The Spartans have always been hearty people, and in this game their heartiness will be put to a serious test. Your first storyline mission is the same like all other 1st missions in all other RTSs: selecting some troops and moving them from your starting location to somewhere across the map.

From there the game goes where all other RTSs have gone before: teaching you basic combat. In this game’s case you get to quell down the rebellions and unite Sparta. Great! Now let’s move on. The storyline takes us next to the oracle for a quick prophecy. There is where AWS introduces the navy. Big mistake. Since they actually bothered to put in a navy, I really hope they will patch the AI and path-finding because I haven’t seen a naval RTS done this bad in a very long time.

Now that you’ve been dragged around through about seven or eight missions, you’re finally ready to meet the Persians in a 25 minute gauntlet. That’s when the storyline got just too redundant for me. Every single RTS that I’ve played has the 25 minute survive until reinforcements arrive mission. After that mission I abandoned the Spartan storyline and moved on.

The Egyptian campaign assumes that you know how to move your people around by now so it actually starts out a bit faster. Your first mission is to build 10 warriors, 5 ranged and 5 melee. At this time the Egyptians are a conquered race and they are forced to follow Persian authority, but for how long that is up to you.

If you bother to load up the 3rd campaign then expect the same lame story played with a different look (the Persians have beards). It is actually bothering me that Playlogic took something that had great potential and turned it into something that is just sooooo bad.