Ancient Wars: Sparta

Ancient Wars: Sparta is a real-time strategy game, controlled via a point and click interface, in which the primary goal on most maps is to build a strong enough army to defeat the opponent or opponents by destroying their settlement, or, on occasion, killing a specific unit in their army. To achieve this end, the player must engage in some basic economic micromanagement, such as gathering resources, constructing buildings, and researching new technologies, abilities, weapons, ships, and war machines.

The game can be played in one of two modes; single-player or multiplayer. In single-player mode, the player can play either campaign missions or individual non-campaign games. In campaign mode, the player must complete a series of missions, the goal of many of which is to defeat the computer controlled opponent or opponents by destroying their settlement. Most missions have several primary objectives, which usually must be completed sequentially, and often one or more secondary objectives.

The game was announced in February 2005 by German public relations firm Interactive Media Consulting (IMC). Known at the time as Sparta: Ancient Wars, it was touted as the first in a proposed series of historical-based real-time strategy games under the Ancient Wars banner. IMC stated that it would feature three campaigns and a total of 30 missions, also stressing that there would be no unit limit per mission and that naval combat would be a major part of the gameplay. Unusually for a video game announcement, neither the developer nor the publisher were revealed, although IMC did say the developer was an "international known [sic] development team."

In April 2005, Russian studio World Forge was revealed as the developers, with Ancient Wars set to be their first game. In an interview with IGN, producer Torsten Hess and IMC's head of communications Ingo Horn explained that the game had begun development early in 2004, with IMC coming on board in August. Initially hired to "analyse the game documents and storyline", IMC came to feel that the game was a potential triple-A title and that World Forge "needed support to push it into the right direction for the Western market."

The game received "mixed or average reviews," with an aggregate score of 59 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on twenty-one reviews.

GameSpot's Jason Ocampo scored it 6.3 out of 10. He praised the graphics, although also acknowledged that the game "looks not unlike most other 3D RTS games". Elsewhere, he found the gameplay derivative, the voice acting poor, and the difficulty too high. His biggest problem was that the game did very little to distinguish itself, calling it "very generic" and "indistinguishable from the rest of the genre". He also felt that it wasted the potential of its historical setting; "[there is] nothing particularly epic or grand about the gameplay or the story."