Naked_Lunch
Erudite
Yep, I finally got it and gosh darn is it fun. If you liked the demo, like any sane strategy gamer would, then you'd like the full game. It's basically more of the same but in the good way.
The interface is almost deceptively simple. Attacking and moving are done by simple drag and drop, and building forts and forced marches are as easy as clicking one button on the sleek, minimalized interface. Of course, it's not simple as in dumbed-down but as in "Gets rid of unnecessary fluff and presents things in an easy-to-use fashion with all the depth retained."
But definitely, the best thing about it is how easy it is to get into and just how fun it is. Like, right now, I just polished off a 4-turn Carolina scenario playing as America vs. those nasty Brits. It was just back and forth, Britain would take a town this turn and then I'd be sieging it for two turns while going around the board snapping up towns to add to my final victory point count. Despite being limited by the small area and turn count, there was still a lot of stuff going on and it kept me engaged well after the limit was up (BoA thankfully lets you keep on plaing even after you've failed or completed an objective).
And the thing is, it's so friggin' easy to do all this. Not to say the game itself is a pushover, but actually taking over towns and attacking and setting up unit formations: It's so simple. This is the quintessential beginner's wargame but not because it's easy and dumbed down to the point where it's just checkers with hexes: The game still retains it's complexity but just kinda hides it under a veneer of accessibility. If you've played the demo, then you know what I mean.
Not everything is gold and chocolate, sadly. The game is a serious friggen resource hog. It uses a system in which the map is just one huge fucking bitmap and it preloads some of it when it loads but my oh my does it chug. For the first couple of minutes of the game you don't actually do anything except zoom in and out and move the map around to load in the graphics so the game doesn't run at a single digit FPS. Even in the scenario I mentioned, the Carolina battle which takes place inside a single state, the game still has to load the entire map instead of that small section. Why? I have no idea, but it just CHEWS up resources like crazy. The unused portions are blacked out and have considerably less detail, yet still, it's crazy. I'm almost afraid to try the giant campaign out of fear that my computer will just burst into flames.
That sounds really bad, but once you've loaded it all into your cache it doesn't matter: The game is seriously that fun and enjoyable to play. I'll go more in-depth with it later, 'cause I'm off to play it some more, heh.
The interface is almost deceptively simple. Attacking and moving are done by simple drag and drop, and building forts and forced marches are as easy as clicking one button on the sleek, minimalized interface. Of course, it's not simple as in dumbed-down but as in "Gets rid of unnecessary fluff and presents things in an easy-to-use fashion with all the depth retained."
But definitely, the best thing about it is how easy it is to get into and just how fun it is. Like, right now, I just polished off a 4-turn Carolina scenario playing as America vs. those nasty Brits. It was just back and forth, Britain would take a town this turn and then I'd be sieging it for two turns while going around the board snapping up towns to add to my final victory point count. Despite being limited by the small area and turn count, there was still a lot of stuff going on and it kept me engaged well after the limit was up (BoA thankfully lets you keep on plaing even after you've failed or completed an objective).
And the thing is, it's so friggin' easy to do all this. Not to say the game itself is a pushover, but actually taking over towns and attacking and setting up unit formations: It's so simple. This is the quintessential beginner's wargame but not because it's easy and dumbed down to the point where it's just checkers with hexes: The game still retains it's complexity but just kinda hides it under a veneer of accessibility. If you've played the demo, then you know what I mean.
Not everything is gold and chocolate, sadly. The game is a serious friggen resource hog. It uses a system in which the map is just one huge fucking bitmap and it preloads some of it when it loads but my oh my does it chug. For the first couple of minutes of the game you don't actually do anything except zoom in and out and move the map around to load in the graphics so the game doesn't run at a single digit FPS. Even in the scenario I mentioned, the Carolina battle which takes place inside a single state, the game still has to load the entire map instead of that small section. Why? I have no idea, but it just CHEWS up resources like crazy. The unused portions are blacked out and have considerably less detail, yet still, it's crazy. I'm almost afraid to try the giant campaign out of fear that my computer will just burst into flames.
That sounds really bad, but once you've loaded it all into your cache it doesn't matter: The game is seriously that fun and enjoyable to play. I'll go more in-depth with it later, 'cause I'm off to play it some more, heh.
