Before purchasing games, I highly recommend reading a couple threads in the forums or doing some research on them elsewhere on the web. I love this website and have already purchased several games but since I have the option to write a review, I feel it has become my duty to inform people some specifics of this particular game which may or may not sway their opinion in regards to purchasing it. Firstly, the graphics are definitely nice and the interface is smooth and well organized. This is not where you will have any issues aside from the battle camera view, which isn't really graphics but more of an interfacing issue. During battle, your view is adjustable but it's very awkward because pressing left or right turns your view as if you'd be rotating your head and it doesn't strafe. "Minor inconvenience" is what I immediately thought but after playing a few battles I definitely found it increasingly frustrating to deal with. Another problem with interfacing is how you control your units on the battlefield. Mostly, everything works smoothly and it's awesome watching your little guys march down the field and form formations, but once in a while things just... "mess up". Here and there, you'll find that you just can't move an army to a location even though another of your armies was just there a second ago, sometimes you will tell them to go a direction and they decide to ignore you and walk somewhere else, and a few times my units just completely ignored me and I couldn't even select them. Usually these problems fix themselves somehow within a short amount of time but it's awfully irritating. When I first played the game I went through the painfully vague tutorial which was incredibly short. Went through specific basics like how to board a ship with an army but kinda left you out of the loop on other aspects of the game. Then came the battle tutorial which was just, "do what I say and move these guys over there and these guys kill that guy... ok that's it". Then came the ship battle tutorial which was kinda simple but nice - also pretty vague though. So I finished the tutorials and began a new campaign as France. Playing the governance part of the game is great. It's definitely well thought out and complex enough for economic strategies. Unfortunately, you can only really "interact" and use diplomacy with countries that you directly border and I see this as one of the biggest flaws of the entire game and just completely ruins it when for instance; you have an ally that is being besieged by a country that you can't declare war on because your country doesn't border the attackers. I'd love to help you little country and I have all my men in your country just standing next to the attacking men but I'm sorry, the only way to fight those guys standing on your capital is for me to take all my men - leave you here defenseless - attack the attackers country thus declaring war but unfavorably across the entire world because I did it all "sneaky" since there was no other way of declaring war in the first place - hopefully win that battle - make all the attackers get off your capital and come to battle me and try to take their territory back - hopefully win that battle - then take my guys back to your little country and hope that the attacker didn't leave anyone because then the annexation process doesn't stop and we may have just lost you anyways. I'll probably not even bother trying to help you, little country, since every time I try to battle someone I find myself getting more and more frustrated with the unrealistic and boarder line silly game dynamics in battle mode. 'Small' things like how 180 highly trained rifle men shoot close range at 60 grouped up, untrained, charging, militia equipped with only melee weapons and only hit like 12 of them. Then find out that they are significantly killing my guys even though by now, I've got about another 180 riflemen shooting at them and one line in hand to hand combat with them. It appears as if the cheapest and earliest unit to create is the best and most capable of destruction because these guys can take out cavalry and cannons as well. It's at this point that I just can't continue because if you don't get the idea by now, go ahead and by it. Maybe you will enjoy it.
