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MB's Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

excellent gameplay, nice graphics. However, the only problem is that it only has campaign missions and no "random map" scenarios.

Flawed game by with a few pluses

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Legion is a flawed game, but it is old and you can buy a copy for $7. The city growth is oddly limited, so no city can build every type of building offered. Why is this? I could not tell you. The Real Rome had every type of building the Romans could build; and all Roman cities were just a copy of Rome. It is worth $7, not $8, but $7 is a good price for this game. Wyatt Kaldenebrg

Great Beer and Pretzels Game - High on Fun, Low on History

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: May 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When board wargaming was in its golden age, we called easy to learn, fun-to-play games good "Beer and Pretzel" games. Legion is a good game and poor simulation of ancient Roman warfare. If you want an accurate computer simulation of ancient warfare during the heyday of the Roman Empire, keep looking. If you want an easy to learn game with an ancient flavor, Legion works fine. I was put off by the basic graphics at first and limited strategic options, but once I learned how the game worked, I found the entertainment value worth the purchase. Buy this game for fun and entertainment, not for historical simulation.

Lots of Strategy, fun.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: May 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off, this game will not win game of the year awards or anything like that.

But it is a good game. Management of your economy, army, and diplomacy is simple and doesn't take very long to learn. The best thing about the game is that there is lots of strategy... Keeping it challenging and interesting.

One of my favorite things about the game is how battles are played out. You give your troops their orders BEFORE the battle, and then you have no control once it starts. It adds to the strategy as it is not a clickfest-- you can think about what your unit formations/orders should be, the position, and the terrain you want them to fight in.
It is also very realistic-- in Roman times, once a battle had begun, orders could not be efficiently relayed to the troops.

The economy interface is simple. There are 3 resources; food, lumber, and iron. You will need them to raise armies and build buildings. Some buildings provide the resources directly. Others improve your worker's productivity. And others add town defenses or military improvements. If you leave workers idle, the population will rise faster.

There are many types of soldiers you can buy. Different tribes can build different soldiers (Rome builds legions, and Celts can build fanatics), and there are building requirements to get certain units. Every unit has its own specialties. Some fight well in rough terrain, whereas others (such as legions), fight well in the open. Some fall easily to cavalry-- but hopilites will tear them up. In the back of the manual it lists the abilities of the units, and all this adds to the battle strategy.

The game is turn based. Each turn is a season, and each turn you can move your armies a certain number of spaces. In the spring, buildings you ordered are built and units produced.

The diplomacy is fine. You can declare war, offer tribute, offer an alliance, and check a tribe's standing with others. They can make you an offer, such as: "We will agree to the alliance if you give us 100 food and 200 lumber." Or they might beg for peace, and offer tribute if you will accept.

The graphics are NOT cutting edge. Rather, they are acceptable-- and this makes it so that the game will run on low-end computers. It runs perfectly on my G3 400 MHz iMac... And I am sure it would also work on even older computers.
There is no multiplayer either-- but as the game is turn based, multiplayer probably wouldn't work very well anyway.

This won't be the best game you buy, but I would recommend it.

The Mediocre Legion

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I would recommend that you not buy this game for the following reasons:
1.There is really no attacking or defending. It seems like every battle is a meeting engagement.
2.Combat can get to be quite boring after a while. You usually know who will win when the battle opens and I was surprised to find that you can't control your units during the battle.
3.Cavarly units are very weak and their initial charge has no shock value.
4.In combat, units just march at each other and fight-there seems to be no tactical skill involved; the AI is exceedingly dumb,and the combat music can get very boring.

All this said, this title is an average game. You may like it if you are a history buff, and the patch 1.06 improves a little on the games original flaws.

Don't Bother

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: November 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Poorly made. Much better strategy games out on the market. A let down after playing Europa II and Medieval Total War

Very Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: October 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Coming from the company that has produced the very successful Europa Universalis games (which are great) - Legion is a flop, a big flop. As an experienced war gamer my expectations continually rise due to continual improvements in war gaming. This is the most disappointing game I've ever bought and that probably covers 50+ different games. I tried playing this 5-6 times for several hours and no the game is not too complex. It is way too simple and wooden. Like the 'town' in an Italian spaghetti western.

