Everyone secretly wants to be a sky pirate, and last year's Final Fantasy XII fulfilled those dreams. Although the game offers a satisfying conclusion to the epic, the saga now continues in Revenant Wings, a real time strategy spin-off for the DS. Those who played the original will feel right at home, while newcomers might need some time to gain their bearings in the story, but either way this sequel delivers a satisfying quest and arguably the best RTS game to hit the portable yet.

After spending some time with Revenant Wings, you'll start to feel that the DS caters to the RTS genre. It's no replacement for the PC, but using the stylus to navigate menus and control the bounty of playable characters feels very natural. Selecting multiple targets at once is a breeze and sending them into the fray of battle will become second nature in just a few missions. The opening tutorial is almost numbingly basic, but it should help those who find themselves in unfamiliar waters.

The gambit system returns in Revenant Wings, although in a heavily modified format. Characters can each have one gambit assigned to them at a time, which causes them to automatically execute a particular action every time they can in battle (there is a brief recharge that is typically required). This helps to lessen the workload for the player, which can be quite a lot in the more difficult battles. Each character has unique abilities that work well against particular enemies, so the game requires serious strategy if you want to be effective. At times, the small and overly pixilated character sprites hamper this, so you must keep a keen eye in order to be able to quickly spot the character you need.

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