American Conquest. Thumbs Down. Interface is pretty lame. No way to command troops to halt. No way to creat armies and give them commands AS an army. No way to select all your men, because the huge mod spreads way past the edges of the screen. No diplomacy. You often feel "lost", like "what's happening now?" or "When is something going to happen?" or "Why is nothing happening?" Pretty boring campaign, which is a shame. Care was lavished on the intro pages, beautiful paintings. Nicely voice acted historical background on the stages of the campaign, but it's all so stiff, stilted and boring....the overall feeling is like an ancient Atari game...go pick up the gun! And the gun is a blob of pixels that looks nothing like a gun....just feels "stick figure" all the way through. Scale feels weird, but that's typical of all RTS games I have played. Music is so crushingly dull and horrifically plodding. This is about like playing that old Age of Empires. If you are desperately jonesing because you've totally burnt out Age of Empires and Civ, this is NOT a way to get your fix. Avoid like the plague. Worth maybe one dollar, if that.
This game is very, very limited. Only the European theater is covered, and after investing hours in the game, you may get the same nasty surprise I did: poised to invade your enemies and win a decisive victory, you see a popup window that declares that the war is over! Not so much flawed as profoundly incomplete. Very little depth, but the trade off is that it's marvelously easy to learn and play. I think an apt comparison is, if you're looking for a game at the level of Chess, this is not it; this is more like Checkers in depth.
I found this game for one dollar at a thrift shop, and looking at the screen shots on the CD case, figured it must be junk. Wrong. The theme is a bit hokey, and the graphics are a bit crude, but the gameplay is deceptively deep. You really must THINK, hard and long, on each of your moves. The game has all the depth of chess if you give it a chance. Several settings speed up or slow down movement or combat, if watching such things bores you. You can even click a button and watch a replay of your opponent's last move, to get a better idea of what the computer is plotting against you. If you are used to Real Time Strategy games such as "Civilization" or "Empire Earth", you'll find this familiar, but refreshingly different. You'll have plenty of time to plan your moves, and you'll need it after the handful of easy introductory missions. To get some very useful pointers, go to google and find the Walkthrough that's out there, it's awesome.
The game is advertised as an adventure in two world, one governed by science, one by magic. This intrigued me so much, I had to give it a try. Big mistake. First of all, the game is beautiful to look at. It better be, because you'll be looking at the same things, over and over and over and over......the game is not a test of your logic and reasoning skills, it's a test of eyesight and patience. Items that are completely essential to progress in the game can only be found by randomly stumbling around a room, again and again until you get lucky. You can't use your brain and find a key in a logical place, you have to pick up every single item on the coffee table until picking up the magazine reveals the key underneath. Now, a little of this is okay, but the game really overdoes it. You have to have the patience of a saint to endure this game, which makes you run from one end of the map to get something, only to send you right back where you started to get something else. I don't call that fun. I call that boredom and frustration. Horrible, horrible game.
