300: March to Glory (PlayStation Portable) Review
300: The March to Garbage
~by tankMage (August 2025)
Score: 67/100 (Poor)
If you were to make a list of the top ten easiest movies to base a game on, 300 would be number one or close to the top. The vast majority of the movie is a bunch of guys stabbing things with pointy sticks. Heck, the movie is even shot somewhat like a video game. And yet, Collision Studios (a company I have not heard of until today and I’ve been gaming for forty years!) managed to drop the ball. Why a company like Warner Brothers would entrust a no name developer with the rights to 300 is beyond me. I also have to wonder how the project was financed, because they definitely didn’t put much effort into this dog of a game. My guess is most of the budget went to David Wenham who played Dillios in the movie and did the voice of the same character in the game.
At any rate, 300: The March to Glory starts off promising. There’s an opening scene that attempts to emulate the comic on which the movie is based. While the artwork isn’t quite up to the standards of the comic, it’s good enough. That said, it would have been fine if they just used panels from the comic (though there may have been legal obstacles to that) or scenes from the film. I suppose they decided to redraw everything to make Leonidas look like Gerard “Lazy Eye” Butler.
Everything goes to hell when the actual gameplay (you know, the most important part!) begins. The graphics are crap and look like a PS1 game, but without the charm. While the weapon animations are ok, the animations for pushing things and jumping are amateurish or downright awful in some places. To be fair, there are instances where the graphics have a certain flair to them, particularly when you’re fighting at the cliffs of Thermopylae with the ocean crashing against the rocks. There’s also plenty of gore in keeping with the motion picture.
Once you get over the graphics, you may get your hopes up. Fighting can be fun, I’d be lying if i said it wasn’t enjoyable at times. Leonidas can switch between sword and spear, plus there’s plenty of combos and special moves. Players can even upgrade their equipment, learn new combos, and upgrade their Battle Skills using Kleos (fame and glory) from killing enemies. The devs even included the arrow rain from the film and you have to avoid it by “tucking tails” or hiding under your shield. Graphics aren’t everything and a game that looks bad can still be fun. Too bad they managed to ruin the good things about the gameplay.
You’ll soon realize the game will bug you with dialog boxes explaining how to do things on a regular basis. This lasts from start to finish and you best read them if you want to beat certain enemies. These tutorials even pop up if you start a New Game + after beating the story. Seriously? What kind of lazy crap is that?
Then there’s the arrow storms, which are also in the film. It’s fun taking cover under the shield the first time it rains arrows, then it happens again and again. Arrows pour from the skies even during boss fights. No wonder the Persians lost, they were shooting at their own people!! The arrow storms are at their very worst in Phalanx mode, which I’ll get to later. Regardless, the frequent volleys of arrows get annoying.
So, after you cope with the eternal tutorial and the arrow barrages, you’ll notice another bothersome feature of the game: shield turtle enemies. Yep, it’s one of those games where the enemies block constantly. As you can imagine, it gets annoying mashing buttons and hearing a clank every time your weapon connects. There are ways to break shields or knock enemies off their feet, but they just serve to make matters worse. The former requires the use of the spear, which was a fairly good idea, while the latter can be executed using Wrath.
Now, maybe you’re wondering what Wrath is? Well, it’s used to activate light and heavy Wrath Attacks, which break guards and knock enemies off their feet. It’s also used for Battle Skills which help Leonidas in a number of ways. You build up Wrath by hitting enemies or by collecting Lambda signs. Building up wrath just to kill trash mobs gets annoying and the alternatives of hammering away at their shields with the spear or dual blades aren’t much better. There’s a near constant demand on Wrath at certain points and it gets really tiresome.
Speaking of Battle Skills, they’re nice on paper, but suck in practice. One of them heals Leo, which is good. Another boosts his damage and heals him as he his enemies, which is cool. Yet another Battle Skill automatically blocks arrows; useless. Finally, the fourth one slows time. I tried to slow time on a boss and it didn’t work, so that one is also useless. They really failed when it came to the Battle Skills since they consume Wrath, which is also needed to kill a bunch of things, and the only good ones are basically heals. It would have been awesome if they did things like break up crowds or called in a phalanx of Spartans to throw spears, but that would have required effort on Collision Studios’ part.
So, after dealing with the aforementioned problems that start cropping up early in the game, you’ll get treated to 300: March to Glory’s worst feature: Phalanx Mode. Leonidas and a few other Spartans will form a line and you have to march forward while stabbing bad guys with your spears. It’s another idea that seems good, but was botched somewhere in development. First off, Phalanx Mode looks like something from a cheaply made pay-to-win online game. Secondly, there’s a “command bar” that depletes as time goes by or if you get hit. It can only be filled by killing enemies. Thirdly, it’s hard to see what’s going on. Last, but not least, the game doesn’t explain much about Phalanx Mode despite bombarding the player with tutorials.
