Partia Review

Partia is a turn-based strategy role-playing game created by Imago Software. Inspired by old classics of this genre, like Fire Emblem and Tear Ring Saga, Partia has players take control of a young prince in his quest to resolve a personal tragedy and reunite a continent in conflict. While the game faithfully recreates the feeling of an old school strategy game, Partia seems to devote itself so closely to old genre conventions that it ends up feeling like a poor imitation of one rather than a worthwhile game in its own right.

Partia begins by introducing players to the game world with a brief text overview of the world's history. From there--much like in old video game fashion--players are dumped into the first level of the game with absolutely no explanation of how the game works at all. If you are familiar with strategy role-playing games, then the controls are relatively straightforward: Players will tap units to pull up menus of actions that these units can perform. The object of each map is to maneuver units in such a way that the victory conditions are met. Although this sounds simple, Partia makes this task quite difficult not only by its lack of explanation for anything, but also because the game seems quite hard, even for those familiar with these kinds of games.

Even if Partia was a little more accessible in terms of difficulty, it would still be hard to get into. The game presents itself with a visual style so akin to older consoles like the SNES that it is hard to look at on a crisp Apple screen, and the game's story almost immediately becomes too muddled to care about through the introduction of many new characters who are given no proper introduction at all. So, despite being a sound game, mechanically speaking, Partia does itself almost no favors, making the game seem only palatable for die-hard fans of old school SRPGs.