User Reviews (1 - 11 of 33)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Decent game, some faults.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 57 / 65
Date: June 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As most of the reviewers here I immediately made comparisons to Rome: Total War which is an all-time favorite of mine that I still play.

Land Battles:
Beautiful graphics, simple controls and formations. All the areas you fight in are very well done. The terrain is interactive as well, where you can take units and place them in buildings, blockades, etc.. for increased defense and observation. There are basically three different types of units which fits well in the time period...Infantry, Calvary and Artillery. The major complaint I have with the Land Battles is the units need to be patched...badly. Very rarely have I had enemies rout or retreat.

A few things that need to happen to greatly improve Land Battles would be to increase the range of artillery dramatically to become an effective unit on the battlefield (as they historically were). Militia units need to be treated as militia units, one or two salvos from a Line Infantry unit should rout them..period. As it stand now militia units are more like very inexpensive and cheap fanatical infantry. That's one hell of a militia unit to be able to run across the map into a bunch of muskeeteers, see half your buddies die then take yer tree branch and face off against a professional soldier with a fixed bayonet. Militia will charge Artillery blasting the heck out of them, run right into a calvary charge and brave point blank musket fire. The best fights i've had, have been between armies of non-militia units where you really get a taste of Napoleanic warfare displayed on your screen. Bottomline here is the land battles would be dramatically improved if one musket salvo would rout a militia unit so the only way a bunch of club weilding peasants could defeat a professional army unit would be overwhelming numbers. As it is now, why did man invent the rifle in the first place, if they are just expensive useless toys. Just go down to your local pub and round up a bunch of drunk farmers and give them their +5 Clubs of Heroism.

Once a unit engages in melee combat there is no way to disengage them until they are done. I suppose there is some realism to this where you can't really shout orders to an entire unit when they are in hand-to-hand combat. This takes some tactics especially when fighting against militia as frenquently when they would charge into my Line Infantry i had to quickly order the rest of my units to stop firing on the militia because i'd hit my own men as well.

Calvary is a very powerful force. These are useful to crush militia and of course, the calvary will charge right towards them and the ubermensch superhuman peasants will fight to the last man against a thundering charge of trained professional Hussars (Can you tell i hate militia yet?).

Artillery as I mentioned above needs to be fixed. It's basically useless right now unless you want to shoot up a house to get Infantry out of, but as you approach any building they tend to come out on their own anyway. I still create them in my armies because....well, just because I like having armies with cannons *shrug*.

Navy Battles:
Personally I enjoyed these. The battles are simple, but I imagine things could get very complicated if battles consisted of like...5 ships fighting 5 ships. This will pretty much never happen tho as each country minus Britain seems to be complacent with having one ship to count for their Navy *yawn*.

Strategic Map:
This is where you conduct all your research, diplomacy, troop movements etc. No real big complaints here. Different countries will have different challenges. As mentioned by another reviewer England will rarely see Land Battles unless they choose to, so if you don't want to go to war that much and diplomat most of the game then England is a good choice. Playing a power like Prussia however is pretty difficult as they are going to be at war pretty much from the beginning and fighting..a LOT.

As mentioned by other reviewers here it is very time consuming and requires a lot of your country's resources to build advanced infrastructure and trade routes. Building Armies is NOT fast at all, takes a lot of time and a lot of resources especially since you are also using those resources to build your trade and advanced infrastructure. It can take at least 2-3 years to field a viable invasion force especially since you can only build Land units in capitols. There are pros and cons to this, but the endstate is you are much more careful on where, when and with who you fight. The annihilation of a big army can set you back and squash your military ambitions.

Peaceful Annexation in it's current state is pretty much FUBAR. The computer is much more apt to peacefully annex another country and I seriously have no idea how they do this so quickly. For example, I eventually peacefully annexed Portugal playing as England but in order to do this it took a ton of resources building consulates, newspaper offices, etc. I even tried Improved Relations Diplomacy option and threw 5,000 gold at them, they rejected it and my relations with them went down! This part of the game needs to be patched to decrease the ease of which the computer can peacefully annex another country and alter the bonuses and penalties of dealing with other countries.

