| Total score |  |
| Game play |  |
| Nuts & bolts |  |
| Bells & whistles | N/A |
Once again I'm left comparing a game from Ageod to their first English language masterpiece, Birth of America, and once again I find the new game coming up short. So here I go again, praising with faint damns.
Game play
The Napoleon's Campaigns' engine is a slightly improved version of the original one in Birth of America, without any of the strategic elements of American Civil War, and game play is consequently similar to the earlier game. If you've played either of the first two games though you'll know what to expect, and I refer you to other descriptions or your memory for the details.
I say play is similar, but it's not quite the same. Because the unit density is now significantly higher than the first game, and the map considerably bigger, the game doesn't quite cope with things as well as it should. For example, sometimes whole armies disappear in combat , but there's not even a note of this happening in the log. If you don't watch what can be widely separated combats closely moments of "Hey, where'd my army go!?" aren't uncommon.
There are some minor improvements to the engine, but they all seem pretty minor indeed. There are a few more options about how aggressively a unit will defend or attack, and the underlying combat model has supposedly also been changed to include the possibility of squares being formed, the guard being committed and so on, all out of a player's control. If there are any icons to indicate that any of this new stuff has happened I haven't noticed them, so its impact is small.
There are a bevy of fourteen scenarios that come with the game, with at least one more planned for an upcoming patch. There are three tutorial scenarios that spell out a few of the game's key features, though probably without adding anything all that new for anyone who's played Ageod's last two games; and there are a few scenarios that are likely to be unwinnable from the French side, like Waterloo, Russia & Spain; but there are also some meaty open slather scenarios too: Austerlitz, Trafalgar, Jena, Eylau, and the War of German Liberation are all here, and all make for good gaming against a pretty cunning AI, via PBEM or (though I haven't tried it) TCP/IP.
The early campaigns in Italy & Egypt are missing, but that may be corrected in a patch or sequel. Five regular scenarios with the option of a few more to visit occasionally is probably plenty for me in a game, but your mileage may vary.
All up I just couldn't award this game a second star for game play though. American Civil War sometimes made a hash of the strategic element of the war, but that strategic aspect was a major addition to the game engine. Here there are no major additions, just the same little engine left struggling with a bigger load.
Nuts & bolts
The game continues to be solid, and runs just fine on my hardware, and customer support continues to be great. I'm up to patch version 'd' as I type, all welcome fixes. There were originally some teething problems with buying the game that probably could have been avoided (links that wouldn't work, emails without serial numbers in them & so on), but the problems were fixed and an apology made promptly & politely. Other publishers can still learn a lot from Ageod's behavior.
The game is just not as pretty as its ancestors. The map is an uncomfortably bright green colour now instead of the previous muted period-like browns, and some of the off map areas are in weird locations, Indonesia is to the West of Africa for example; general & unit portraits seem just that little bit more amateurish; and finally units now stand on pins. That's right: pins. I think it's meant to make a congested gaggle of Napoleonic units easier to tell apart, but it continually gives me the mistaken impression that all of the units are one area further North than they actually are. The graphics can be modded, but expect to have to do that yourself if any of this bothers you.
Please bear in mind that your tastes may be different to mine, so check out some screenshots or the demo (yes, there's a demo!) before deciding. Some people like the new look, me I'm probably just part of another ramshackle reactionary coalition on this issue.
The game still looks better than a lot of its rivals, so denying it a second star on the tenuous grounds of my aesthetic judgement seems churlish. Two stars for Nuts & Bolts.
In summary
All up a good, but not great game on some of Napoleon's campaigns. One that'll probably be on my hard drive for a while despite its shortcomings, because it has its moments, and because Ageod are likely to continue to tinker with & improve it.
