Shieldwall Review

I have a special place in my gnarled heart for games that let me take command of troops and fight alongside them. I also love games like Mount & Blade: Warband and Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes, so I leapt at the chance to try out Nezon Production’s latest game.

Shieldwall puts you in command of Caesar’s legions throughout his campaigns to the north of Rome. In truth, this is all just a setting and while the campaign offers a fair few different scenarios, there’s no real story or characters that you need to make note of. Before you ask, you don’t need to know the history of Rome or Julius Caesar to know what is happening or why you’re fighting a whole bunch of topless people.

The real question is… how do these battles happen? and that’s where Shieldwall gets interesting… for a bit. For the most part, the battles have you take the role of a Roman commander who will need to capture points, gather gold, and increase your score. The currency can be used to build your ranks and upgrade your troops. Meanwhile, the enemy will also be looking to grab the points as well, but, in reality, you can’t really lose the matches per se. Essentially, your goal is to stay in the lead points-wise for about nine minutes and, at least in easy mode, your enemies never win. 

As I said, the main use for the gold is building up your units, including placing defenders on your base. At the start of the match, you can have up to 20 soldiers on the field, but you can upgrade it to 25 pretty quickly. When you start, you only have access to Militia and Defenders, with the latter staying at the point you spawn them. Eventually, you can unlock Spearmen and Legionnaires. Spawning your troopers is as easy as being near one of the capture points and having the gold to afford them. 

You’re not the only one with soldiers, as your enemies will all have the same number of warriors, and you are nowhere near strong enough to fight them alone. You can command your troops with the press of a button. The actual commands are simple, they’ll follow you, charge, or take up the Tetsudou formation. I wish I could say that Shieldwall included some interesting tactical decisions, but really, you just charge in and throw some spears, and that’s about it. 

Another issue is that, while there are different units, I couldn’t tell you what difference there really is between them. There’s no point in using any unit other than the most up-to-date one, at least from what I could tell. I ran teams comprised of a mix of spearmen and legionnaires, and they were just as effective as squads of full legionnaires. 

The actual fighting is mildly entertaining, at least at first. Essentially, your unit clashes with the enemy, and they beat on each other for a bit until one is dead; this isn’t Total War Battles: WARHAMMER, where you need to track charges and counter charges alongside morale. Your hero can get into the fight, but you’ll end up getting killed if you’re losing. As such, you’re better off just sending in your troops than running away if you start to lose. You do respawn if you die, but honestly, the combat is dull; you use one button to hit, one to block, and that’s about it.

I’ll be honest, I had fun for the first few missions in Shieldwall with the hope that more would be added as I progressed through the campaign. To be fair, the maps are varied and interesting and include both forts and open plains. However, how you fight the battles never really changes, and neither do you get the option to control more than twenty-five men at a time. The result is that even though there are a lot of map differences, every fight plays out exactly the same.

Graphically, Shieldwall is stylish and a bit cartoony, with all the characters taking the form of white blob-like humans. I will also state that there’s only minimal blood in the game aside from some red spots on your character while the enemy's blood is based on the colour of their armour. The soldiers are cute enough, and the landscapes are all pretty well-designed and interesting. It helps to fight some of the tedium that slowly builds up, but it can only do so much. 

Shieldwall is an interesting concept, and in short bursts, it can be pretty fun. The issue is that there really isn’t enough here to keep you playing through the campaign. While it has its charms (and there are a few of those) I wouldn’t see this as on the same level as other tactical games. However, there’s plenty of room to grow with DLC; for instance, including more units and battle types. The truth is that no game should have to rely on future content to be entertaining.