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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.

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.

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.

Big disappointment!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: June 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This could have been such a beautiful game but for some reason the developers decided to hamper it to the point of being nothing more than an exercise in frustration. The battles are really fun, and the graphics are great, but you must play for three hours of "next turn" just to build up enough resources to have a minor skirmish which lasts 5 minutes and then... you start all over again! Also, for some reason which totally escapes me, they decided to place certain restrictions on each empire. I started out as England but never had enough population to build armies. Then, I tried Russia - plenty of people but never enough food. The games kept disbanding my armies due to the "severe food shortage". The number of troops in a unit is arbitrarily set to 60 max - the number of units in a command by a captain or general is arbitrarily set to a small number - the number of armies you can have in a province is arbitrarily set to 3 max. Everywhere you look in this game you find restrictions which rob it of its potential for greatness and of your chance to have some fun - isn't having fun what these games are for?

I will never understand why the developers took such a beautiful gaming engine and decided to force the game's progress to such a snail's pace. You spend most of your time clicking through the months (one month is a turn) desparately trying to build armies to have a little fun - but it never comes!

This game could have been great, but some ridiculous decisions at project management level have killed it. They should have pre-released it to a bunch of 14 year old gamers and LISTENED to their advice. Then we might have had something approaching a fun experience. As it is, you have nothing but frustration and limitation everywhere you turn with Imperial Glory.

JUST TERRIBLE

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 13
Date: June 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

THE GAME IS GOD AWFUL. THE ARMIES ARE NOT AS BIG AS THE SEEM TO BE, AND WHEN THE UNITS RUN THEY ARE STUCK TOGETHER AND LOOK LIKE CRAP. THE GRPAHICS ARE BAD AND THEY PLAYING MODE IS BAD AND YOU WONT LIKE IT. THE LEVELS AREN'T INTERESTING AND IT TAKES TO LONG TO START THE BATTLE. THE AI IS TERRIBLE. SOMETIMES IF YOU TOLD THE TROOPS TO WALK STRAIGHT THEY WOULD WALK BACKWORDS. THINK TWICE BEFORE BUYING

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

Tries to be everything, fails to be much at all

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: May 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Imperial Glory suffers from one major flaw: It tries to be 3 games at once. First, let's look at the most hyped aspect of the game; the real-time battle engine. It is much like those found in the Total War series, but is not as effective. In Rome: Total War, the game really gave you a feeling that there were thousands of individual men fighting the battle, but the engine in Imperial Glory makes it feel like you're pushing around a very sluggish single unit. Also, there is no real reason to build any infantry units during the game. In my experience, if you rushed a couple of units of militia (the "weakest" units in the game), you could trample any army. I was frequently defeated, even when I outnumbered the enemy by two or three, and most of their units were milita.

The second game Imperial Glory tries to be is a world simulator like Civilization 3. It also fails on this base greatly. No matter how mighty and far-reaching your empire is, you are still scraping by with the tiny numbers of resources at your disposal. The diplomatic model functions, but there is very little personality to it. Resource trading is awful, as countries will more than likely never accept your generous offers of raw materials for gold, but on their turn offer you the same. If you reject this country's offer, your overall standing with the country goes down, sometimes even forcing you into war. The game also features a fairly robust tech tree, and it is probably the best aspect of the game. The game also features "quests". These quests are more or less like the Wonders you construct in games like Civ 3 or Rise of Nations, and they give you similar results. The only problem with them is that by completing them, you burn off a great majority of the few resources you have.

The third game Imperial Glory attempts at is a naval warfare simulator. It plays out much, much slower than the combat found in the wonderful Sid Meier's Pirates!, and it is simply not fun. It has some good features, but the combat is far too slow to enjoy them. Also, the enemy seems to have an advantage on the seas. For some reason, I had two ships in pursuit of an enemy ship, and in one salvo, both ships were blown apart by enemy fire. This is neither fair or realistic.

Finally, we come to the worst part of Imperial Glory. This game is touted as a simulation of the national and political turmoil of the early 19th century, with epic wars being fought on all fronts, but it has one major flaw.....

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FIGHT A SINGLE BATTLE TO WIN THE GAME.

The game has a concept called "peaceful annexation". This means that if you throw enough money to a country, they will quickly and quietly become part of your empire. I played the game for a little over 10 game years (each turn is a month, so 120 turns), and I never, ever had a battle. Ever. I never even had the slightest threat of battle until I kept making countries mad by proposing resource deals. That's right, the game can go on without a single battle on your side and you can still win the game. This makes the game very dull and it forces the game to neglect it's much-touted 3d battle engine.
In conclusion, if you played the demo of the game, please understand that actual fighting is about 10% of the game, and most of the game is spent looking at a board, waiting to get enough resources to build a small army that will soon be destroyed by men who do not even use guns

Great Ideas but Boring Game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Imperial Glory just isn't a lot of fun. The concept is terrific and there are some wonderful innovations, but gameplay isn't interesting.

The Good: The idea of a Total War type game set in Napoleonic Europe is terrific, as is the idea of allowing the player to devote resources to building politicial and economic buildings in other player's territories. The resource management system, while nonsensical, adds some strategy to economic development as the player struggles to balance gold, raw materials, population and food. The tech tree is a lot fuller than in a Total War game and offers interesting strategic choices. The diplomacy is quite complex and it is possible to win through diplomacy alone.

The Indifferent: As so many other reviewers have pointed out, the game isn't even trying to be historically accurate.

The Bad: As in the case of the Total War series, a lot of effort has been put into the RTS battle system. However, while the graphics are lovely, there is no strategy to the battles and the toughest army always wins. Building improvements isn't much more fun since you usually have to click through multiple turns to save up enough to buy anything. The result is that while the game is great in theory, it is a chore to play. Imperial Glory it is as corageous and inventive as Napoleon himself, but alas, it is about as much fun as a Russian winter.

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