The Adhara War is a space strategy and real time combat game. The game in concept is not too dissimilar in concept as Marvelous Galaxy that you may remember my previous review of, The Adhara War does much better in execution.
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The game starts off with a loading screen which fades into a very graphically basic title screen which says (A) Player (I guess it means Press A, player), once you do so you are then given several options, New Game, Skirmish, Tutorial, Options and Database.
It would probably be advisable to choose tutorial first so you can figure out how to play it. I skipped passed this initially to get straight into the game, I later went back for the review and I must say it is a bit long winded. One of the problems I find with this game is there’s too much text when explaining the game and the text is a bit too small for my liking, making it both a pain and a bore to read.
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In the New Game (Campaign) you are given a choice of 8 Scenarios, you can choose who plays as the two factions; Guard and Hegemony (Player 1/2, AI Easy/Normal/Hard), You can also choose how heavy or light “Phenomena” and “Resources” are. One thing I like about this menu system is that you can press Y on any option to get information on what the option does, though like the tutorial some of the text can be a bit long winded when it doesn’t need to be.
The premise of the game is quite simple, take over all the enemy planets and destroy all enemy ships. The game takes place on a 9 by 7 grid and you can only see planets you own or the 8 squares around where one of your ships is placed.
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One thing annoying about the game is that things seem a bit too small so it is sometimes hard to see ships that are on top of planets/platforms, You move a ship by choosing where you want to move it to, if the square is neutral you can immediately build on it and take ownership, if the enemy owns it or you don’t build on it then after your enemies turn if your ship is still there then you own that grid space. You can also build a Jammer, Shipyard or Refinery on a square you own, to be honest I never did figure out what the Jammer did but the Shipyard lets you build ships and the Refinery gains you more resources to build ships and platforms.
To instigate a battle you merely choose a square where an enemy ship is located and move your ship to the same square, you are then given a real time fight between you and the enemy ship. The background will change depending on what grid space you are on and there are a multitude of different square types which I liked. One of the graphical things I actually like about this game are the animations of the starfields that gives the impression of a black hole, I’d have also preferred that the movement on these stages wasn’t entirely controlled by the D-pad as I much prefer the format of a button for moving forward and reversing and the D-pad/analog stick for turning, none the less this is one of the more fun aspects of this game.
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One big oversight in my opinion is that it doesn’t seem to have any indication for who owns what square which makes it annoying to win the game when you think you have won as you control all the enemy platforms only to find the game hasn’t ended. The only other game mode is skirmish which is a realtime battle between any of the Guard ships and Hegemony ships of your choice.
The options menu gives you the ability to change the menu colour, music volume, the size of the menu and game grids. The database item also gives you some of the back story and more in depth info on the game, the music isn’t bad, and the sound effects work well. After some initial misgivings about the game I warmed up to certain aspects such as the realtime battle system and the multitude of different battle grounds. The price tag of 240 :MSPoints: is not too unreasonable I recommend you try the trial and make your own mind up weather or not to purchase.
Review by CyberAxe.
You can find more information on The Adhara War as well as download the trial and full version of the game on the Marketplace.
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