Pathway to Glory

"Maybe the best strategy game ever made ..."

Pathway to Glory is one of my favourite games of all time. Yes, the high score of 10 is serious. Read on to see why.

Now where should I start? PTG is both a real time and turnbased -strategy game. The game takes place during the second world war and you are controlling small divisions of allied soldiers. Soldiers are from different countries and are speaking in their own language. This is really fabulous because there are so many different soldier origins. There are Americans, Britons, Poles, Germen, Italians and even Finlanders. You control the units separately and give them orders. You have a limited amount of Action Points for each unit, how much depending on how experienced they are. It takes AP to move, drive a vehicle or use an item or weapon.

In the single player campaign, before each mission, we get short cut scenes with a radio voice telling us the mission. There's also a text with historical background which is surprisingly in-depth. After that, you get to pick troops. There are different unit classes, Rangers, Bazooka-men, Radio Operators etc. Pick units wisely. When you've picked your units, you must arm them right. All units have a default armament, but often it can be optimized by throwing away some bullets for better unit movement. The reason I'm telling this is because I want to emphasize that a skilled PTG-player is not only good on the field, but also with his brain before the battle.

When the battle starts, during each turn you have a time limit ( only in multiplayer games which probably is how this game will be played the most). So you must think fast, there are dozens of aspects to think of when you move your units. You should always think about cover, a soldier just can't stand in the open in this game. There are many different vehicles such as cars, trucks, attack wagons, shuttles, light and heavy tanks as well as stationary cannons and machine guns.

Gameplay is very flexible. It's hard to describe what I mean with flexible, but it's the fact that the player always control the happening, not the game. You can come up with own strategies and techniques even the programmers didn't think of. This in combination with a very very well done multiplayer game mode, makes PTG differ from other games in the genre.

The game has support for six players over bluetooth, which makes it possible to have tremendous battles. In a 3v3 game, all the players of each side control their units at the same time. So if you are shooting automatic fire towards your enemy, a clumpsy ally could walk through your bullet rain and die, that makes it a real time strategy game. You can also overlap on the enemies turn for jaw dropping manoeuvres. This require skills. For example, you can kill the enemies reinforcements the same second he get them, but I wont tell you how :))

Another feature I just love about PTG is the Active Fire. That is if you save action points for your soldier, he will be able to fire at the enemies turn if he crosses his Active Fire Field. Let me take a bright example of this. You are driving a car. Drive towards the enemy, not too close, but close enough for him to be able to walk to you the following turn. Now, jump out of the car and lay down behind it, make sure you have 4 action points left, change weapon to AT-Grenade and aim at the car. End turn. Now the enemy probably will be fooled to walk into the empty car and try to drive you over. BANG!! You will throw a grenade at the car, during his turn. You were smarter. Brain is always rewarded in PTG.

Online combat over N-Gage Arena is almost better than over Bluetooth, because there you can meet very good players from around the world and compete for score on the high score-list.

Other good features of the game I didn't mention is that your soldiers level up between missions. So if you manage to keep you soldiers alive (which can be very hard sometimes) they are more useful in later missions. The landscape on maps you are returning to, are as you left it. Building stay destroyed. Speaking of the maps, they are unbelievable balanced, without giving the two sides the same vehicles, buildings or being symmetric. There's also a Field Radio feature which allows you to communicate with your allies over the N-Gages microphone and speakers, for fast voice orders.

Yes, Pathway to Glory kills Advanced Wars and similar games due the fact that it's so open. It's not grid based and you can use innovative strategies such as destroying buildings to harm your enemy. This as well as a 6-player online mode (it's actually 8 when online!) doesn't only make this game the best mobile strategy game, but also one of the best strategy games ever made. When you master the game you will understand which masterpiece this truly is.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/07