I had never cared for the Empire games but for some reason the newest one: Empire Total War has grabbed my attention. A week after I knew of it’s existence (2 weeks ago) I decided to try the demo. The demo installed within in an hour or two and I was ready to play, it didn’t work. 2 restarts, 1 re-install and 8 tries later , I eventually got to play the game.
My enthusiasm had decreased somewhat due to all the hassle of getting it to work. Turns out that all I had to do was wait. For some reason it takes 10-20 minutes for each new screen to load.
After 30 minutes of getting into the tutorial I finally got to experience the game. Due to a fault of my own my screen shots didn’t save and new ones might not relate to my content so, my apologies.
My monitor lit up with a beautiful grass field with a forest surrounding a small village of 3 houses and some sort of mansion. I am taught the ways of commanding my army from a nice man in the top left of the screen and through the tutorial you get to bombard the enemy with cannon fire, rush in with your line infantry as a second squad of line infantry fire their muskets but 30 feet away. The gameplay is very nice and could probably get really intense if there were a lot of troops of varying class.
Empire Total War completed taught the 17th century RTS gamer within me and it’s no wonder that I enjoyed the demo.
The controls are simple enough and typical of an RTS on PC, as is the HUD and this makes getting into the swing of things quite easy. Games like Empire have always been good because they combine history with the ability to slaughter your enemies. The RTS elements also allows players to think about their next move and the range of classes allows for each player to make radically different decisions in order to win the battles. Their are many levels of sight in this game, you can control where the camera is positioned, it’s height from the ground and it’s rotation. This means that you can plan your battles from afar or you can go into the battle like one of the infantry and see some of the quality battles that come out of the well animated battles.
The land based fighting was very enjoyable but the Sea Warfare was far more enjoyable. In the tutorial you play as one ship from the British fleet and you learn the ways of controlling the ship. The ship feature is Total War’s selling point as it is much more immersive than other sea based fighting games that I’ve played and allows the same level of control as the land based battles. You can choose your ammunition, the speed at which your boat goes and you can even control which side of the ship’s cannons to fire.
My first battle with an enemy on the ocean was short lived. Two rounds of cannon balls and two minutes later, I had devastated the enemy Sloop. The second sloop was a bit more of a challenge, but that was purely because it took huge arcs around my ship making the battle drawn out and slightly more intense. Neither of the Sloops did that much damage to my vessel but I still managed to lose 3 men. They will never be forgotten.
One feature that I haven’t really seen is the ability to board the enemy vessel after you deliver a devastating blow to the ship. Once you have boarded the ship it then falls under your control and can be used against the rest of the enemy.
The different types on ammunition have different effects. The standard cannon ball breaks guns and hulls, where the chain balls rip holes in the sails. The last type of ammunition is the pea shot, which is a shrapnel style cannon ball that kills the enemy vessel’s crew. It’s little details like this that make the Sea Warfare enjoyable and quite intense.
I never had a chance to play the preset battles as it would have taken 20 minutes to load the battle and the preset battles in war games are never as enjoyable for me. I find that you are not as attached to your army in preset battles and I tend to not care about the welfare of my army. But if I have built my army from the ground up and have shared many battles with them, the level seems that little bit more realistic and enjoyable. I understand that the preset battles are good because they test the player in their skills rather than their ability to conserve men between levels.
Empire Total War is a fun, 17th Century RTS with the ability to control a fleet of ships accurately and moderately realistically. Empire games have always been big because they bring together the past and the ability to create carnage and watch people slaughter each other. Empire Total War takes these two sides into account and creates a really good balance. Well, that’s what it seems like from the Demo.
If you are a Pre-19th century history nut or a teenager who just wants to see mindless slaughter, I would recommend this game to you. For this I give Empire Total War Demo One Thumbs up. It would have been higher if my PC didn’t take 20 minutes to travel from the menu to the battle.
Calum “Needs More Screenshots” Gilchrist – Calum@homelinen.org
P.S. I took a bunch of screenshots for this review but for some reason they didn’t save to my computer. I promise there will be more screenshots next review.
