User Reviews (1 - 11 of 34)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Think First

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 21
Date: January 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I first looked on Amazon and thought American Conquest was a cool game, I even found a discount for the gold edition. It looked like a good game right? Wrong! I threw some money right down the drain!

Pros
The game has an awosome campain.
You get a great variety of civs.( Though they basicly just look diffrent.)
You get a ton of units.
The music wasn't terribly annoying

Cons
The game laggs way, way too much. (At the time I had more than half my memorey, which is 37 gigs.)

The game was way too realisic.(As in if you run low on recorces all your millatry units would turn on you, or out of fifty freacking guys only one acually hits the guy and it takes like three minutes just to reload.)

When one building or ship is hit it keeps on taking dammage even when your villagers repair it.

The second you build a guy recorces start depleting( There for you need like 150 guys just to be working on one recorce to stop it from going down at break neck speed

AND FINALLY THE THING THAT IS NOT JUST STUPID BUT IS MY FINAL PLEA NOT TO BUY THIS GAME IS THAT IT DESTROYS YOUR COMPUTER!!!!!
My dad and I are complete computer tecno wizards and it took both of us a month to un-do every all the damage American Conquest did to me.

Well...umm....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 11
Date: October 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First of all let me just say that if you liked cossacks you'll like this game to.
Personally, I hate 'build-fest' games where the number of units you build is much more important than strategy or tactics.
I much prefer Medieval Total War to this game.
Multiplayer suffers from horrible lag, I don't know what the deal is with that.
Indian units have rediculously low morale: I am affended by this because the Indians were defending their homeland, and they were brave warriors. They would not run in fear. But what can you expect? The developers was made by a german company. Issues surrounding customer support for english speakers abound, as they do not make patches for english versions of the game.

unreasonably realistic

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: July 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

the game is too realistic to produce any fun. there are lot of things which the computer knowns and the players don't. unfortunatly the computer gets a head start at things. the realism takes the fun things out of it. unreasonable things also go wrong in this game. characters don't follow what u tell them to do, it should be that way!

Not much an improvement over Cossacks.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 21 / 25
Date: April 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

GSC's "American Conquest's" greatest strength is it's unique historical setting- not many games allow a player to refight the French and Indian War! I basically bought this game strictly because I love that period of history. However, I was a little sceptical about how AC would play because I really didn't care for GSC's first RTS game, "Cossacks," which I thought had terrific potential but it ended up being just a pretty blase "Age of Empires" clone. I was hoping that AC would get the benefit for all the improvements that GSC had developed for "Cossacks" engine plus a good number of new features.

Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be true. AC pretty much plays the alot like "Cossacks"- standard RTS fare. Like "Cossacks," AC has some serious gameplay issues. The Native American tribes are extremely weak. Animals attack only your units. (Buffalo, deer, and bears literally charging towards hundreds of heavily armed men is one of the more bizarre elements of the game.) Canoes can sink a frigate? There are some improvements, like being able to garrison buildings, but overall any "Cossacks" player will be able to jump into this one without a problem.

However, if you're a "Cossacks" fan then you're probably going to like AC. It's more polished than "Cossacks." The single player scenarios are better designed. And the graphics for your soldiers are quite nice: the first few times you watch a 180 redcoats let loose a volley is pretty cool. Also the animated deaths are better done than they were in "Cossacks."

This is pretty much a no frills game. The scenarios are introduced with lengthy (and not particularly accurate) historical information. If you leave the dull, repetitive music on you will be able to hear a bored voice actor narrate the historical intro. The campaigns are linked just by their subject material, but there is no relation between scenarios. Finally, there is NO scenario editor! There's a map editor, but it's useless without a scenario editor. So that means you're stuck with some Russian guy's idea of what the French and Indian War was about. There is an addon coming to give the player more nations (you can recreate Germany's role in the conquest of America with it???) and scenarios, but I've had enough of AC. No mas!!

Another Ordinary RTS!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 29
Date: April 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

American Conquest is just another ordinary RTS title, adding to the
several other RTS games available in the PC gaming library.
What makes this game distinct from the others is that its based in
North America..well thats good because everyone is freaked out by playing
in Medieval Europe.

The Graphics are well done, you can actually see smoke coming out of rifles
and cannon's blasting away concrete.However there is no Zoom Option
available so youre stuck with the default view. Its not bad though,
however if you have a slow computer then the peroformance will be
greatly affected. Soldiers walk quite fast as if theyre each wearing
a pair of roller blades. It seemed to give me an unrealistic effect.
Soldiers also walk through trees(that finally puts an end to realism!)

Gameplay is impressive. In a total there are 8 campaingns spanning 42
missions which will keep you entertained for quite a while. Even while
playing on normal the game seemed to be awfully difficult. For a greater
challenge you have "Hard,Very Hard and Impossible".