What also needs to be fixed is the zerg of other powers offering you their surplus of government cheese for gold AND when you reject them your relations decrease. So if you are working on peacefully annexing a country you basically HAVE to take whatever they are offering unless you want to lose relation points. Of course, there is a way around this and that's to say screw diplomacy and just build your infrastructure and trade enough to build some armies and start to conquest.

If a patch is released that fixes range on Artillery, nerfs Militia and the Relations to other countries this game will be a 4-5 star game imo. As it stands now, it's a decent game to pick up if you like the Turn-Based Strategy Game with a RTS spin on it (Like Total War). On the Campaign game it takes awhile for the game to get going, but once you do it's fairly enjoyable. I'm still playing it as i love this type of gaming genre despite it's faults. Hoping for a patch soon.

Good looking package ... nothing inside

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 30
Date: July 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As other people have commented here, this game aspires to be the "Total War" equivalent for the Napoleonic Wars. Unfortunately, all the game has is pretty visuals and no substance:

1. Unlike "Total War" -- morale is not a factor -- units of soldiers fight to the last man, every time -- playing it was like watching a bunch of robots in period costumes fighting each other.

2. Unlike "Total War" -- the strategic game is completely uninvolving.

3. Artillery in the game is dramatically underpowered. As others here have noted, there is no "canister shot" for breaking up cavalry charges. And the AI behind the artillery is so stupid that your batteries will cheerfully fire at targets beyond their range with no effect whatsoever.

Maybe "Imperial Glory II" will fix these problems. But in the meantime, I'm out the 50 or so dollars I paid for this pallid imitation of the "Total War" series.

Oh well, at least I didn't buy the Strategy Guide.

Imperial Glory

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: January 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Beautiful game. Period. As for playability not worth it. I have seen two types of reviews either 1-2 bad or 4-5 good. The 1-2 is more accurate as this game is lame, especially if you like wargames, strategy games, Total War, Civilzation, Steel Panthers, etc or any other similar game. The reviewers that wrote a 4-5 and I think one wrote this is for hardcore gamers, what a bunch of bull. This game is for a 5 year old kid. The troops look great, but no hint of actual realism in the game. They will hack at each other until only one side or the other is standing. Why the game company left out morale is beyond me. In the Napoleanic time period, casualties were light, mainly you fought til one side or the other ran. In this game you will have 500 troops go against 500 troops, and at least on one side, you will end up with 500 dead troops, no prisoners, deserters, retreats, etc. Actually for that matter, even in modern combat you never are able to inflict 100% casualties on your opponents. Also artillery range quite short.

This game has huge potential, if only the game company would spent some time on perfecting a bit more realism. As it is, this is like a beautiful modern game, with 1970's Atari AI. Also some realism in the strategic/political model might have been nice too.

I am looking forward to their next release, perhaps it will be a bit better. To be honest, I don't regret buying as I read the reviews before hand. It was like I said, very pretty to watch for a few minutes. If only they could collaborate with Matrix Crown of Glory, you would have the best of both worlds, hardcore game with much substance no graphics and graphics with no substance.

Finally found a bad enough game to write a review.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: February 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Hello, let me start out by stating that I am in my mid 30s and have been playing games for over 30 years.

First off the bat, I purchased this game back in October of last year. I got it home and tried to install it. After trying for over an hour I finally gave up and called the Edios support line.
I had a batch of defective discs according to the error codes I received. This is the first and only time that I couldn't even get a game to install.

Fast forward to 2 days ago. Having mailed in my defective discs, receipt, box and manual to Edios about 4 months ago I finally called their support line again. I waited for over an hour the first time before I finally gave up. Then I called them back in the evening and finally got through. No big surprise when I finally talked to someone that they had never heard of me or my bad discs. Then I gave them my RMA number and they shipped out new discs.

