This is just fun after you get past the somewhat steep learning curve.
In Battalion Wars you play as a Commander for the Western Frontier Army and your troops look a lot like Americans with their green outfits and M-16 like assault rifles. In the beginning of the game you start by waging war against the Tundran Empire, whose troops look a lot like Russians with red uniforms and AK-74 like assault rifles. Later on you’ll also face a third party in your warfare: the Xylvanians.
Graphics indicate right from the start that Battalion Wars doesn’t take itself seriously. Everything has a distinctive Nintendo look to it with bright colors and cute characters. Also your different units look more like children’s toys rather than hard boiled war machines. Environments don’t look real and they remind more of that fairy tale like colorful world of Zelda or Mario. This is a good thing, because warfare is not usually considered a thing that should be taken lightly.
Sound design right from the starting screen makes you realize the same thing you face in the game itself: this is about having fun and not to give you a heavy lesson on how horrible thing war is. There is its rightful place for games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, but Battalion Wars offers a nice change in the war game genre. Sound effects fit the action and to me they somehow remind of Pikmin. In an untypical Nintendo style the cutscenes include voice acting and this helps to bring these different caricature characters to life. Commanders of the Tundran Empire even speak with a Russian accent.
Gameplay works and once bullets starts to fly there is a notable chaos in the battlefield with lots of particle effects all around. Luckily the frame rate stays solid all the time. Unfortunately it will take quite a long time for you to master the controls: I played earlier missions at least few times in a row just to get more time to learn how to use the controls in order to command my troops properly. And just when you’ve learned the controls it’s time to start thinking strategic things like which of your troops to use against what enemy troops. This also takes some time to learn so all in all it might take somewhere around an hour of solid playing to really get use to commanding your troops to victory.
Map is your best friend: it tells right from the get go where all the enemy troops are, how many there are and with what they are armed with. Unfortunately you can’t produce more troops during missions or play the entire game in the enemy’s perspective like you can in Command & Conquer for example.
Battalion Wars is a different real time strategy experience and it’s definitely worth checking out.