Written 15.08.2009 - Uploaded 30.09.2009
Spartan: Total Warrior was pretty much a random purchase; my local gaming store was offering preowned games with a pay two, get three offer. I do play action games every once in a while, and Spartan had this massive battles thing going on for it. As you might've figured out, the game is related to the Total War series, hence the somewhat silly name. I mean come on, Total Warrior, what's up with that anyway. I just find it kinda hilarious, a bit of an overstatement I might say. "You are the Spartan, you are the Total Warrior". Holy shit, that's just awesome marketing.
Anyway, let's get back to business shall we? Spartan is largerly in the footsteps of Dynasty Warriors in the sense that the player controls a one man army in a confrontation of armies. Basically this means fighting huge amounts of enemy soldiers, usually in groups of tens or more. Your usual Roman soldier drops easily with a few slashes from any weapon, but there are always tougher officers around, introducing some change of pace to the battles. Spartan's main idea is this: shield yourself, while shield bashing your enemies away from you, and once you get an opening, attack like crazy until they start to overwhelm you again. The basic fighting recipe is actually pretty good as it disallows brainless mashing.
The Spartan has five different weapons, which all have different properties and special attacks. There are two types of special attacks, rage and rage of the gods, and the latter is obviously more powerful. I'm not going to go on about the attacks that much, let's just say there is enough difference to make each weapon useful in some circumstances. Especially rage of the gods attacks are freaking powerful weapons of mass destruction that make killing several hundreds of enemies each mission a slightly easier task. This is a good thing, especially in battles where the Spartan is alone against legions of Romans, as sometimes such battles start to really drag. The game is much better when fighting with allies on your side, as it seems to move forward more quickly. Also, while it's up to the player to actually do everything, when there's a battle going on around you the immersion is just so much better.
So that's the deal. The game works best in battlefields, so why include so many dungeon type missions? Go figure, I don't know. The only good thing about these dungeon missions was the fact that they made battlefield missions feel even better in contrast, especially after the midgame annoyingly long series of dungeons and other annoyances. Yeah, this game has its share of annoying missions, especially one where you have to protect Arkhimedes. Okay, let's face it. Who likes escort missions? In real-time action games? I don't, because the charge is always so damn stupid and gets himself killed if not constantly babysitted. On top of everything else, this mission (and some others too) was buggy. I suspect Arkhimedes was supposed to wait at given points, but more often than not he just went forward towards new enemies while I was busy with the last crowd.
There are a few other humongously unfair missions but at least these were not buggy as such. I guess the game's event system was the source of bugs, as sometimes it happened that all conditions for going forward had been met, but the next event simply did not happen. This was only really annoying in the Arkhimedes mission though, and caused me only a couple replays otherwise. All missions concentrated around a particular Roman sorcerer (wait, what) were somewhat unfair when this guy just sits in the back throwing spells while the Spartan has to go through tons of his minions. This sounds like a cool scenario, but there's a whole deal of unfairness involved. Well, at least no one needs to be protected. Furthermore, this fucker just keeps coming back.
Another curiosity about the game: it's very damn similar to God of War. Similar combat systems, although Spartan's seems a bit more tactical, which is always a plus. They have a similar storyline and the same theme (ancient Greece with supernatural elements) and the same villain. Which of course I'm not going to spoil to you because, oh wait, I am. If you're playing these games for their stories, you really need to go out there and read up some real culture. So yeah, you're going to face Ares in the end of each game. I find this large amount of similarity (these details just don't sum it up, try and see for yourself) especially curious since both games were developed at the same time.
Out of these two games, I liked Spartan more. Its annoyance factor is still way below God of War's instant death pitfalls and other stupidities, and its battle system is more interesting although maybe a bit repetitive at times. God of War is (slightly) more adventurous a game, whereas Spartan just gets right to the point, which just happens to be pointless slaughter. And I like it. For the record, I just really don't understand the praise God of War has received, as at least the first game is just abysmal and annoying.
So while the review sounds a bit negative at times, at its finer moments Spartan was a good game. While fighting might have gotten a bit repetitive at times, the changing conditions around the Spartan usually kept it interesting. The feeling of being a legendary hero in a war was captured very well in all missions involving battlefields. Without the dungeon missions, and the bugs, Spartan might have been a top class action game. As it stands now, it's still pretty good for what it is, as long as you don't expect anything larger than life. A careful observer might have noticed that I didn't mention the game's plot. There's a reason for this, trust me.