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Portable consoles, to me, always seemed to be an ideal platform for turn based strategy games. After all, you can take them with you and play them for a few minutes while you have the time, then put it away and come back to it later. You're not locked to one location or time to play.

That being said, I haven't been overly wow-ed by the turn based experience on the Nintendo DS. Some games were too anime and cute for me; others were of the historical bent but far enough back that I would shrug, often employing some real time strategy elements such as material harvesting that I felt was a drag.

Thus, when I got a chance to play Panzer Tactics DS, I was quite excited. Just from the manual I could tell this was an in-depth game, and it was set during the World War 2 era, one which I think makes a much better match for the type of gamer I am.

Then I hit the tutorial, and woo-boy was I in over my head!

This game has a very steep learning curve. Let's put that right out there — you can get very frustrated figuring out some things. When it comes together it all just comes together, and you really feel like a general. Until then, you're stuck saying "uh…what am I supposed to do?"

There are a number of tutorial missions where you play as the Germans. Play them all. You'll need them.

From there you can pick out campaigns. You've got Easy, Medium, and Hard — the Germans, the Russians, and the Western Allies.

Don't get to thinking that just because you're playing on Easy, and that you're the Germans invading Poland or Belgium that you're going to have it easy. The AI is not stupid in this game. He'll move up his artillery to catch you off-guard, send in air units to strafe your troop convoys, put fighters against your ground attack plans, and retreat when it's best to do so to patch up and come back after you.

The game is played on a hex grid. Every hex has a type of terrain on it that will tell you the benefits and penalties to that terrain. The tutorial helps you learn how they work — how mountains and forests, for instance, help you see further and help hide units, respectively. They also let you set up ambushes if you so desire, though it's best to remember that if you're on the offensive, you're much more likely to be the ambushee.

There are a huge variety of units in the game. Each unit has a number of different tactical modifiers. They may be different types of infantry, armor, planes, or ships. They have different specialties, they all have morale, and they all have defenses and offenses against the other types of units that will vary. Your core units will even gain experience as the war goes on, and you can pair officers with units in order to make them even better.

But again, that leads to the learning curve. It takes a while to figure out the intricacies, and it wasn't until about the fourth mission into the Easy campaign, after playing the tutorial multiple times, that I even started to feel a bit comfortable. For instance, you get additional units in your missions — but if you don't place them right away, it's not going to remind you about them until you go to recruit new units.

You recruit new units and officers by using your "Fame", the currency of the game. Take a town or complete a mission and you get Fame. You also use Fame to resupply your troops. Each unit can only fire so many times and only move so far before it needs ammo and fuel. You can get bonuses, such as additional Fame or lower costs, by achieving secondary objectives during the game.

Once nice touch that makes the game more bearable — and more strategic — I felt was the fact that all of the slow units (basically infantry and towed artillery) have intrinsic transport. If you give up their ability to fight for a turn, you can put them into a convoy of vehicles and race up the road. At airports, you can put them into aircraft to land at other airfields, and at sea you can put them into landing craft to cross the water.

Just watch out, because they're vulnerable like that — even if the animations make it look like your ships or trucks are shooting some kind of machine guns.

The graphics and animation aren't that bad. They're not great, but they give you the idea of what's going on and look historically accurate (to me, at least!). The battle sequences are fast enough that they don't really get in the way, and there's always something refreshing about seeing your artillery finally dislodge — permanently — that infantry unit that's been stubbornly holding the city core.

The sound isn't that bad either though some of it can get a bit annoying.

The great thing about the game is the fact that it is quite challenging and yet not stuck to the "one true path" kind of game, where there's only one way to beat each scenario. You can figure out different ways to play out each scenario. One time you might split your troops up and form a pincers movement. Another time you might just have one mighty armored spearhead, but drop airborne troops behind enemy lines. If you have lots of time, you might just rely on punishing artillery barrages and bomber runs to give your ground troops an easy run on it — but keep in mind the enemy will reinforce his troops just like you do, too!

There're multiplayer options as well. I haven't played them, but you can play in a "Hot Seat" mode, where people take turns playing with the same DS. I'd imagine that'd be a bit boring. You can play via WiFi, or with up to four people who all have the game. The latter is what I'd love to try sometime, if I can just convince my friends with DS-s to buy the game.

All in all this game is a great investment for turn based strategy buffs. If you're not one, though, this is a very difficult game to cut your teeth on.