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From:Eidos , Eidos Interactive ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#5532 |
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4 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
 Great game., 2005-06-13
I think people came in thinking of this game in the wrong way. They wanted it to be like Rome Total War, but its more like a Medieval Toal War. The straedgy masters RTW but the comabat is on smaller scale in Imperial Glory. If you enjoy stradegy games and enjoy the studying the Napleonic Time Period you will love this game. If you like pure action and massive blood baths; you wont like this game. Its a fantastic stradegy game and i like the battles. I think the musket vollys are dont very well and look realistic. I love this game and ive been playing it for a week pretty much non stop, its very addictive. So again if your a fan of a lot of action you probabaly wont like this game. If you like stragedy games that take a lot of thinking and a lot of time to beat, you'll like this game!
9 of 11 customers found the following review helpful:
Misunderstood Gem, 2005-06-08
The negativism of many of the reviews to date may create a misimpression for many of the readers. IG is really a strategy game in the Civ III mold. The player controls a country and runs that country's economic, industrial, intellectual and military affairs with the ultimate goal of leading the Age or conquering the world. Unlike Civ III, it is set specifically in the Napoleonic era and thus the strategic situations and decisions are tailored to the era.
In this the game succeeds admirably. I could quibble with details, as others have done, but in general the challenges are identifiably Napoleonic. The Major Countries each face individual situations and threats recognizably historical. The trade/resource model is particularly effective at simulating the pressures and opportunities that brought a continent to war. Production and diplomacy are rough hewn, adequate and perfectly fine. The research tree is interesting and historical. But since all nations complete all items of research sooner or later, research choices only create temporary differences in capabilities. This perhaps could have been done more artfully, but it is amusing even if it doesn't advance the historiosity as well as it might have.
So with regard to the strategic game which is the heart of IG: Bravo!!! It is challenging, fun, recognizably historical and not so complex so as to compete with one's day job for tedium.
As a second order effect, IG also offers the option of tactical land an naval combat. Please note these are in fact options (reinforcing the notion that the strategic game is the center of the developer's intent). Any battle can be 'fought by computer' to speed up play or isolate play to the strategic realm. The tactical battles themselves are more like candy than serious simulations of Napoleonic battles. They are pretty enough and they are certainly Napoleonic in flavor. But make no mistake, the battlefield dynamics are unique to this game and people knowledgeable in Napoleonic tactics will have to make adjustments to their approach. I would agree with the observations of other reviewers and suggest that minor adjustments might be made in unit statistics to enhance gameplay and historiosity. But both naval and land battles are amusing little puzzles in and of themselves now, even if not rigorously historical.
My one complaint is one that hasn't been mentioned yet. Neither the included printed or PDF manual is sufficient to the game's complexity. The strategy guide arrived today and it seems to contain a lot of data missing from elsewhere. Hopefully it'll fill in some of the gaps in rules explanations as well.
To conclude, Imperial Glory is a fine game of Napoleonic strategy. In the style of Civ III, it captures the decisions and feel of the Napoleonic era with simplicity, challenge and excitement. It passes the rare 'just one more turn' test of addictive gaming. But it is not for everybody. Gamers desiring realistic Napoleonic combat would be better served looking elsewhere ("Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle" or "Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory" would be the benchmark there). And to be sure, there are a few design decisions (restricted naval maps and army morale in particular) and unit balancings (artillery range and militia combat power to name two) which should be readdressed. But for Napoleonics fans who have days of their lives to lay at the alter of a really fun, recognizably historical game that is simple to learn yet with great replayability, this is a must buy!
4 of 6 customers found the following review helpful:
 Napoleon: Total War, 2005-06-07
First the bad news: I too had problems at the beginning - slow loading times, buggy interface, curious animation, bad scrolling, freezes, crashes, etc. The very good news: I lowered the option settings, and particularly, changed the Animation Interpolation. I also updated my NVIDIA drivers, and as a result, it is as if I have a brand new game! The difference is phenomenal - the scrolling is better and easier, the animations are alive, the loading times are practically diminished. Both the campaign game and the battle modes are fun and engaging. The troops now move normally and fluidly, instead of 'gliding' strangely across the terrain. I can play this game for hours now. Those of you who bought this game and had problems, please give it another try, it is a very nice game, although not as perfect as Rome:Total War, it is a similar experience, and an enjoyable one. I am glad I was stubborn and patient with this, considering Cossacks II was a great dissapointment for me. For Napoleonic, this game is much better. Change the 'Interpolation', and try changing the settings (it won't affect the great look of the game), and upgrade any cards and drivers you have to - it is worth it. Vive l'empereur!
56 of 61 customers found the following review helpful:
 Decent game, some faults., 2005-06-07
As most of the reviewers here I immediately made comparisons to Rome: Total War which is an all-time favorite of mine that I still play.
Land Battles:
Beautiful graphics, simple controls and formations. All the areas you fight in are very well done. The terrain is interactive as well, where you can take units and place them in buildings, blockades, etc.. for increased defense and observation. There are basically three different types of units which fits well in the time period...Infantry, Calvary and Artillery. The major complaint I have with the Land Battles is the units need to be patched...badly. Very rarely have I had enemies rout or retreat.
