow, the genre has found a niche for itself (albeit a small one) in the console gaming arena. Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms series has miraculously spanned eleven titles and three decades. More accessible products like Nintendo's Fire Emblem have been around nearly as long. Perhaps Square-Enix had the biggest part to play in opening the genre up to America's current generation of console gamers with 1998's Final Fantasy Tactics.



These beautiful watercolors are
gameplay screens, not pre-renders!
Though many of these games are ridiculously alike, one comes along every five years or so that turns the genre on its head. The last one I can think of is Konami's Ring of Red, a phenomenal mecha title that added just enough real-time elements to keep things fresh. And the next? Perhaps we only have to look to this year's Tokyo Game Show to find the answer. Sega appears to be working on one of the most beautiful games I've seen in ages. Valkyrie of the Battlefield: Gallian Chonicles combines the artistry of a Miyazaki masterwork with some truly groundbreaking tactical encounters. Gameplay is a distinct mix of real-time and turn-based – there's an overhead map of the battlefield, but there's also the full control of character's aiming and actions during the battles themselves. Though little information can be extracted from the game's Japanese website (unless you can read Kanji), it's received more than its fair share of coverage from the American gaming press. Although an American release has yet to be announced, one seems likely considering the game's production budget and studio backing. Time will tell, but it's slated for a 2008 release in Japan.

As we wait for its release, allow me to suggest a handful of titles which could probably be found for a steal used. Front Mission 3 and Front Mission 4 were great Square-Enix releases, and the series-starting Front Mission was just released for Nintendo DS last month (feel free to check out the review). I've already mentioned Final Fantasy Tactics, which was itself just re-released for the PSP. There's also more accessible fare like Advance Wars DS and Field Commander. Any way you cut it, these titles are some of the most engrossing yet relaxing games you'll ever play. For a lazy guy like myself, a relaxing game is all too often the best kind.





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