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Rise of Prussia
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Graphics & Sound:
Rise of Prussia chooses a straight-forward map layout for its graphics. What you see is what you get here, with a map of central Europe divided into a free form grid for the purposes of the game. There's nothing flashy, nothing really eye-catching about this game. Troops are represented by a small troop icon, and generals are represented by historical portraits. But while this all sounds like it makes for a simple game, it doesn't. All the groups look the same on the map, for example. But the fact that they are not the same, depending on their size, troop make-up, and leadership, is actually a pretty central point to the game. And where the game could have many helpful icons or flashing reminders, there are none, or they are ridiculously tiny.
Rise of Prussia's soundtrack is a very traditional, classical collection of pieces. There are some harpsichord pieces, as well as some very stately sounding chamber music. There really isn't much in the way of adaptation, it all sounds very traditional, and very accurate to the times. Though I did enjoy waving my hands like a conductor for a while, I soon had to mute the audio in favor of my Depeche Mode channel on Pandora, just to stay sane.
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Gameplay:
Rise of Prussia is a game based on the Seven Years War time period in Europe. This is your basic turn-based strategy game with a tiled map system and period appropriate troops. It's basic, but with a rather intricate interface. It's reminiscent of older style games where you're not given much guidance, and when you are, you're expected to push up your glasses and get to reading.
Rise of Prussia's tutorial begins with these lines, "The game was designed to offer both strategic depth and historical consistency without overwhelming the player with too much micromanagement or overly complicated. However, one still has to master the game mechanics to master the game." Oh Lord, ain't that the truth. When you start the game's tutorial, the stately band music is still playing. For starters, that puts you in the mindset of being in the crowd at some official function, listening to speeches, perhaps with the sun beating down on you: the entire affair is designed to put you into nap mode. Combine that with a tutorial that is all text based (paragraphs and paragraphs of tiny text), and you'll probably feel the need to curl up and take a nap before this whole thing's even started.
But no! You must fight on! Every good strategy game has a big ruleset to learn, and you're just going to have to pay your dues and get past this. But heck, this tutorial doesn't even show you when you've done something right or wrong, you simply follow the text and try to figure out if you got things right. A tutorial with no feedback at all and copious text to dig through means it may be hours before you can be expected to know how to "properly" play the game.
But once you get into the game, you will notice that all this meticulous detail in the tutorial is necessary, because the game is a meticulous, detail-oriented game. Some nice realistic features are the seniority factor when it comes to promoting your ranking officers. If you promote a new guy with no seniority, it will cause division and resentment among everyone else. So just as in real life, sometimes the guy that doesn't really deserve it gets promoted just because he's been there longer.
A lot of what this game does has been done in other turn-based strategy games, and with a lot better interface. Why can't the "fog of war" be a simple grayed out area on the map? Instead, you've got to mouse over your units, and dig through text to find out where this area starts and ends. Why can't units that are acting together simply be highlighted a certain color? I know, it's a lot of "why can't things just be easier" whining, but honestly, why does this have to be so plodding and painful?
Rise of Prussia is a rather old-fashioned game, and likewise has a rather old-fashioned multiplayer system. You create a game save file, then email it to your friend, who plays their turn and emails it back.
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Difficulty:
Rise of Prussia has a steep learning curve. We're talking steep, with rocks that crumble away under you, with rain beating down on you as you try to climb it. Perhaps it doesn't have to be so hard, but the gameplay system really makes you hunt for everything. You've got to look at your logs, look at your ledgers, mouse over just about everything to get an idea of where you stand. There's just not much in the way of an easy path here. Even such fancy features as "Synchronous Move" make you do most of the work. It's a feature that makes two different groups arrive at their destination at the same time, but their arrival times don't actually update to show you this. The tutorial cheerily declares that you should "rest assured" that they will arrive at the same time.
Wow, just wow, there's really no hand holding here. This is the kind of game that might actually be easier if you played it with pen and paper, the way it's set up here.
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Game Mechanics:
Rise of Prussia isn't perfect in its game mechanics, but it's not really a game that's heavy on them. Still, when the map doesn't scroll smoothly, and it's difficult to find a particular unit, or a place on the map, it does tend to hurt the experience.
Strangely, there's a long loading time between turns while the results of your battles and decisions play out. It just doesn't seem like it should take as long as it does to calculate all of these results, when the results are simply text and numbers.
There is some drag and drop interface available, but nothing in this game is as intuitive as many games 10 times its age. Everything seems to require some extra click, some hidden icon, something more to get things to happen the way they're supposed to.
Of course, a game like this is going to be much more enjoyable to a history buff, or perhaps a fan of this historical time period. I didn't exactly find myself yelling "Drezden, at last!" but then I'm not much of an expert on historical battles, or this time period. Expect to invest a lot of time in learning the intricacies of this game. To get that far, you'll probably already have a vested interest in this historical time period, so chances are that you're not going to learn much about history with this game.
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-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville |
Minimum System Requirements:
Operating system: Windows XP/Vista/ Windows 7 (Does not support 98 or 2000), Processor: Pentium(r) IV 1800+ MHz, Memory: 1024 Mo RAM, Hard disk space: 2 GB free on hard disk, Video: 128 Mo DirectX 9.0c, Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, DirectX(r): DirectX 9.0c or more, Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers |
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Test System:
Windows XP, 3.20 GigaHertz Intel Pentium 4, 1 GB Ram, RADEON X850, Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS |
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