North & South

This game is a classic on Amiga. It's fun, challenging and just awesome to play. This version of the game however, despite its very low price, was a disappointment as far as graphics and sounds are concerned. Horrible quality! I expected more from GOG.

I played this game when I first got it when it was originally released on the Atari ST and on a friend's PC. There are differences in graphics and sounds, but nothing important. The game is absolutely fantastic as a single player game. You get to pick one of 4 IIRC starting dates, pick side (North or South) and A.I. difficulty setting if playing single player. You can have two humans playing or even two A.I. playing and you watching. You can enable the real time mini games, or play it completely on the main strategic map (think of RISK or Chess or other board game). You can disable them if you don't like them, or if you are very bad at them, or whatever. For example after the first couple of years of playing the game I became so good I disabled them so that I don't demolish the A.I. in the mini games. The main strategic map is made up of territories which you can capture by moving an army. Five territories have forts which if they belong to the enemy have to be attacked even if there is no enemy army stationed there. There is a railway line going from bottom right (map) to left to up to right. The 5 forts are spread out on it. If you own at least two forts which have direct connection with a line (no enemy fort between them), then when it is your turn a train will bring you income (gold bags) to spend on your armies. If during that cutscene there is an enemy army in between the two forts, there is a mini game of train robbery. Action game where you have to go up the train, and all the way to the engine to stop it. The AI/Other human tries to stop you with limited soldiers they can spawn. Problem for the attacker being the time limit. Fort assaults have very similar mini game only it is obviously not a train. The third mini game is a real time strategy battle when two opposing armies meet. Keyboard or joystick controls only for it. Direct control of a single unit at time. VERY FUN. I did a review of the ST version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHbuUtGmX6w

The popularity of this title is totally deserved - it's mixing some action-oriented mini-games with simplified turn-based strategy elements, giving a very enjoyable mix. Sadly, this version of the game has noticeable issues in some areas, making your sessions with this game less enjoyable than they should be. Mini-game with the fight between armies is working quite nicely, but sadly I can't tell the same thing about attacks on the forts and trains - both are sharing a similar type of mini-game, where you're controlling your character in platform game style. Jumping is extremely inconsistent and has animation making next jumps really hard to perform. The same goes with attacking, which is suffering from input lag (surprisingly random input lag). And climbing back on the train is also hard to understand, sometimes your character is climbing up, sometimes not (at the same railroad car). It's really terrible because those mini-games (especially attacks on forts) are an important part of the game. There are also some minor issues. At the very beginning, after choosing the language version, you have to wait until the entire music theme will be played. Very long, lagged and not too pleasant for ears (PC speaker version only). There are also some random lags when you're issuing orders on the strategic map. And the map itself looks a bit too blurry and hard to read. I think that this version has also a bug with control, despite the fact that you should be able to edit it in the game, pressing the "e" key is not causing anything. By the way - for some reason information about changing the formation you're controlling during battles (right shift) is not visible here at all. I'm sad to tell, that this version of the game has many unpleasant surprises, making contact with the game not as well, as it should be. You can still play it, but... Despite the price difference, I would rather recommend the renewed version (Bluecoats...), it's in terms of pure gameplay more enjoyable.

Must admit, I only played Amiga/C64 version before, this one here dissapointed me in sound and graphics quality, guess will return to C64 version on PSP emulator.