A few things that need to happen to greatly improve Land Battles would be to increase the range of artillery dramatically to become an effective unit on the battlefield (as they historically were). Militia units need to be treated as militia units, one or two salvos from a Line Infantry unit should rout them..period. As it stand now militia units are more like very inexpensive and cheap fanatical infantry. That's one hell of a militia unit to be able to run across the map into a bunch of muskeeteers, see half your buddies die then take yer tree branch and face off against a professional soldier with a fixed bayonet. Militia will charge Artillery blasting the heck out of them, run right into a calvary charge and brave point blank musket fire. The best fights i've had, have been between armies of non-militia units where you really get a taste of Napoleanic warfare displayed on your screen. Bottomline here is the land battles would be dramatically improved if one musket salvo would rout a militia unit so the only way a bunch of club weilding peasants could defeat a professional army unit would be overwhelming numbers. As it is now, why did man invent the rifle in the first place, if they are just expensive useless toys. Just go down to your local pub and round up a bunch of drunk farmers and give them their +5 Clubs of Heroism.
Once a unit engages in melee combat there is no way to disengage them until they are done. I suppose there is some realism to this where you can't really shout orders to an entire unit when they are in hand-to-hand combat. This takes some tactics especially when fighting against militia as frenquently when they would charge into my Line Infantry i had to quickly order the rest of my units to stop firing on the militia because i'd hit my own men as well.
Calvary is a very powerful force. These are useful to crush militia and of course, the calvary will charge right towards them and the ubermensch superhuman peasants will fight to the last man against a thundering charge of trained professional Hussars (Can you tell i hate militia yet?).
Artillery as I mentioned above needs to be fixed. It's basically useless right now unless you want to shoot up a house to get Infantry out of, but as you approach any building they tend to come out on their own anyway. I still create them in my armies because....well, just because I like having armies with cannons *shrug*.
Navy Battles:
Personally I enjoyed these. The battles are simple, but I imagine things could get very complicated if battles consisted of like...5 ships fighting 5 ships. This will pretty much never happen tho as each country minus Britain seems to be complacent with having one ship to count for their Navy *yawn*.
Strategic Map:
This is where you conduct all your research, diplomacy, troop movements etc. No real big complaints here. Different countries will have different challenges. As mentioned by another reviewer England will rarely see Land Battles unless they choose to, so if you don't want to go to war that much and diplomat most of the game then England is a good choice. Playing a power like Prussia however is pretty difficult as they are going to be at war pretty much from the beginning and fighting..a LOT.
As mentioned by other reviewers here it is very time consuming and requires a lot of your country's resources to build advanced infrastructure and trade routes. Building Armies is NOT fast at all, takes a lot of time and a lot of resources especially since you are also using those resources to build your trade and advanced infrastructure. It can take at least 2-3 years to field a viable invasion force especially since you can only build Land units in capitols. There are pros and cons to this, but the endstate is you are much more careful on where, when and with who you fight. The annihilation of a big army can set you back and squash your military ambitions.
Peaceful Annexation in it's current state is pretty much FUBAR. The computer is much more apt to peacefully annex another country and I seriously have no idea how they do this so quickly. For example, I eventually peacefully annexed Portugal playing as England but in order to do this it took a ton of resources building consulates, newspaper offices, etc. I even tried Improved Relations Diplomacy option and threw 5,000 gold at them, they rejected it and my relations with them went down! This part of the game needs to be patched to decrease the ease of which the computer can peacefully annex another country and alter the bonuses and penalties of dealing with other countries.
What also needs to be fixed is the zerg of other powers offering you their surplus of government cheese for gold AND when you reject them your relations decrease. So if you are working on peacefully annexing a country you basically HAVE to take whatever they are offering unless you want to lose relation points. Of course, there is a way around this and that's to say screw diplomacy and just build your infrastructure and trade enough to build some armies and start to conquest.
If a patch is released that fixes range on Artillery, nerfs Militia and the Relations to other countries this game will be a 4-5 star game imo. As it stands now, it's a decent game to pick up if you like the Turn-Based Strategy Game with a RTS spin on it (Like Total War). On the Campaign game it takes awhile for the game to get going, but once you do it's fairly enjoyable. I'm still playing it as i love this type of gaming genre despite it's faults. Hoping for a patch soon.
4 of 8 customers found the following review helpful:
 Big disappointment!, 2005-06-05
This could have been such a beautiful game but for some reason the developers decided to hamper it to the point of being nothing more than an exercise in frustration. The battles are really fun, and the graphics are great, but you must play for three hours of "next turn" just to build up enough resources to have a minor skirmish which lasts 5 minutes and then... you start all over again! Also, for some reason which totally escapes me, they decided to place certain restrictions on each empire. I started out as England but never had enough population to build armies. Then, I tried Russia - plenty of people but never enough food. The games kept disbanding my armies due to the "severe food shortage". The number of troops in a unit is arbitrarily set to 60 max - the number of units in a command by a captain or general is arbitrarily set to a small number - the number of armies you can have in a province is arbitrarily set to 3 max. Everywhere you look in this game you find restrictions which rob it of its potential for greatness and of your chance to have some fun - isn't having fun what these games are for?
I will never understand why the developers took such a beautiful gaming engine and decided to force the game's progress to such a snail's pace. You spend most of your time clicking through the months (one month is a turn) desparately trying to build armies to have a little fun - but it never comes!
This game could have been great, but some ridiculous decisions at project management level have killed it. They should have pre-released it to a bunch of 14 year old gamers and LISTENED to their advice. Then we might have had something approaching a fun experience. As it is, you have nothing but frustration and limitation everywhere you turn with Imperial Glory.
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