Battle Islands: Commanders

Strategy games usually require a fair bit of experience in order to be enjoyed at full potential, especially those that provide the players with a large palette of options. However, they can also be designed to cater to beginners as well, and there are plenty of casual titles on the market. In essence, it’s all about simplifying the player’s interaction with the units.

Battle Islands: Commanders is a simple strategy game in which the only goal is to destroy the enemy’s base as quickly as possible. In order to do so, you have to send unit after unit, as well as try to counter your foe’s moves by selecting the appropriate response to his tactics. Granted, the free-to-play model might be a bit too cash-oriented, but it all depends on how willing you are to accept the fact that it’s a lot slower to grow without paying a dime.

Each round starts the same, since there’s hardly any difference between the maps when it comes to positioning. Thus, the two players start face-to-face, and they must send units to attack each other. These units come in a variety of shapes and sizes, although they are mostly inspired by World War II. Thus, it’s important to pair them correctly and send them as quickly as possible.

You can use tanks, rockets, as well as infantry with many types of weapons to overwhelm your opponent. However, each unit has a strength and a weakness, so it’s important to try and counter these as often as you can. Naturally, the enemy is going to do the same, and since the spawning time for each unit is just a few seconds, the matches turn into repetitive click fests most of the time.

As for the graphics and the interface, you shouldn’t expect an awful lot, given the fact that the game was designed to run on almost any computer. The visuals are not bad, but they lack depth, especially since you cannot zoom in or change quality settings. Thankfully, at least the user interface is quite nicely done, especially since you only need the mouse to do everything.

In the end, Battle Islands: Commanders is not an inherently bad game, but it suffers from the pay-to-win syndrome. Hence, if you decide not to throw cash at it, you must still deal with the players that did, as well as go through excruciating waiting periods in order to get better units.