Sound is poor. Cheap music in the background really irritates,luckily
it can be turned off. Sounds during gameplay are quite good, like marching,
gun shots etc.

Overall, try to skip this one. Its just not worth the price tag. Nor
the effort and Time youll spend playing it.Feast your eyes on something
else!

Misses The Mark

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: March 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Sure, the game looks great, but I wish a little more time had been spent on playability. No great improvement from Cossacks.

First off, there are too many vexing common sense issues. Native American canoes easily sink top-of-the-line Frigates. So do small boats. Neither can be sunk by ramming as with the Cossacks series. If you've played Cossacks, you'll also notice that all aspects of this game are vastly (and annoyingly) slower. Canons move and fire so slowly that you're likely to invade and conquer an entire country before you see them. Developers seem to have spent an extraordinary amount of time on the nuances of the gun crews- setting up, moving the gun, loading, moving the gun, moving the ammo & firing- all at the pace of a Sunday drive, even when under fire. You begin to wonder if they forgot that people actually play this thing rather than just look at it. Ships move and fire just as slowly and are much more slow to build than Cossacks. Bugs are abound. Cannons and ships bunch up and get stuck constantly while on the move. Worst of you'll find that some targets, inexplicably, can not be fired on by ships, essentially making them invincible. Watching one of these "invincible" boats sink your entire fleet one shot at a time is maddening. Especially when ships take so long to build.

Besides the bugs, you'll notice that almost everything is more expensive and more restrictive than in Cossacks. Large populations and multiple buildings are much more restrictively expensive to build. Also, I've played the American side and noticed that there is no fishing fleet or trading center available- ouch!

Many problems with Cossacks play were transferred into American Conquest. Formations still fire as one, sometimes killing a peasant with 100+ shots while not being able to reload in time to address the 100 pikemen that are advancing directly behind him. Although it has improved slightly, fratricide is still a big issue- watch in horror as one of your canon wipe out half your army. A.I. still refuses to assemble large enemy armies in formation (the strength of the game).

Other gripes: Native American arrows outshoot rifles by large distances, dragoons are too weak, American units lack imagination and accuracy, 17th century units are worthless. Naval units have been reduced (from Cossacks) and boring back-end nation building still makes up the bulk of game play. Mortars are gone and canon fire has little effect on many buildings, drastically changing the power of assembling an artillery barrage on an enemy city like as in Cossacks.

Bottom line: A lot of time wasted on graphics that get old after your first play and disrupt the speed of the game. The visuals are a step ahead of Cossacks, but the play is two steps behind. The game as (a series) is still the only game in town in you're into next gen military strategy gaming. I still play, but with a lot of frustration. Buy this game if you're into military strategy gaming, and grind your teeth like the rest of us. Just wish it was better.

Accurate but Not Excellent...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 21
Date: September 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I just graduated from the University of Illinois with a Major in American history, my speacialty being the Revolutionary War. I got this game a few weeks ago because I thought it sounded interesting. The game is very accurate to history with a few exceptions such as the fact that, the soldiers can ONLY fight, they would really have been doing plenty of other things such as building shelters and such. Certain obstacles are also not included, like the fact that the soldiers were constantly coming down with dysentry and other illnesses. The sounds are realistic, but the music is horrible. The graphics are OK, but you are looking into the scenes from a far away view and the movements can become sticky. One thing that annoys me is the fact that the soldiers can walk throught trees! The soldiers can turn and flee, including your own, which is a realistic plus and morale is included, which makes the game harder. Its an interesting play and pretty fun, but there is definetely a better one out there. And if you're really interested in the Revolutionary war, university classes and novels are a much better way to learn and have a good time!

Where's Waldo?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: April 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This could have been a great game, but there is only one problem with it: There are too many things going on at once! You cannot select one entire group at a time, only sections of a group, and since you usually have over 80 men on the battlefield at a time, things can get difficult to see, and therefore unit management becomes tedious. That's all I really have to say about this game. The engine is pretty, it had great promisses, but this one issue ruins the entire game.

Two days and tired of it

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Not much else I can add to these other reviews. But yes, you can have thousands of troops in battle at once. But no one mentions what a tiring process it takes to create that many troops. I spent 3 straight hours of building, upgrading & turning my peasants into troops. In all, I had about 2,000 troops in those 3 hours. Compared to the 5,000 my enemies had while set on easy.

If you got a lot of time on your hands to build mills for food, mines, dwellings to produce peasants, forts to send your peasants to so you can turn them into troops, not to mention all the upgrades on everything blah blah.. then by all means get this.

Often times they are so many things going on it becomes a task to keep up with it all. This is definitely a game for someone with a lot of free time. I had fun with it for two days, but it got old quick.

Strategy Plus

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: June 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If your not good at strategy, you will be by the time you master this game. It will teach you how to use many flanking maneuvers.
Unlike many games where forest are taboo and you must go around them, here you can go through them as a real army could. Well worth its price.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 Next 

Actions