Imperial Glory Full Review
User Rating: 8 | Imperial Glory PC
Imperial glory is a game in which tactics really is needed. Unlike other strategy games in which you must gather food and make soldiers and just send them to battle, this game requires skill to be able to master. You start off looking at the map of Europe and you have the choice of 5 different countries; Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria. And then you must try to conquer the map. The game is set in the 17 and 1800’s. You go through 3 eras in the game unlocking new things as you go. Just as in reality you rely on your ally’s and must try to use them to conquer the field. The army do require resources but can usually be easily made. They consist of men armed with swords, clubs, muskets, hussars etc. Each time you send an army into enemy territory a battle starts in which you can see your army on the terrain. Then you must tactically position them for the attack. The gameplay somewhat reminds me of Rome: Total War but better. The only real problem with the game is the loading time. If your RAM is 256mb it takes around 2 mins to load each battle. However if you RAM is 512mb it might take 1 minute (approx) for each battle. And another good attribute is the length of time to learn the game. And this can be done in minutes even without a tutorial. The graphical attributes of the game are actually quite high considering each battle can have up to 1800 troops max. And each time one group of your army attacks another they all go together in a big huddle and kill each other. It does actually look really good. You can send muskets into the houses (if there are any in the particular terrain) to defend from. The five main countries that you can choose at the beginning are the only ones with a palace in the capital city. The palaces however were a bit disappointing graphical wise. They were too blocky and chunky. But this was not the case with Great Britain because they have a castle and moat. If you are the defender of the palace/castle it’s not too difficult, but if your the attacker your in for a hell of a time. Once you actually get one of the around 20 countries you are likely to be enemies with their old friends. So say you attacked Spain and they were friends with Portugal you would also be at war with Portugal and maybe the friend of Portugal and their friends. So you have to be careful. And you also have to be careful not to let any of the five main countries grow too much or you’ll be in for it later!
The audio is of high quality and it does suit the game quite well. In battles if you far away from an army you hear nothing but as you get closer you can hear them marching and shouting. But the only thing was that in my opinion some of the cannons made the same sound as the muskets did when fired but that was only minor.
The time it takes to complete the game is not easily defined, because one mistake could mean another hour of gameplay. But it took me no longer than 3 days of hardcore gaming. It really was tough to get every country. But by the time there were only 3 countries left I bought some land from them and then attacked them from the land because I was so rich. But if you made little mistakes like me and you saved every now and again you could finish it in 10 hours. However if you’re a bit slow and an average gamer probably 15-20 hours should do the trick.
Verdict:
This game is a game for any one who liked Rome: Total War or something like it. And is something to try for someone looking for a game to spend time on.
Gameplay: 9/10
Loading time: 5/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Audio: 7/10
Gaming time: 9/10
Learning use of game: 9.5/10
Overall: 8/10
These are the minimum system requirements of the game:
Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/2000/XP
Pentium 3 1.0 GHz or equivalent
256 MB RAM Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP
Video card: 64MB Geforce 4 or higher.
A DirectX® 9.0 –compatible sound card. DirectX® 9.0 or higher
A windows compatible mouse, Keyboard and CD-ROM drive.
At least 2560 MB free memory on hard disk.
8/10
Final Verdict
