What can be said about Legion Arena? Not much. Developed by Slitherine Software and published by Strategy First, Legion Arena is fully rendered, three dimensional, mass combat, real time strategy. Heard something like that before? Of course you have, looks to any title in the Total War series to see how Legion Arena is played. In fact, during the combat phase I was stricken with a deja vu that was so vivid it was practically an out-of-body experience. With a few exceptions, the look and feel of Legion Arena is nearly identical to Medieval: Total War .

Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly distinctions. For instance, Legion Arena does not incorporate a turn based component or any style of tactical map to speak of. Instead maneuvering your armies and navies across the map, Legion Arena appears to take you on a trip though history.

Moving across realistic, detailed landscapes, your army is dropped into an increasing difficult series of conflicts that parallel the real skirmishes of the period. Whether you are attempting to crush a civil uprising in name of the Roman Empire or expel the Roman invaders from your Celtic homeland with pitchfork and sickle.

Legion Arena gives every indication of striving for historical accuracy while providing a compelling strategy experience. Delving into history even further, the game offers more than twenty unique unit types and one hundred apparently accurate single player scenarios. Once again, the historical bend of Legion Arena is very pronounced, but not to the overall degradation of the game. It’s not as though your victories are meaningless. In fact, this is one of the standout abilities for Legion Arena. Your army is capable of growing. Not only in size, all strategy games deal with increasing the size and breadth of one armies, but this time you can take it to a whole new level by using your combat experience and the experience of your Legions all the way up from the lowest dog soldier, to the massively armored heavy Calvary knight. Every time one of your units survives a battle they have the potential for a promotion. Promotions increase the abilities of that unit. In addition, you can spend your spoils on weapon and armor upgrades. Yes, other titles in this style offer upgrades and promotions, but none of them affect the outcome of a battle as much as these do.

Visually, Legion Arena is at least on par with Medieval: Total War with a pronounced upturn in quality and detail when fully zoomed in on the action. Sure does make a pachyderm one intimidating mother . Aside from that, the visualizations are nothing new.

In fact, "nothing new" is the mantra for Legion Arena. It’s fun, has good strategy, is multi-player enabled, but really nothing new. Just another solid title from Strategy First.