This game fails as a strategy game since there is so little depth to it. It looks like a cheesy imitation of Civilization I (without the tech tree, wonders, new units, leaders, etc.) which came out over 10 years ago. Yet Civ I is better than this for strategy (guns v. butter decisions).

Legion fails in the tactical sense. Don't even begin to compare this to Age of Kings for battle play. All you do is a one time launch of the battle. After it starts you have no control. AoK runs circles around this in controlling and viewing battles plus AoK is better at the strategic level. And yes, AoK did come out over 2 years ago.

That Legion is turn-based (i/o RTS) makes the flow much more stiff but at least I knew that up front.

The graphics are like something out of a time capsule - an not in a good sense. Ancient Art of War does come to mind.

Top it all off with almost useless documentation and, you get the point.

Strategy - F
Tactics - F

Graphics - D
Instructions - F

Am still looking forward to Paradox's Hearts of Iron (which looks great) and Crusader Kings. Still, how can something as bad as Legion come from the same company that produced EU? Reminds me of a line from the Sheriff (Jackie Gleason) at the end of 'Smokey and the Bandit' when he looked at his bumbling son and said 'when I get home I'm gonna puch your momma in the mouth'. Maybe that's how Paradox will look at Legion some day.

HORRIDLY BAD

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: September 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Stay away. Stay FAR AWAY.

This game might (MIGHT) have been acceptable in the late 80s, but I doubt it. The graphics are ugly and primitive. The interface looks like a VGA dos strategy game like Settlers 1, and is unclear and hard to use. The game is plagued by numerous video bugs.

But all that would be ignorable if the gameplay were even OK. Unfortunately, the gameplay [is bad]. It's basically Ancient Art of War for the Apple II with (slightly) updated graphics. The cover illustration is the best thing about this ..., unimaginative, rushed title.

Do yourself a favor and spend your hard earned money on something good, ...

simple, but somewhat enjoyable

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The game is well implemented and mostly succeeds at accomplishing its modest objectives. As you can see by the other reviews, the non-interactive combat sequences are by far the most controversial aspect of the game. I personally like the way combat is handled: it does provide you with a fair amount of control over your armies without devolving into a frantic click-fest like so many other games. Indeed, I've been impressed by the level of intelligence exhibited by my AI soldiers -- it's a big improvement over standard RTS fare, where half of the time your troops are too dumb to defend themselves when attacked unless you click on them.

My main problem with the game lies in the way units and experience are handled. Each unit can contain up to about 80 soldiers (depending on the type and size of the unit) and up to 8 units are grouped together into an army. If at least one soldier from a unit survives a battle, the unit survives and retains all its experience. You can repopulate the unit pretty quickly just by having it positioned inside your borders. I find that this makes it just too easy to create powerful veteran armies. This system, along with the high frequency of battles in the game, means that very few battles have a make-or-break sense of excitement: even if your elite invading army gets wiped out, it can be replaced fairly easily.

I did get a few evenings of enjoyment out of this game, but it's certainly not one of those games that will take over your life and consume every moment of your free time.

(The earlier reviewer who said that the factions differ in name only is incorrect: different factions have different unit types available to them. Also, the faction's starting strength and position can dramatically alter the flavor of the game.)

Doesn't cut it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was so looking forward to this game. I mean Really. Which is why I am really bummed it is not that good. As a Roman empire fan I was dying to use my legions to trounce those nasty celts. And it just seemed to lack any roman flavor. The combat baffled me as the units had no common sense, you can't use traditional Roman tactics, and I almost went mad trying to get my troops to realize they were in a great hill position just sit and wait! The Legion units scattered to the four winds in combat- so much for that great trained bunch of men hammering through the barbarians. And I was also mystified by the rqndom limits placed on units in specific areas- which why of all things are called "squads"? They went to great lengths to get every celtic tribe name correct, but allow only 8 "squads" in one place.

Maybe its in the game someplace but after playing for a few hours I was just sick over what was missing. No forming the XX Legion and marching on the enemy. It really felt like a game from maybe 4 years ago.

So as a Roman history enthuiast I just have to say I am very disapointed and wished they had put out a demo. WIth that I would have known in 10 minutes not to waste my money.

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