Braveheart fans expecting a game of the same quality as the movie should beware. This game does not do the movie justice. We can almost see what the designers were trying to do here: combine a sweeping strategy game and complex diplomatic model with a real-time combat engine to reenact 13th-century battles. Unfortunately the end result is a muddled mess. We thought we were in for a treat when the good-looking strategic map loaded up, but we were mistaken. The interface is convoluted and the manual does an incredibly poor job of describing its operation (in fact, several features are not discussed at all). We figured things out after a few hours of trial and error, but by that time we also had discovered that the game was repetitive and dull. The combat routines are laughable. The designers gave us all sorts of neat formations to line our troops up in, presumably to give us a tactical edge in combat, but every fight immediately degenerates into a circle-shaped general brawl. The only thing worse
