The gameplay received very mixed reviews, with the artificial intelligence universally derided and other gameplay elements garnering a range of opinions. Bozon said that "the A.I. can be a real pain, as characters often take extremely odd routes to destinations or show command issues when engaging enemies", Joe Juba of "Game Informer" called the pathfinding "laughably terrible", a criticism echoed by Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com, and Parkin called it "an unmitigated disaster". VanOrd termed it "the worst, most broken system of unit pathfinding ever devised", and Gann felt it was so bad that it showed that the developers "had no idea what they were doing" in making an RTS. Bozon felt that the overall real-time strategy gameplay, however, was deep, if a bit slow, as did VanOrd. Parkin felt that the gameplay was "easy and intuitive", though slow, while Parish felt that the limitations of the Nintendo DS's small screens made the game too streamlined for an RTS game. Juba and the "GamePro" reviewer felt that the restrictions necessary to fit an RTS on a system the size of the DS made the game too simple and easy. The Japanese "Famitsu" review, however, felt that the game worked well as an RTS for the Nintendo DS, and was well-suited to the console. Both Bozon and Parish felt that the local multiplayer was better than the single-player game, though Bozon felt that the lack of online multiplayer was stifling and VanOrd felt that the tie between the multiplayer game and the player's single-player progress imbalanced any game where both players had not fully completed the storyline.