Battles of Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia as an action platformer: great. But as a turn based strategy game? Prince moves four squares across the wall, buzzsaw trap moves three? Um, maybe not.

In actual fact, it's turned out a lot like Advance Wars, with the Prince (and various other generals) leading armies all over the Middle East and India in the period between Sands of Time and The Warrior Within.

And, you know, it's also turned out rather brilliantly. The gameplay system, based around randomly drawn cards set in the Prince of Persia universe, is richly tactical. There's easily enough depth here to satisfy those of us who ate up the machinations of the Black Hole army, and it's easy to get into, too.

It's the kind of thing that will happily fast-forward you through huge chunks of the afternoon as you shift formations, have a go at the enemy with cunningly placed archers and pretend to be an army general.

It's a shame it's not as complete a package as an Advance Wars game - you can construct your own card decks, but there's no map design, and for some reason it doesn't save any statistics - because it's just as engrossing.

Fine presentation, a decent storyline, nine playable characters and a generous multi-player modes are simply the icing on the stake, as it were.