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From:Eidos , Eidos Interactive ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#5532 |
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9 of 10 customers found the following review helpful:
 Very attractive - but not without flaws, 2005-06-05
I had tracked this game for a very long time, basically since it was first announced and I was pleasantly surprised to find it in my local gaming store. I immediately handed over the $40 hoping it was worth that amount. After about a week of gaming I can safely review this after playing all the aspects.
Imperial Glory is really made up of three parts, which are each extensively covered in helpful tutorials. A lot of games seem to lack a helpful tutorial but luckily the designers for Imperial Glory were kind enough to add in THREE tutorials to help get you started.
--- The first part of the game is the land battle maps. The 3-D graphics are simply superb and the troops are very attractive as they march, charge and especially when firing volleys. The land battle controls are easy to use and quite simple. The interface makes sense and there is little to no clutter. My favorite part of the game is where you can actually create your own battles between any of the five playable empires (France, Russia, Austria, Prussia and Great Britain) in any of the provinces and you just duke it out with whomever your opponent is until you win. These are mainly fun but I have a few problems with the land battle aspect of them game.
- The "total victory" option means your enemy always fights to the death. That may be "glorious" in a sense, but it's pretty unrealistic and causes you many casualties. The enemy never seems to retreat and will always fight to the last man.
- The artillery range is pretty ridiculous. There is hardly a point to having artillery because the range is so small. You seem to be less than three hundred yards away when your cannons and howitzers finally come into range and the enemy always targets those expensive weapons first. The high ground for the artillery is hardly an issue because despite whatever altitude you're at, the range is still pitifully small.
- The maps are always the same in the provinces. And I mean always. It is always winter in some places, always summer in others. I personally don't have a big problem with this, but some may be peeved when they fight in July in Poland and see snow.
Despite these setbacks, the land battles are by far the most fun and attractive part of Imperial Glory.
--- The second aspect of Imperial Glory are the naval battles. They are pretty slow moving and dull in my opinion. Unlike the land battles where the map was different for all provinces, the sea battles - like in real life - look exactly the same. The naval battles are fun due to the amount of firepower you have and the potential amount of damage you can deliver. Once again, the controls are VERY easy to use and VERY understandable. You fire port or starboard broadsides and between which broadside, there is an appropriate time to reload. You can even board the enemy ship and capture it! If you are a fan of naval warfare of the Napoleonic era, you will not be dissapointed in the gameplay here.
There is one thing that gives me a hard time in the naval section. There is a certain area in which you are allowed to fight. If you leave the area then you lose the battle. The concept is crazy...imagine if it was like that at Trafalgar: if you leave this red box, then your ship is sunk and loses the battle! Sometimes it is hard to turn the ship so you sail right out of the boundaries and automatically lose.
--- And finally the third aspect of the game: the campaign map. This is the part easily compared to Rome: Total War, the part that has caused me the most stress, anger and joy in my experience with this game. The layout is much the same as Rome: Total War although besides that the two games have nothing in common. I dislike the comments that compared a Napoleonic game to a game on Ancient Rome, two very different time periods that deserve two different layouts.
In the campaign map, you must concentrate on your resources - Gold, Raw Materials, Population and Food. These are what create your buildings and units and without them, you lose.
Each resource can be gathered in different ways and I was thanful to find that there is no micromanaging resources, like in RTS-style games. Each province has a set amount of resources that it gives your 'national treasury' but that is barely enough. You need to build buildings and forge trade routes in order to increase your raw materials/food and gold respectively. Buildings and units are very costly and by losing a battle, your economy can be severely hurt due to the amount of money and resources it takes to create these armies.
Diplomacy has a number of options that range from declaring war to offering marriage. One option is the peaceful annexation and the enemy seems to take full advantage of that. In one game, Austria had peacefully annexed the Ottomans while Britain managed to annex all of the Iberian peninsula. Each country has a number of "sympathy points" which range from 0 (when you are at war) to 100 (and only then can you peacefully annex them).
Armies are created from barracks and all armies out of their barracks intake food. It is key to have enough food to feed your armies. Each army is commanded by either a Captain, Colonel, General or Marshal and can move one province at a turn. There are hardly enough men in an army to be considered real - a maximum of 60 per infantry unit and 36 per cavalry means a maximum of maybe 300 men per army. Quite a contrast compared to the half million involved in the Battle of Leipzig!
A series of complicated building rules and research punctuate the campaign map games. Each turn is one month and the game ranges from 1789-1830, which gives you plenty of turns. Each unit, building and research take turns to complete which provides for a slow pace. Indeed, I found myself watching the TV between turns due to the slowness of the changing of the turns, but your computers may be a little more updated than my four year old Pentium 4.
The campaign map may be the least user-friendly area of the game, but it could hardly be called confusing at all. The left-click/drag way to move armies easily puzzled me at first. However it only gets easier as you get on.