There were a lot of times where I died in Phalanx because an arrow storm came while the Persians were pushing me. I just couldn’t see what was in front of me because a bunch of diaper wearing Spartans were in the way, which also lead to deaths. Worse yet, you fight elephants a few times and they are one of the most cheaply made aspects of the game. They just look awful and attacking them feels buggy and half finished. There’s something like four or five Phalanx Mode sections players have to suffer through.
If you manage to keep playing this game after the first Phalanx, you’ll soon be treated to one of the game’s many crappy boss fights. Bosses take everything that is wrong with 300: March to Glory and combine it into one disappointing experience. Most bosses block constantly and have unblock-able attacks as well as those that can knock away Leo’s shield. Imagine how unfun it is to stop in the middle of a fight to pick up your friggin’ shield. Some bosses have an armor bar in addition to a life bar that has to be depleted in order to actually hurt them and build that oh so important Wrath. The worst of the worst have a stupid gimmick like healing or staying out of reach that you have to deal with. And, if that’s not enough for you, you get to deal with arrow storms and hordes of trash mobs during most boss fights. They’re not fun, not fun at all. Once you figure out that just about every boss can be defeated by circling it counter clockwise and attacking them after they attack, the bosses become hilariously easy.
Then there’s the miscellaneous annoyances that pile up with this damn game. The camera sucks, you have to push statues and pull levers for no reason. The NPC Spartans steal kills (no Kleos for you!) and get in the way. There’s a sequence where you have to protect a wall from Persian wizards who throw grenades and slaves who kamikaze themselves which is my least favorite type of mission. Leo can throw his spear (and has to sometimes) but has to go out of his way to pick new spears up. Why didn’t they just give him javelins? Its not like they didn’t embellish the source material to begin with. Ugh, I think that’s everything. Oh wait, I’ve encountered bugs where certain gates won’t open and you have to restart from the last checkpoint, because the game soft locked…great.
Of course there’s a story, but it’s flat and lifeless. Even with David Wenham narrating, all the bluster and bravado from the movie is absent. They tried to pad the story with extra characters and had some success. The extra bad guys were actually ok and I felt like they added a bit to the game. One of the problems with games that are based on movies is you know what’s gonna happen if you have seen the movie and 300 suffers from this issue even with the embellishments. They even added the second battle with Xerxes’s army and it didn’t help make the plot more interesting.
Oh, I forgot to mention the gods awful stealth sequences. Yep, you can sneak around and stealth kill Persian soldiers in camps at certain points. Once again, Collision Studios screwed up and the stealth sections are pure ass. The main culprit is the camera, because its hard to see enemies in the camp. But it’s also not in your favor to be stealthy anyway, because you want that sweet Kleos from fighting as many enemies as possible. Who thought this crap up? Have they heard of Tenchu or Metal Gear where you can look around to find enemies as you sneak?
Let’s say you somehow suffer through this mess to the very end like I did. Well, you get to fight this guy named Mordanius, who wasn’t in the movie and I’m fairly certain was not in the comic. Mordanius is not a turtle blocker (thank you God) but he does have a metric crap ton of health and armor. He also has annoying attacks, but you can just block, circle him counter clockwise, and slowly pick away at his gigantic health pool like worth most other bosses. Just be ready to block those arrow volleys! It took me a good ten minutes to kill him and the game seemed to end like the movie…. then it didn’t and I got treated to more 300: March to Glory….ugh.
The final chapter is somehow uglier than the rest of the game and you get to control Dillios, who is identical to Leonidas in terms of gameplay. He even has the equipment and skills you bought Leo. I gotta say, I was vicariously embarrassed for this game when I saw how Dillios’ armor clipped through his chest. So, I plowed through another ugly mess of missions to get to an irritating final battle where the camera works against the player in the worst ways imaginable. And what do you get for your trouble? You get to fight Mordanius again! And he’s exactly the same as before, except he wastes your time by running away.
I really tried to like this game, I did. I want to like all the games I play, but 300: March to Garbage didn’t want me to like it. By the time I was done, any good will I had towards this title evaporated like Xerxes’ odds of conquering Greece. What kills me is the fact that there were plenty of good hack ‘n slash games to use as models for 300. Devil May Cry, God of War, Onimusha…even BloodRayne could have served as a template. But no, they had to try and innovate (or just didn’t care) and it went horribly wrong.
If you’re still reading and want to play this game, I can’t stop you. In fact, everyone has different tastes and you may even like it. That said, there are objective problems with this title and I can’t recommend it unless you like to play bad games for a laugh.
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