American Conquest: Divided Nation – PC – Review

American Conquest:
Divided Nation is a real-time strategy game based upon events during the
American Civil War, the Texas War, and the Battle for New Orleans.  That’s
correct; all the battles pit Americans versus Americans.  All events are from
the 19^th century which revolves around history about the South
against the North.  With all this USA talk, you’d think that the developer and
publisher would be based from the U.S. right?  Not so fast due to that the
publisher, CDV, is based in Germany.  The developer, GSC Game World, hails from
the Ukraine.  How much better can you get – you have two European countries
rewriting U.S. history centralized on a war against our own selves. 

CDV, known for Blitzkrieg and Sudden Strike, is one of the largest German
publishers at this time.  GSC Game World has already worked on the American
Conquest series in the past.  GSC’s biggest claim to fame is for a game that may
have turned into vaporware – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.  Would GSC
deliver on the merits already set for the American Conquest series or will it
fall into obscurity of the RTS realm? 

If you don’t own
an expensive video card, haven’t upgraded your PC to current hardware standards,
or haven’t even bought a PC with Windows XP; American Conquest may be the game
for you.  Gamers that still haven’t left the year 2001 could play this with no
worries.  The visuals even sport a look that is ‘retrofied’; it feels all too
similar to Age of Empires 2.  That’s right, Age of Empires 2!  GSC Game World
may have been able to pull off the original American Conquest title without too
much beef on the graphics.  Nowadays though, the graphics leap is clearly
evident without even a second look.  Age of Empires 3, Warhammer, LOTR: Battle
for Middle Earth 2 and even Civilization IV are a notch or two above American
Conquest in terms of graphics.

To begin with, the
camera angles in Divided Nation don’t help the gameplay one bit.  It’s hard to
see the units you are controlling and when you eventually do zoom in to improve
the vision, you will only see about ten percent of the units.  The camera isn’t
totally useless as you can rotate it around for a few different perspectives. 
The problem all lies in not being able to see the units and how they are fairing
in the war.  Outside of the camera issues, the units on the screen could have
used some more attention.  I find it hard to see any drastic differences between
the original and this version.

The enemy A.I. isn’t superb by any means with its attack, but, their defense
isn’t too shabby.  They’ll lurk in nearby trenches waiting for the attackers to
approach.  When the battle is fought in the fields, the A.I. will lessen their
strategies and spread out in terms of defense.  While they aren’t Robert E. Lee
or Ulysses S. Grant, they happen to put up a fight when the battle is in a small
area.  The enemy A.I. doesn’t take the game above mediocrity, which is a
disappointment since it drastically needed it to.

There are two models of gameplay that Divided Nation offers.  The first, the
standard real-time strategy type; it has you collecting resources to build up
your troops to attack.  The other model is where everything is given to you at
the start of the battle.  The second is my particular favorite since the first
has been done over and over again.  The second type allows for more strategies,
and figuring out where to place your units as no more units are allowed in the
game outside of the beginning allotment.  What’s missing for the gametypes is
the commonly found tutorial mode.  There is none featured here in any fashion. 
Any type of tutorial would have helped with the learning curve due to it is an
RTS; with any RTS there are a ton of commands that you’ll need to memorize all
hotkeys.

The sound for
Divided Nation wants to fade into the background.  Without any recognition of
what you are listening to, it’s easy to forget that there’s any music at all. 
The sound effects at least make up for the lack of music.  They are crisp with
gunshots and cannons being fired.  Voice-work could have been added to improve
the overall audio department.  The sound just doesn’t deliver an all around good
job.

American Conquest: Divided Nation isn’t the step in the right direction for the
series.  It isn’t my favorite Civil War game – which credit goes to Sid Meier’s
Gettysburg.  It isn’t my favorite RTS – that label is placed on Age of Empires
II & III.  It isn’t even my favorite GSC Game World game, Cossacks is above
American Conquest on every level for me.  What exactly do I think of American
Conquest?  It’s a game that could have benefited being released two to three
years back.  It would have been received a warm welcoming back then.  In 2006
though, heavyweights like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Age of Empires are
dominating the RTS world.  American Conquest: Divided Nation clearly is a minor
league game hoping to make it into the big leagues.

Minimum
Requirements:

Pentium 4, 2.0 GHz

2.5 GB HD free
space

256 RAM or better
12x CD-ROM Drive
Graphics card with 64MB RAM
 

Gameplay: 6.7
If you liked the original, you are bound to like the second.  It didn’t get
any worse in terms of gameplay.  It didn’t jump in leaps and bounds in improving
the gameplay though either.

Graphics: 5.5

The graphics speak
for themselves – outdated when compared to modern RTS’s.

Sound: 6.0
The sound isn’t anything to brag about.  It’s quiet, unheard and barely hanging
around.  Thank goodness there are sound effects.
 

Difficulty:
Medium
With no tutorial, the difficulty is a little harder.  The game necessarily isn’t
incredibly difficult when everything is figured out.  The enemy A.I. is sub par
in a few different situations.

Concept: 7.5
I am thankful this is on the Civil War.  I am sure that the developers aren’t
thankful for Age of Empires III being based around the same timeframe.

Overall: 6.0
This is hard to judge since not too many games base their theme around the Civil
War.  With a few games in the last few years basing their games around the Civil
War, especially AoE3, it’s difficult to not compare Divided Nation to them.  For
comparison’s sake, American Conquest: Divided Nation doesn’t do enough to
warrant a purchase outside the fan base that may be already established.