In conclusion, Imperial Glory is a very fun game despite some flaws it has. I am impatient and I find the long load times to be a pain in the ass (when loading a saved game it took near 4 minutes) but the wait is really worth it when you see the game. Worth $40? Nah, but most games aren't worth their opening prices. Imperial Glory is fun, pretty and addictive and I suggest it to all people who are interested in the Napoleonic era.
Pros:
-Beautiful graphics: the troops, ships, and landscapes blew me away
-Easy to use interface provides an understandable gaming experience
-Friendly tutorials help introduce the game to you easily
-In depth research, building and diplomatic systems
Cons:
-Land battles have some fishy stuff going on (i.e. artillery range is too short)
-Ridiculously slow loading times
-Naval battles have a boundary
-AI seems to be able to peacefully annex much better than the human player
4 of 8 customers found the following review helpful:
 Wonderful Tactical Strategy., 2005-06-02
Move over Rome Total War! Imperial Glory is a very good title. It really shines during the turn-based strategy game mode with a GORGEOUS map to play on, animated pieces, and deep strategy. It even has economic and diplomatic models that are very lifelike.
The tactical side of the game is good but flawed somewhat. Even so, I found it MUCH more enjoyable than Rome Total War. The battles are fast moving, exciting, and a real treat to watch.
The graphics and sound are superb.
3 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
I think this is an AWSOME game, 2005-06-01
I've read the reviews below and I disagree. I think Imperial Glory is a great balance of Strategy, Tactical and Naval Combat of the 18th and 19th Century and the graphics are great. It did not work well on one of my older machines. I am running a P4 3.2ghz with a Radeon card and it runs great. Did not look or run well on a P4 1.8mghz and an older nVidea.
I have been playing it for hours. It is not an easy game to learn and you do have to read the manual and do the tutorials but I love it!!!
3 of 12 customers found the following review helpful:
 JUST TERRIBLE, 2005-06-01
THE GAME IS GOD AWFUL. THE ARMIES ARE NOT AS BIG AS THE SEEM TO BE, AND WHEN THE UNITS RUN THEY ARE STUCK TOGETHER AND LOOK LIKE CRAP. THE GRPAHICS ARE BAD AND THEY PLAYING MODE IS BAD AND YOU WONT LIKE IT. THE LEVELS AREN'T INTERESTING AND IT TAKES TO LONG TO START THE BATTLE. THE AI IS TERRIBLE. SOMETIMES IF YOU TOLD THE TROOPS TO WALK STRAIGHT THEY WOULD WALK BACKWORDS. THINK TWICE BEFORE BUYING
9 of 11 customers found the following review helpful:
A Terrible Game, 2005-05-30
I rarely get excited about video games, but being in love with history, its games like these that I highly anticipate. I was thrilled when I heard about Imperial Glory, I downloaded the demo and absolutely loved it. However, I was completely disappointed when I picked up this game.
I played for an entire night and I couldn't get into one battle. I played as Great Britain and was disappointed to find out your navy is just a couple of sloops, and you don't even see a ship of the line until late into the game, if you can even afford one considering your always short on resources.
The biggest problem with the game is its whole basis. While I'm out there building a Navy and an incredible Army the AI is annexing countries peacefully. The game's basis is something called "peaceful annexation" where you pretty much pay tons and tons of money to weaker nations so that they peacefully join your empire.
When you finally do get into a battle you don't even need infantry, it always comes down to a bum rush of militia (who don't even have muskets) and Cavalry. I could rarely get my infantry into a decent formation before I was bogged down by the enemy militia. Artillery is a joke, it lacks the range to be of any real use. So I found myself building all Cavalry armies. I don't know about anyone else but to me that is just absurd.
What's more absurd is naval combat. First of all, you have to pretty much build your fleet from scratch, so don't think that your going to buy this game, play as the British and just rule the waves. Second, when you do put your ghetto fleet together and manage to catch an enemy at sea, controlling your ships becomes the real battle. The only real naval thing you can do is kind of put your ships into line ahead, but that's about it and it takes awhile to do this. Then you have to worry about your ships falling of the map. If one of your ships gets to the edge of the map, that's it, its finished, it will leave the engagement. Then repairing your ships after an engagement is a pain.
I bought this game because of my love of history, and I wasn't expecting something with super scripted historical events or any historical events for that matter, I was expecting a game that simulated the situation that faced Europe during the Napoleonic wars. I didn't find that at all. The AI doesn't act like any European country of the time. I don't seem to remember France peacefully annexing European nations, and I don't remember the Grand Armee being composed of 90% militia armed with clubs and swords.
All the previews I read said this game was going to be competition for Rome: Total War, and then I heard the developers trying to distance Imperial Glory from that image. Well this game is no where like Rome. It's not a "bad imitation" of the Total War series, it's just uniquely bad. If you really want this game buy it, but you'll probably regret it. I wish I would have waited until this game came out in a jewel pack or bundled up with a bunch of other failures.
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