My third or fourth attempt to play this. A proof of concept, but is just so dreadfully slow and brain dead. Having played this on OG hardware and emulation, playing without a fast forward button is excruciating. It's hard to call this a strategy game when all the game offers you if a series of dots to connect while the enemy sends wave after wave of enemies rushing you mindlessly. This game is easily defeated by just relying on 2 or 3 really strong units placed at chokepoints, and if you play that way there's a lot more waiting in this game than anything else. There are some interesting meta systems at play in the background, but engaging with these mechanics can be extremely frustrating. Trying to play by the rules of charisma and alignment is more an exercise in patience than anything else as it requires an extreme amount of micro managing. This is fixed a little in 64 where the enemy behavior is more sophisticated, but here it can be hard to balance everything out when enemies that you're trying to avoid are dive bombing you by the dozens. The plot is also thin, being primarily delivered in a text crawl at the beginning of a mission with some boss and town dialog. Ogre Battle 64 invalidates this game totally by improving on nearly every single aspect while having a more in depth plot. I would only recommend for series completionists.