Innovative and brilliant. I have never played a game like it.
I have to admit, the thought of controlling many different troops at the same time in a real time battle sounded a little overwhelming, but it all comes together seamlessly. You have to use a little bit of strategy instead of just rushing in wiping the enemy out. You have to place your archers so the sun is behind them, or make sure they are on higher ground; you can have your calvary charge over them, you can lay traps with the sappers, or dig up the enemies traps. All sorts of different things you can do.
The real fun begins when your main troop becomes engaged in battle. The camera zooms onto you and you basically hack and slash your way searching for the leader and killing as many things as you can. At the same time you can control your other troops; like, while you are fighting, you can have your archers firing on them as well or have your calvary circle around and charge over them. This is all done nicely with the zoomable map in the upper right corner.
There are 4 main campaigns that you can play through. Gerald and Lucretia's missions are not too difficult, but they are not a walk in the park either. But the last two are pretty tough. I only wish they had a save now feature or something. The only time you can save is when you complete a mission, which could be upwards of an hour or so. Another small complaint is I wish you could use magic while your fighting. The only magic you can use, while fighting, is if your support troops can use magic; like Cirith on Lucretia's campaign. If you build her up right she can lay down a devastating lightening attack. The graphics are outstanding, considering you could have, literally, hundreds of people, monsters and whatnot on the screen fighting at the same time.
As you play through the missions you gather money and experience points. After the mission is over you have to allocate your experience points to your troops. You have to upgrade your main characters and all of your troops. Based on your skills you can buy different weapons, shields, armour and magic to use in battle. You can also change the jobs of your troops by spending points in different skill sets. You can turn your calvary into calvary archers, your archers into morders (which are awesome by the way) and so on.
This game, to me, is truly unique. I have not played a game like it. It really shows the chaos of battle. Trying to fight hundreds of creatures and, at the same time, command up to 5 differnt troops to attack a different set of enemies or come and assist you. This game is awesome. At the end of a mission you will find yourself going "Whew, that was tough". Its intense, a lot of fun to play. There really isn't any cool cutscenes or anything and the story is basically carried out by talking heads but who cares. Did you pay money to watch a movie or hack the @#&$ out of ogres and dark elves? I chose the latter.