American Conquest, RTS which has its roots way back when intelligent people in Europe thought it might be a good idea to go across the Atlantic and take lumps out of the natives, so this is not a passive game.
When you enter the game you are hit with a number of different options Scenario, campaign, multi-player and so on and so forth. I’m going to talk to you about the scenario part of the game, basically because this covers most bases about the game.
If you choose scenario, you get to pick from different points in American colonial history (North, South and Latin American) starting with the Spanish all the way up the war of independence in the States and melees with the locals. So spanning about 300 years in all.
Each campaign beings with a nice little history lesson about the mission your about to undertake which I didn’t read or really take any notice of the friendly man narrating, get to the fighting, being my main train of thought, but if your interested in some of the back round to the various missions this is informative and not long or drawn out either.
Once in the game you can both be given a couple peasants and told to build up a community and defend it, or a rather large bunch of troops with obvious objectives. These missions are not short, by god no. I’m not saying that there hard (you get to pick the difficulty level) I just found the best way to play the game was a slow build up of force with a nice large base to fall back on. Your troops can be eaten up by enemy if your not ready to take them on.
Units
Well the units, so much to say, so much of a timeline to cover, but I’ll summarise. Basically you got 300 years of development there, and it shows in the game; when you start you don’t have access to lots and lots of muskets or cannon. Halberdier and Harquebusier are your first aggressive units, there nothing compared to what you get later on, but for now they do nicely, as the game goes on your get officers, drummers and these guys that wave flags around. Now you got the Indian units, very fast very fast, bows, arrows and dudes on horseback, give me a musket please. As time goes on you get more advanced units fusiliers, musketeers and dragoons.
On their own I don’t really have much to say about these units, but remember the officer, drummer and flag waving guy, well you use these guys to create formations which are deadly and so very handy, much more effective than using these units as just a large maul of crazy trigger happy colonists. Deadly. The formations are one very cool part of the game, because you are allowed have thousands of units moving in formations which visually is seriously cool to watch and better still is very effect is combat your fellow man.
Strategy
Possibly the strongest point in the game, you are allowed to control a vast number of formations contain a max of 190 troops I think. You can configure a whole battle by using your formations intelligently, pulling your enemy into the centre then slamming in from the sides with dragons with can cannon raining down from a near by hill. It is all about timing baby! Your formations become a larger general formation utilising thousands or troops which made my want to play this game more. On the other hand there is nothing more demoralising than being on the opposite side of a strategy that you can’t get out of. Best part of the game without a doubt.
Buildings and Peasants
You can’t really deal with these on their own. Peasants are vital to survival in this game, buildings for all the cool stuff. Everything spawns from the buildings and you get to stockade them with people to defend them so only don’t bees will lose if they don’t fill their buildings full of defenders.
You get to build forts, fortresses and blockhouses. Now these have a double function. One, they allow you to build your armies (very important). Second, place say a fortress in a strategic position and woe on your enemy these things will shell the hell out of them with cannon.
Other useful buildings worth mentioning are dwellings, sometimes you’ll be allowed to build offensive units in dwellings which can be essential in finishing off an objective, their not as powerful as your main offensive units but they get the job done. Another very handy building or structure to have in your colony is a dock, oh yes. A dock will allow you to build frigates and other nice ships of war, which have very effective cannon on board.
Now all of this costs something, you pay for all this by taking advantage of the resources, which surround you. Mines, forests and farming. All very well done, by that I mean you can keep developing this through out the game, so you can’t really take them for granted.
Game play and Visuals
American Conquest is a nice looking game, the graphics are nothing fancy but there quiet functional and to the job, the is also a button which allows you to zoom out from the map which is a nice little tool because the maps in AC are quiet large and there is so much going on keeping an eye on everything is impossible without this.
The game play is simple to be honest there isn’t much to say here, its good its easy and there is no messing around, there are some simple hot keys to speed the whole thing up. The fact that the game play is so easy is one thing that really stands out in this game, there is nothing worse than messing around with funky controls and doing things the long way around, claps on this.
Conclusion
American Conquest, is a good game, taking over another continent, killing the natives, exploiting resources and then fighting to make it free again has never been so much fun. Beginning this review I was considering making a comparison with Sid Meiers Colonisation but this game deserves to be considered on its on, its that good.
INFORMATION ABOUT THIS CONTENT:
Originally posted: playerofgames.com (LINK) (ARCHIVED-1) (ARCHIVED-2)
Date of publish: 01.05.2003
Author: Eamonn
Language of publish: english