Imperial Glory is set during the late 18th/early 19th century in Europe and north Africa. As was the case so often with Europe back then, various empires were attempting to expend their area of control and bring glory to their domain. The five playable empires in the game are Britain, Prussia, Austria, Russia and France. Each have their own strengths – for example, France was the absolute powerhouse at the time, and consequently are probably the strongest all-round country in the game. And, Britain, due to its isolation, is fairly safe from invasion as long as it has a Navy. As well as the big five, smaller countries are in the game, such as Sweden, Norway and Egypt, but are not playable. But, these countries will help you achieve the ultimate goal of conquest.
The map screen, where you control most things. Looks like France is an enemy just for something different.
The game features as your standard modes – multiplayer, quick game and historic battle options. However, the bulk of the game lies in the campaign mode, where you attempt to guide one of the aforementioned empires to conquer all of Europe. The majority of time spent in the campaign mode will see you looking at a rather pleasant map of Europe, where you decide what countries to trade each of the four elements with (gold, materials, population, food), what technological advancements to make, and so on. This portion of the game is actually fairly well executed. The most interesting aspect are the various diplomacy options that appear during the game. You can form defensive alliances, request a coalition or armies from other empires, as well as declare war. All these options mean that you can actually play through most of the game without having to result to war. You can peacefully annex the neutral territories in the game, so their resources add to your empire. You can buy territory from other empires too. However, as the game progresses you will inevitably piss off other empires who will declare war on you – and you usually won’t know why – bringing Europe into turmoil yet again. Research is also essential in this part of the game, giving you technological advancements such as better units, a secret service, and so on. Unfortunately, it’s all a linear progression, so each country will progress to the same level, just at a different speed.
The biggest problem with this portion of the game is that it’s incredibly slow paced – there isn’t a whole lot you can do per turn due to limited resources. This is especially the case at the beginning of the game, where you will spend most of the time hitting the ‘next turn’ button, until you finally have enough materials to build something, or somebody declares war on your empire.
You can bring an assortment of units reflecting the times into combat, such as cavalry, militia, grenadiers, artillery, and so on. Each of them is fairly unique too, with significant advantages, such as improved ranged combat, over the others. However, you are limited to three commanding units per territory, of which hold from three to five different sets of infantry/artillery/cavalry. It just seems the scale of the battle should be a lot bigger. Although, it probably is a good thing it isn’t, because attempting to coordinate this many troops is made nigh on impossible by the fact that you cannot issue orders in the game while it is paused. Yup, everything is real time. You will spend the battles frantically attempting to give each company its own formation and commands – and if there are two fronts, forget about it. On top of this, as each team’s troops begin the battle at each side of the battle field, it can sometimes take up to five minutes before they reach the front. Which, of course, is freakin’ ridiculous. Where’s the fast forward option? The lack of these two features significantly impairs the game and stops it from becoming a true strategy heavyweight.
These are a nightmare to manage – but they do look quite impressive.
One of the Imperial Glory’s more unique features is the inclusion of epic 18th century naval battles, which basically force you to move trickily before being able to give your opponent a full broadside. Sounds good in theory, but it is let down by the same problems as the land battles – except it’s worse, as you manually have to issue each firing order for each ship. It’s absolutely impossible to manage, especially when you have the maximum of six ships in the engagement. Your ships will also just drift out of the engagement if you don’t pay attention to them, which happens far more often than it should. Supposedly helping manage this is a command that makes all ships follow one lead ship. But this is a complete hindrance, as the ships just crash into each other, causing damage, rather than hurting opposition boats. Ugh. At least it all looks pretty.
Imperial Glory is quite strong on the graphical front. The battles themselves look quite nice, with hundreds of troops on screen at a time – if you zoom in, you can see them hitting each other with swords, or packing their muskets for another shot. The troops are fairly well detailed too, although their textures aren’t magnificent in order to not strain the machine too much. Each of the various battlefields scattered throughout the game all tend to have fairly unique designs too, from the gloomy castle of England, to the sandy deserts of Eygpt. Even the home map in the campaign mode is quite good to look at. Information is intelligently laid out, with different buttons giving you different information as not to overwhelm the screen with information. If there is a problem here, it’s that Imperial Glory can stutter an awful lot at times, usually just before you commence a battle. It isn’t a significant problem, but hopefully it will be patched up soon. As you would expect from a game of this nature, the score is suitably epic. Orchestral pieces simmer quietly in the background while you’re on the map screen, but increase dramatically during battle. The sound effects of infantry are also surprisingly impressive, with convincing gunshots, sword clangs, and even the odd word of encouragement.
The amount of diplomacy in the game contributes greatly towards the lifespan, as battling becomes too much of a hassle too soon. You will probably want to play through the campaign for multiple countries, experiencing the unique challenges have to offer. Online capabilities are available if you want to battle a friend, but it’s not something you will want to do often. The historic battles are a nice touch, too.
Russia and Austria at war – look at the detail.
Imperial Glory shows a lot of potential, but in the end doesn’t quite get there. Not being able to issue orders to your troops while the game is paused makes using strategy far too difficult – it’s usually just easier to select everyone and attack them at once. And the naval battles? Forget about it. While Imperial Glory is certainly a good game with its own unique charm, you would be better off with Rome: Total War. Fingers crossed a sequel can rectify these issues.
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