Well now, having waited for over 4 months to play this game I opened it up, installed it and beat it in one night. Halfway through I realized that all you needed to do was wait evey few turns and you could use the diplomacy option to buy a new country. So after spending all night clicking OK and next turn. I beat the game. I couldn't tell you anything about the battle scenes because I never fought a single battle. The final few countries I just waited until I outnumbered the AI by 3 to 1 and clicked automatic results. Game over. So I was so disappointed I decided to write a review. Please, please, please do not buy this game. Do like I did and pull out an older copy of Imperialism or Axis and Allies if you want to play a turn based war game.

Very attractive - but not without flaws

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: June 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had tracked this game for a very long time, basically since it was first announced and I was pleasantly surprised to find it in my local gaming store. I immediately handed over the $40 hoping it was worth that amount. After about a week of gaming I can safely review this after playing all the aspects.

Imperial Glory is really made up of three parts, which are each extensively covered in helpful tutorials. A lot of games seem to lack a helpful tutorial but luckily the designers for Imperial Glory were kind enough to add in THREE tutorials to help get you started.

--- The first part of the game is the land battle maps. The 3-D graphics are simply superb and the troops are very attractive as they march, charge and especially when firing volleys. The land battle controls are easy to use and quite simple. The interface makes sense and there is little to no clutter. My favorite part of the game is where you can actually create your own battles between any of the five playable empires (France, Russia, Austria, Prussia and Great Britain) in any of the provinces and you just duke it out with whomever your opponent is until you win. These are mainly fun but I have a few problems with the land battle aspect of them game.

- The "total victory" option means your enemy always fights to the death. That may be "glorious" in a sense, but it's pretty unrealistic and causes you many casualties. The enemy never seems to retreat and will always fight to the last man.

- The artillery range is pretty ridiculous. There is hardly a point to having artillery because the range is so small. You seem to be less than three hundred yards away when your cannons and howitzers finally come into range and the enemy always targets those expensive weapons first. The high ground for the artillery is hardly an issue because despite whatever altitude you're at, the range is still pitifully small.

- The maps are always the same in the provinces. And I mean always. It is always winter in some places, always summer in others. I personally don't have a big problem with this, but some may be peeved when they fight in July in Poland and see snow.

Despite these setbacks, the land battles are by far the most fun and attractive part of Imperial Glory.

--- The second aspect of Imperial Glory are the naval battles. They are pretty slow moving and dull in my opinion. Unlike the land battles where the map was different for all provinces, the sea battles - like in real life - look exactly the same. The naval battles are fun due to the amount of firepower you have and the potential amount of damage you can deliver. Once again, the controls are VERY easy to use and VERY understandable. You fire port or starboard broadsides and between which broadside, there is an appropriate time to reload. You can even board the enemy ship and capture it! If you are a fan of naval warfare of the Napoleonic era, you will not be dissapointed in the gameplay here.

There is one thing that gives me a hard time in the naval section. There is a certain area in which you are allowed to fight. If you leave the area then you lose the battle. The concept is crazy...imagine if it was like that at Trafalgar: if you leave this red box, then your ship is sunk and loses the battle! Sometimes it is hard to turn the ship so you sail right out of the boundaries and automatically lose.

--- And finally the third aspect of the game: the campaign map. This is the part easily compared to Rome: Total War, the part that has caused me the most stress, anger and joy in my experience with this game. The layout is much the same as Rome: Total War although besides that the two games have nothing in common. I dislike the comments that compared a Napoleonic game to a game on Ancient Rome, two very different time periods that deserve two different layouts.

In the campaign map, you must concentrate on your resources - Gold, Raw Materials, Population and Food. These are what create your buildings and units and without them, you lose.

Each resource can be gathered in different ways and I was thanful to find that there is no micromanaging resources, like in RTS-style games. Each province has a set amount of resources that it gives your 'national treasury' but that is barely enough. You need to build buildings and forge trade routes in order to increase your raw materials/food and gold respectively. Buildings and units are very costly and by losing a battle, your economy can be severely hurt due to the amount of money and resources it takes to create these armies.

