Since the early days of the DS I've been waiting for some RTS games to hit and so far there really haven't been any. What there has been are these RPG games that play sort of like RTS games.
The first one that came out was Heroes of Mana. making it a semi-RTS was a neat concept but the game ended up really mediocre. While the graphics looked nice the touchscreen control was really bad. A lot of the time it wouldn't recognize when you'd select something which would ruin you in battles. The pathfinding was also really crappy and units would take the worst possible routes to get to where you told them to go which forced you to babysit them all the way to their destination. It wasn't an awful game or anything but those two parts really made it hard to play.
The next one released was Final Fantasy XII Revenent Wings which came out pretty soon after Mana. This one was better. Stuff like the unit selection and pathfinding were improved over Mana and the story and graphics were better too. The thing that bugged me with this one was how slow the game was and also how some buildings and background stuff would block parts of the screen. So when your units walked behind them you couldn't see or select them and had to fight some battles blind. As bad as that sounds it was still a pretty fun game, especially if your a Final Fantasy fan.
The most recent one is Blue Dragon Plus. From what I played this one followed pretty closely to Revenant Wings except they now let you rotate the screen so your units wouldn't get blocked. Touch screen and pathfinding were about the same as Revenant Wings which is fine. BDP also has you controlling fewer units so things got less cluttered as well. On top of it all is a pretty cool Super NES style throwback soundtrack which was done by none other than Nobuo Uematsu (Which would explain it's awesomeness).
These are the only three games of this type on the DS that I'm aware of and of the three, I'd say it's a toss up between Revenant Wings and Blue Dragon Plus for which is the best (Going just by gameplay I'd say Blue Dragon Edges out Revenant Wings).
So are there any more of these games that I'm missing? Any others you could name would be helpful. Also if you've played any of these, feel free to share your opinion on them or how they could be improved (Individual games or the genre as a whole), etc..
The first one that came out was Heroes of Mana. making it a semi-RTS was a neat concept but the game ended up really mediocre. While the graphics looked nice the touchscreen control was really bad. A lot of the time it wouldn't recognize when you'd select something which would ruin you in battles. The pathfinding was also really crappy and units would take the worst possible routes to get to where you told them to go which forced you to babysit them all the way to their destination. It wasn't an awful game or anything but those two parts really made it hard to play.
The next one released was Final Fantasy XII Revenent Wings which came out pretty soon after Mana. This one was better. Stuff like the unit selection and pathfinding were improved over Mana and the story and graphics were better too. The thing that bugged me with this one was how slow the game was and also how some buildings and background stuff would block parts of the screen. So when your units walked behind them you couldn't see or select them and had to fight some battles blind. As bad as that sounds it was still a pretty fun game, especially if your a Final Fantasy fan.
The most recent one is Blue Dragon Plus. From what I played this one followed pretty closely to Revenant Wings except they now let you rotate the screen so your units wouldn't get blocked. Touch screen and pathfinding were about the same as Revenant Wings which is fine. BDP also has you controlling fewer units so things got less cluttered as well. On top of it all is a pretty cool Super NES style throwback soundtrack which was done by none other than Nobuo Uematsu (Which would explain it's awesomeness).
These are the only three games of this type on the DS that I'm aware of and of the three, I'd say it's a toss up between Revenant Wings and Blue Dragon Plus for which is the best (Going just by gameplay I'd say Blue Dragon Edges out Revenant Wings).
So are there any more of these games that I'm missing? Any others you could name would be helpful. Also if you've played any of these, feel free to share your opinion on them or how they could be improved (Individual games or the genre as a whole), etc..
