First, the things FoG does not or does a bad job at. The battles have no fog of war. There is no campaign included, not even the possibility to play the battles of the Waterloo campaign one after the other with losses being carried over. The gameplay is limited to the 4 historical battles and 2 smaller, fictional ones; no custom battles option. You always play the commander in chief, you can't play a battle as a subordinate commander. The AI is constantly overstrained. Units somtimes react when under attack, and somtimes not; AI Division and Corps commaders stick to rigid formations, even if part of their units are held up in towns or woods, the rest just blindly moves on. It is very hard to actually loose a battle against the AI even on the highest difficulty level. The original manual is included in the installation.
The individual units on the battlefield are infantry and cavalry brigades, and artillery battteries. Also, there are Division, Corps and the Army commanders. Graphically, the game is presented in cute bright colors, while the sound is minimal, with mostly cannon and rifle shots, and the appropriate drum and bugle signals when the player issues an order to a unit. When an AI commander has reached his assigned objective, the player will be notified by an instantaneous report.
The database is very good and contains, apart from the unit composition down to battaillon level, small biographies and battle histories for the commanders and units; also, every commander down to Division level is shown with a portrait, and there are lots of portraits of the uniforms of the regiments.
The game was one of the first "real time" battle simulations. I still reinstall the game from time to time, in part due to the nostalgia, and in part to have some relaxing fun. If you are not here for the nostalgia and the criticisms above do not deter you from spending your money, then you surely won't regret your decision :)
