From Artificial Life, Braveheart is a mobile title that puts gamers in the shoes of William Wallace, the Scottish hero from the epic film starring Mel Gibson. While the game doesn’t feature Mel Gibson’s likeness, the game does have you taking on a variety of enemy soldiers and working your way up to the rebellion against the English forces. While the experience is noticeably scaled down when compared to other strategy titles (even those of the mobile variety) and has some issues, it still controls pretty well and shouldn’t be overwhelming to casual players looking to try their hand at mobile strategy gaming.

The game loosely follows the plot of the film, as the hero begins fighting for vengeance but soon finds himself fighting against the tyrannical Longshanks for the betterment of his country. The story elements are pretty slim, and only serve as a build up to the campaign.

Gameplay-wise, Braveheart is a pretty low-key strategy title. You’ll control Wallace for a good portion of the game, but as you go you’ll gain new units and have access to them. As you complete missions in the campaign, you’ll get the ability to either purchase new units at the end of the mission or buy altogether new ones.

Controlling your characters is a snap, as you’ll only have to use the directional buttons to move your cursor around the screen and select units with the 5 key. By double-clicking the 5 key, you’ll be able to select all onscreen units, and have them either move to position or attack an enemy.

The game works on a Rock-Paper-Scissors scale with the units, as certain units will work well for some enemies but poorly against others. Therefore, it is necessary to utilize some forethought before sending your soldiers to fight.

Aside from the campaign mode, there is an arcade mode, where you’ll fight battles from the storyline in order to gain a high score.

The strategy element in Braveheart is pretty casual and simplistic fare, and the AI has some pathfinding issues that sully the overall experience. There are situations where your soldiers will pace back and forth when they can’t get to their specific objective, and will require a fair amount of handholding to get to where they’re going.

Graphically, Braveheart isn’t much to look at, as the character models are quite small and difficult to make out. There are no real sound effects to speak of, but there is some music that sounds decent enough.

While casual players looking to try their hands at a strategy title for their phone will find the controls easy enough to get into, Braveheart has some serious problems, like overly simplistic gameplay and poor AI.

Gameplay: 6.0
Braveheart is a pretty simplistic strategy title and the AI is quite poor, but it controls pretty well.

Graphics: 4.0
Not a whole lot to look at here, aside from some very simplistic character models.

Sound: 5.0
There are no sound effects, aside from a decent score.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 5.0
A casual strategy title for mobile phones, Braveheart follows the plot of the film very lightly.

Overall: 5.5
Braveheart is easy enough to play, but the simplistic gameplay and weak AI may turn off many gamers.