A terribly planned game: repetitive and stubborn controls, ridiculous voice casting, and poor use of hisorical license
For Spartan: Total Warrior, I expected yet another spawn-off the current films like Gladiator, Troy, and Alexander. And i was right! This game seems to just be trying to get the best of both ends of ancient history, creating a very poor hack-and-slash with Rome and Greece clashing together in battles that never existed as an excuse for storyline.
Starting off it seems to be great, with a nice intro movie, similar menu to that of God of War (which i would highly recommend) and you get thrown into a frenzied battle with only some made up historical backround for knowledge as to why you are fighting. As a hack and slash, this is not that bad as such: some good attacks, like a charge up which decapitates countless enemies, and the nice effects that the corpses of your slain enemies lie there for the rest of the level. However, the power ups are the only thing you rely on in the game to survive, with all other attacks useless when surrounded by hundreds of enemies.
The scenery is okay overall, the graphics average, the music highly repetitive, and some of the dumbest tasks i have seen for a long time in any PS2 game like: "Spartan, open this gate" (with the guy standing right next to the lever) or "Spartan, release the catapults" etc. In the end you become an errand boy, fighting battles and in the middle doing petty tasks which a slave could do (which, by the way, the Spartans actually HAD). Not only does it get annoying that all SPARTAN soldiers CALL YOU SPARTAN rather than give you a NAME, but the fact that bombs are included is totally ridiculous. I have no idea when bombs were invented, but any sane person would not find it credible that they existed more than 2000 years ago (when this is set roughly). The game might have some good stuff later on, as im aware of, but the start is enough to put anyone in their right minds off- if you want to play it, rent it, borrow it, or if you're foolish, buy it, then go ahead. Although, there are FAR better games out there for military strategy (mainly on PC), so if on PS2 you want a hack and slash to do with history go for Shadow of Rome or God of War, both more fun, the same price, and much better quality.