Rowan Software has a long history of producing high-quality flight simulations, including Dawn Patrol, Flying Corps, and GameSpot's 1999 Flight Simulation of the Year, MiG Alley. Shortly before Battle of Britain was released, Empire Interactive bought Rowan and announced that its focus would shift to video game consoles--which means that Battle of Britain is something of a farewell to Rowan's fans. If this indeed turns out to be the case, hard-core flight-simulation enthusiasts will long remember Rowan for its final PC game, which delivers almost everything a fan of the genre could ask for: immersion, attention to detail, visual appeal, and--above all--truly realistic and intense flight combat. However, Battle of Britain may require a significant time investment in getting the game to even work properly, and it's almost completely inaccessible to novice pilots.

The flight combat in Battle of Britain is very intense

Battle of Britain is probably the most comprehensive treatment of the epic air campaign ever done on the computer. To achieve this, Rowan has split up the sim so that it's actually two games: one, a strategic layer in which you manage the entire air effort of either the Royal Air Force or the Luftwaffe, and two, the traditional in-the-cockpit depiction of aerial combat. Both games are superbly done and furthermore well integrated so that switching from one to the other (joining in a particularly interesting battle, for example) is quick and easy. It's the ultimate combination of a strategy game and a hard-core simulation.

The game features five flyable aircraft, which cover the major fighter combatants involved in the battle: the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane for the British, and the Messerschmidt Me-109 and Me-110 on the German side. The fifth aircraft is the Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber, which makes for an interesting (if often short-lived) ride. Furthermore, the three German medium bombers that flew in the battle (the Do-17, He-111, and Ju-88) all have gunner positions that you can man (similar to the gunner positions available in the recent B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th), although you can't fly them as the pilot.

The aircraft models aren't spectacular, but they do look quite good, as does the terrain from high altitude. Down low, the terrain does get somewhat uglier, though this is fairly common to the genre. The cloud effects are outstanding, but unfortunately they tend to be a real burden on the processor, and they'll drag down the performance of low-end and midrange computers. The cockpit graphics are very crisp, uncluttered, and easy to read, and you can manipulate the internal switches and toggles with the mouse when you set "engine management" to manual mode. In this mode, you even have to go through a full flight check to get your engines started.

The cockpit graphics are crisp and uncluttered

The aircraft that flew in the actual Battle of Britain were quite challenging to fly in real life, and that challenge has been re-created in the flight models used in the game. The game engine is a modified version of the one used in MiG Alley. Whereas the high speeds possible in jet aircraft made hard maneuvering dangerous in that game, the planes in Battle of Britain are just finicky enough (especially the Me-109) to make them challenging to fly without being frustrating. However, one aspect that is frustrating is the game's attempt at modeling the pilot's head-bobbing when you make abrupt maneuvers, which is certainly a factor in real life but is simply annoying on the computer. There's apparently no option to disable this effect.

The presentation is essentially window dressing for the game's main strength, which is its simulation of dogfighting. Simply put, Battle of Britain offers the best World War II dogfighting experience available in any computer flight simulation. One reason for this is that the air battles can become absolutely enormous, since hundreds of aircraft can fill the sky. The scope of the game is much larger than that of any previous flight sim, and when you're in a dogfight with planes zooming by and small specks filling your view in the distance, this will really hit home. In these huge air battles, even the most experienced pilots will find themselves thankful for the aircraft directional icons and the attitude indicator, which in some less demanding sims might be considered cheats. The large-scale dogfights in Battle of Britain push air combat on the computer to the limit.