I had heard vague stirrings of goodness about the Battalion Wars series for some time, so when I found a copy of Battalion Wars 2 on the Wii, I thought I’d found a real winner.  See, when I first took a whack at this I thought I was going to play an actual RTS on the Wii.  That really perked my interest–for crying out loud, TELL me the Wiimote and nunchuk aren’t just perfectly suited to a point-and-click style interface.  Seriously, try and tell me that.

But anyway, you can just about imagine my surprise when I didn’t get a map-driven point-and-click strategy simulation game, but rather a third-person shooter.

We start our little affair in the midst of a battle between the Iron Legion and the Solar Empire.  The Iron Legion is about to literally hand the entire world its own ass by knocking out the last functioning army left on the field.  Only a last-ditch effort by a single brave soldier can save the entire planet from being ground under the Iron Legion’s massive, heavy boot heel.  Fast forward a few years–the Solar Empire has been living in relative peace, but all that is about to change when the Anglo Isles, another area power, gets word that the Solar Empire was working on a new kind of superweapon.  The Anglo Isles forces launch an all-out assault, which you must repel.  And this is only the beginning of a massive and world-sweeping plot…but who’s behind it?  Only by playing through a series of battles all over the planet will you manage to find out.

Yes, this is a third-person shooter.  You will, however, have access to a pretty nice variety of units, making this almost a strategy game at the third-person shooter level, forcing you to make decisions about which units to use in which situations.  You may need to use flamethrowers against infantry, bazookas against armor, anti-air units against aircraft, and so on.  I admit, I haven’t seen that many third person shooters involve quite so much strategy, but that’s still like saying it’s the least painful hammer to hit yourself with.

Perhaps another interesting issue with this game is that it’s uniquely well suited for the younger set.  For all the gunplay in this game, I don’t remember seeing any blood.  There are explosions, but these are really little more than bursts of color.  Enemies set on fire with your flamethrower simply fade out after a while.  I’ve heard about parents buying this game for children as young as seven despite the fact that it’s rated for teenagers.  Frankly, I’m not sure why this game rated a T myself–asides from the popgun-like effects of the gunfire there’s not much in the way of truly objectionable content here.  But that’s neither here nor there–I’d honestly say that T might be an overreaction on the ESRB’s part.

The game itself, meanwhile, is fun in a cartoony sort of way, with fairly decent sound and graphics, plus quite possibly one of the better third-person shooters I’ve played thanks to its heavy dollops of strategy and occasional humor.  You might want to take a run at Battalion Wars 2, if for no other reason than they try harder than most of the rest.