Diplomacy has a number of options that range from declaring war to offering marriage. One option is the peaceful annexation and the enemy seems to take full advantage of that. In one game, Austria had peacefully annexed the Ottomans while Britain managed to annex all of the Iberian peninsula. Each country has a number of "sympathy points" which range from 0 (when you are at war) to 100 (and only then can you peacefully annex them).

Armies are created from barracks and all armies out of their barracks intake food. It is key to have enough food to feed your armies. Each army is commanded by either a Captain, Colonel, General or Marshal and can move one province at a turn. There are hardly enough men in an army to be considered real - a maximum of 60 per infantry unit and 36 per cavalry means a maximum of maybe 300 men per army. Quite a contrast compared to the half million involved in the Battle of Leipzig!

A series of complicated building rules and research punctuate the campaign map games. Each turn is one month and the game ranges from 1789-1830, which gives you plenty of turns. Each unit, building and research take turns to complete which provides for a slow pace. Indeed, I found myself watching the TV between turns due to the slowness of the changing of the turns, but your computers may be a little more updated than my four year old Pentium 4.

The campaign map may be the least user-friendly area of the game, but it could hardly be called confusing at all. The left-click/drag way to move armies easily puzzled me at first. However it only gets easier as you get on.

In conclusion, Imperial Glory is a very fun game despite some flaws it has. I am impatient and I find the long load times to be a pain in the ass (when loading a saved game it took near 4 minutes) but the wait is really worth it when you see the game. Worth $40? Nah, but most games aren't worth their opening prices. Imperial Glory is fun, pretty and addictive and I suggest it to all people who are interested in the Napoleonic era.

Pros:
-Beautiful graphics: the troops, ships, and landscapes blew me away
-Easy to use interface provides an understandable gaming experience
-Friendly tutorials help introduce the game to you easily
-In depth research, building and diplomatic systems

Cons:
-Land battles have some fishy stuff going on (i.e. artillery range is too short)
-Ridiculously slow loading times
-Naval battles have a boundary
-AI seems to be able to peacefully annex much better than the human player

Needs a Patch

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: June 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Game play- As noted by some of the other reviewers the game play in the campaign game is very slow. You can spend hours just building up your resources to begin to challenge the smallest of adjacent AI countries. There is no "quick start" option that allows you to get into the campaign game with enough resources to start an empire that can engage in battle.

Tutorial - No audio (voice), only pop-ups that instruct you what to do next. No mention of how to land troops aboard ships in the tutorial. If you start as Great Britain, you will have no clue how to do this - shameful, as GB was a major player during this era...

Quick Battles - No cutomizable start up...you may only pick the battles offered and no way to customize them by choosing maps, units, reinforcements, etc...

Diplomacy - This is a mystery, sometimes no matter what you offer in trade, the receiving country declines, when you look at the information you have you cannot discern why they do...there should be some feedback during negotiations that explain what's lacking or why they won't accept, or what is necessary to succeed.

Difficulty Levels - Start in easy mode, pick Russia, after hours of clicking "next turn" you get an advance in Food production that supposedly adds 75% to your food production rate. But, you never have enough food to field the armies you see the AI countries fielding...namely 3 armies per territory. This must be a bug...if you even try to field the advanced armies that you so patiently built structures to create, you don't have the resources to attack anyone with any depth because you can't field enough troops (due to lack of food) and you lose most of your empire in one or two counter attacks. Why on the easy level, this happens is a mystery...Why aren't resources easier to obtain or even are a problem at the "easy" level is unknown. Why this happens after you spent 3 days of real time building all the resources to even try the attack is inexcusable...

Naval Battles - God forbid you should enter one of these instead of letting the battle resolve itself. You will spend so much time moving each and every boat involved that you will forget why you did this. 'Sid Meyers' Pirates' has a better user interface although the graphics are probably not as good.
The Naval Battles playability interface (in real time) is so bad that you just wish someone would sink (even your own boats) so that the battle would be over...why there is no AI interface or interface for multiple vessel/fleet tactics is a mystery - No (decent) admiral would try and steer every boat in a fleet nor expect them all to sail the same direction, attack the same target, fire in the same direction, etc... The Naval Battle add on was probably not necessary for this game. In any case, in my opinion, its implementation sacrifices playabilty for graphics.

