Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Solid"

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Shadow Wars (I'm just going to call in Clancy) is the first game I picked up for my 3DS. I heard it is a sleeper and is quite fun. After completing it I do believe it is a game that slipped under the radar. It really is not ground breaking, but is very solid. It uses turn base strategy and six different classes. It then puts the player through a variety of missions, such as defending a point or defusing a bomb. None of the missions are ground breaking for the genre, but all of them are fun. Clancy did a nice job of balancing the classes which range from a heavy gunner to a medic. The classes somewhat reminded me of team fortress 2. The story was mediocre; it just gave the player a reason for the mission setups. The characters lacked personality and just weren't very interesting. However, each character was fun to control using unique abilities and upgrading them. The upgrades made the characters stronger without ever making them fell overpowered. The environments were great and moving your characters from cover to cover, or trying to gain the high ground was a fun challenge.
The story involves conspiracies, presidents, nukes, and terrorist which are all things I have come to expect from a Tom Clancy game. The story never got to interesting, but I cared about it a tiny bit. The characters in the story are so generic they had no effect. Not a lot to talk about it, it seriously was just a bland story for the most part.
The gameplay is what made this game. The classes were all balanced and there were plenty of variables I had to account for when making my move. Not only were the classes balanced they all had a unique feeling to them. Some can't return fire while others had their own unique weapons. My favorite one was Recon. The recon cannot be shot unless an enemy stands next to it first and the recon had a deadly one to two hit kill melee attack. Its main weakness was its lack of health. One of the biggest parts was if one of your units died, it was game over. This made it so I couldn't do any suicide runs with a character and would have to fall back sometimes just to be safe. Other factors include using cover and trying to gain the high ground. Some weapons could pierce through cover while others couldn't. Another factor was return and cover fire. When a unit attacks another unit, the opposing unit can return fire if in range (or if its weapon has the ability to return fire). Usually the return fire had a damage reduction (unless class ability says otherwise). Then all the other units within range with the ability to give cover fire would also attack with return fire. This made range and sticking units into groups essential. The gameplay was surprisingly deep and a joy to play. Another cool part was the bonus missions unlocked after completing levels. These usually put the player in a unique situation such as only having a group of snipers against a group of heavy gunners. One of my favorite was when it put me up against zombies.
That's mainly what this game was about, strategy and fighting bad guys.
Graphics: 6
Gameplay:9
Main Story:5
Side Stories: none
Characters: 5
Main Character: 5
Replay Value: 6
Freshness: 8
Exploration:5
Voice acting: none
Emotion:2
Weapons: 8.5
Powers: 7
Freedom: 9
Level Design: 9
Music: 7.5
Overall: 8

The gameplay and bonus missions were very fun. However, the lack of a good story or interesting character did hurt the game a little. The gameplay was solid, but that's all it offered was gameplay. Without adding anything new to the genre and an uninteresting story, I just couldn't give it a 9. Its border line 8.5