Battles of Prince of Persia for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

The thing I did not like about this game is that I was expecting a cool fight game where you could maneuver your character not some card game

This is not a bad game. It's a good battle-strategy game. What it is not is an action scroller a la Castlevania or Prince of Persia on the GBA.

Battles PoP is a turn based strategy game much like Age of Empires or Advanced War. It's a little more hardcore tactically, though, much like a war board game. It uses a three weapon system (Swords beat Arrows beat Pikes beat Swords) and a three size system (Small beats Large beats Medium beats Small).

Add to it that it uses a facing system, meaning your units face a direction. They can be flanked and attacked in the rear. It also has a Moral effect and a Zone of Attack effect.

This is not unlike any strategy game except that BoPoP runs off of a Card game system like Magic the Gathering (or any of the thousands of imitators). The system is interesting in that cards are used to do everything, from move your units to cast spells on the enemy. Instead of a "turn" being each side taking turns moving units until they're move points are depleted, each side plays battle cards until they run out of ready units or they run out of cards. Then a new "hour" begins and you are given five more cards out of your "deck".

It sounds sort of ghey, and it is if you hate card games, but it's actually sort of a fun and interesting mix of classic strategy games and random card play. You aquire more cards for your deck through campaign play or by playing your friends and winning their cards.

The game has faults though. The interface is unweidly in that you often have to hold down a shoulder button and a direction and move the stylus just to get basic information. I also found myself playing "special" cards as plain "move" cards because you have to drag them into another box.

Once you get past the quirks it's a good strategy game for the DS, especially if you're burnt out on Ages and AW. This is a game I'd like to have the manual for, so I'd suggest reading the FAQ before you play as it covers some of the basic stuff.