Battle Opportunity - You could recklously attack every country on your border and lose magnificently (as you will) - except if you are playing Great Britain (no one is on your border 'yawn')...you spend way too much time building resources to even start a battle you expect to win. I played this game for 3 real days (after a third attempt at the campaign) and only had 3 battles...The third battle cost me 75% of my empire because I couldn't put supporting armies in my territories due to resource limits (food) at the "easy" level. No one wants to play a game for 3 real days for only 3 battles...and lose at the 'easy' level...

Artillery - If you are lucky enough to have a battle during the campaign, your artillery can't hit anyone much beyond infantry musket range. Artillery is an easy target in the game, almost any other unit can destroy it, and artillery is expensive to build. If you select a target out of range, the cannons will fire anyway, even if the impacts are thousand of yards short of the target -no AI involved here or even "common sense" for that matter...why the arty won't hold fire until the target is close to being in range, or the artillery just doesn't tell you that the "target is out of range" is inexplicable. I don't know what would happen if you moved a friendly unit into the impact area while arty is shooting at a target in the next county. In any case, arty just keeps plugging shot after shot into the empty terrain while the target is not even close to being in range from the battery's position.

Summary - I would pass on buying this game until they patch it to fix some of these problems.. Playability is poor at the best of time in the campaign game.
At the time I wrote this review there was no patch. If you like building capacity, patiently waiting for something to happen that almost never does, and no reasonable tactical way to use the hours and days worth of resources you built...buy it...otherwise skip it until they fix some of these things

Ghastly

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: June 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Yes I love the period, but that only makes the game that much more disappointing and frustrating. Yes, the graphics are OK and I like that the battle orders are given in the language appropriate for each army. Other than that, this is just awful. The battles are unrealistic and virtually unplayable. Don't be fooled by this "Total War" wannabe. The strategic level game lacks any of the personality or flair of any Total War games or even "Civ" games. This is my second bad experience with "Pyro-Eidos." They go for bells and whistles and glitz, but seem to crank out marketable games with poor playability.

A Terrible Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: May 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I rarely get excited about video games, but being in love with history, its games like these that I highly anticipate. I was thrilled when I heard about Imperial Glory, I downloaded the demo and absolutely loved it. However, I was completely disappointed when I picked up this game.

I played for an entire night and I couldn't get into one battle. I played as Great Britain and was disappointed to find out your navy is just a couple of sloops, and you don't even see a ship of the line until late into the game, if you can even afford one considering your always short on resources.

The biggest problem with the game is its whole basis. While I'm out there building a Navy and an incredible Army the AI is annexing countries peacefully. The game's basis is something called "peaceful annexation" where you pretty much pay tons and tons of money to weaker nations so that they peacefully join your empire.

When you finally do get into a battle you don't even need infantry, it always comes down to a bum rush of militia (who don't even have muskets) and Cavalry. I could rarely get my infantry into a decent formation before I was bogged down by the enemy militia. Artillery is a joke, it lacks the range to be of any real use. So I found myself building all Cavalry armies. I don't know about anyone else but to me that is just absurd.

What's more absurd is naval combat. First of all, you have to pretty much build your fleet from scratch, so don't think that your going to buy this game, play as the British and just rule the waves. Second, when you do put your ghetto fleet together and manage to catch an enemy at sea, controlling your ships becomes the real battle. The only real naval thing you can do is kind of put your ships into line ahead, but that's about it and it takes awhile to do this. Then you have to worry about your ships falling of the map. If one of your ships gets to the edge of the map, that's it, its finished, it will leave the engagement. Then repairing your ships after an engagement is a pain.

