Genre: Turn-based Strategy
Developer: Community
Publisher: Independent

Battle for Wesnoth's art is entirely sprite-based, and contains absolutely fantastic character work, aesthetically pleasing tile art, and generally wonderful portrait graphics, that is merely spotted with a few only-ok entries. Wesnoth's world does feel a bit generic and not particularly alive, but on the other hand its clean presentation and excellent user interface mean that its straddling of lively presentation and playability is essentially spot on.

If there is one thing that today's industry doesn't have enough of, it has to be catchy music. Wesnoth's soundtrack is, top to bottom, out of this world-- from the complex and intricate song simply titled "Battle", with its heavy shades of Warcraft II, to the Jeremy Soule-inspired "Still Another Wanderer", to the memorable and desperate sounding "The Dangerous Symphony", Wesnoth's music really carries each campaign on its able shoulders. Sound effects are minimal, but what are there are appropriate, clear, and tactfully chosen.

Wesnoth has one foot each in the realms of strategy RPG and turn-based strategy to such a degree that one could argue to which genre it actually belongs. The campaigns that come with the game are wonderfully designed, although no matter how much the game's designers defend the idea, statistics play too large a role in the game's flow. The thriving community, ready availability of an excellent campaign editor, and enjoyable multiplayer mean that there is never a shortage of content to experience.

Wesnoth is, almost undeniably, the most polished community-developed game ever created, exceeding the quality of most expensive, mainstream strategy titles that have been released in the last several years. The fact that it, in its entirety, is released under Free software licenses means that it is a classic that will surely be ported to new platforms over time, and never get left behind as a result. And that's a good thing, because there is a perfectly reasonable line of thinking that says we'll never need another turn-based, fantasy strategy title-- Wesnoth could suffice indefinitely.