I bought this game because of my love of history, and I wasn't expecting something with super scripted historical events or any historical events for that matter, I was expecting a game that simulated the situation that faced Europe during the Napoleonic wars. I didn't find that at all. The AI doesn't act like any European country of the time. I don't seem to remember France peacefully annexing European nations, and I don't remember the Grand Armee being composed of 90% militia armed with clubs and swords.

All the previews I read said this game was going to be competition for Rome: Total War, and then I heard the developers trying to distance Imperial Glory from that image. Well this game is no where like Rome. It's not a "bad imitation" of the Total War series, it's just uniquely bad. If you really want this game buy it, but you'll probably regret it. I wish I would have waited until this game came out in a jewel pack or bundled up with a bunch of other failures.

Misunderstood Gem

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: June 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The negativism of many of the reviews to date may create a misimpression for many of the readers. IG is really a strategy game in the Civ III mold. The player controls a country and runs that country's economic, industrial, intellectual and military affairs with the ultimate goal of leading the Age or conquering the world. Unlike Civ III, it is set specifically in the Napoleonic era and thus the strategic situations and decisions are tailored to the era.

In this the game succeeds admirably. I could quibble with details, as others have done, but in general the challenges are identifiably Napoleonic. The Major Countries each face individual situations and threats recognizably historical. The trade/resource model is particularly effective at simulating the pressures and opportunities that brought a continent to war. Production and diplomacy are rough hewn, adequate and perfectly fine. The research tree is interesting and historical. But since all nations complete all items of research sooner or later, research choices only create temporary differences in capabilities. This perhaps could have been done more artfully, but it is amusing even if it doesn't advance the historiosity as well as it might have.

So with regard to the strategic game which is the heart of IG: Bravo!!! It is challenging, fun, recognizably historical and not so complex so as to compete with one's day job for tedium.

As a second order effect, IG also offers the option of tactical land an naval combat. Please note these are in fact options (reinforcing the notion that the strategic game is the center of the developer's intent). Any battle can be 'fought by computer' to speed up play or isolate play to the strategic realm. The tactical battles themselves are more like candy than serious simulations of Napoleonic battles. They are pretty enough and they are certainly Napoleonic in flavor. But make no mistake, the battlefield dynamics are unique to this game and people knowledgeable in Napoleonic tactics will have to make adjustments to their approach. I would agree with the observations of other reviewers and suggest that minor adjustments might be made in unit statistics to enhance gameplay and historiosity. But both naval and land battles are amusing little puzzles in and of themselves now, even if not rigorously historical.

My one complaint is one that hasn't been mentioned yet. Neither the included printed or PDF manual is sufficient to the game's complexity. The strategy guide arrived today and it seems to contain a lot of data missing from elsewhere. Hopefully it'll fill in some of the gaps in rules explanations as well.

To conclude, Imperial Glory is a fine game of Napoleonic strategy. In the style of Civ III, it captures the decisions and feel of the Napoleonic era with simplicity, challenge and excitement. It passes the rare 'just one more turn' test of addictive gaming. But it is not for everybody. Gamers desiring realistic Napoleonic combat would be better served looking elsewhere ("Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle" or "Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory" would be the benchmark there). And to be sure, there are a few design decisions (restricted naval maps and army morale in particular) and unit balancings (artillery range and militia combat power to name two) which should be readdressed. But for Napoleonics fans who have days of their lives to lay at the alter of a really fun, recognizably historical game that is simple to learn yet with great replayability, this is a must buy!

Looks to surpass Rome Total War

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: May 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

On playing the demo and marvelling at the screenshots and stirring musical score I suspect this could be a threat to the Total War franchise which seems to have gone stale with Rome.

The battle landscapes are beautifully rendered rolling hills where trees, farmland and buildings can be exploited and occupied. The artillery looks a vast improvement as does the speed of the battles which are intense, dramatic and chaotic just as battles of the period were.

The naval battles are the piece de resistance adding an immensely rewarding twist to the formula. Pyro studios have done a superb job from scratch and deserve every acolade I'm sure they will get. Buy.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 Next 

Actions