GameShark just published my review of Rise of Prussia. This was a big disappointment for me, since I’m a Seven Years’ War nerd. Metacritic will convert my “C” into something much harsher than it actually is, but there is no avoiding the fact that I did not enjoy myself a great deal with this game, and was really put off by the whole package.
That’s where I put most of my focus in this review. I could have gotten into a much more nuts-and-bolts discussion about how the game models Frederican warfare and whether or not the AGEOD system really does a good job of modeling it. It does and it doesn’t. There are far too many battles where only a fraction of the forces in a given territory actually take part in a battle. The AI, although generally quite good, is too fond of laying siege to every fort, everywhere, rather than concentrating its efforts. I was astonished when the Austrian army practically dissolved itself along the Oder river, laying simultaneous sieges and Breslau, Schweidnitz, and a bunch of other places.
I could have talked about some of the annoying gameplay quirks, like the maddening ease with which you can destroy a friendly army simply by forgetting to triple-check its rules of engagement, thus destroying the work of over a hundred turns.
A section on the astonishing amount of administrative tasks you have to perform would not be out of place. I loved building and organizing armies, but the frequency with which I had to reorganize was off-putting. I also had stacks of unassigned generals roving the map looking for brigade commands, who seemed never to be where I needed them.
But I focused on the other elements of the Rise of Prussia package, things you could argue are external to the core game, because they are where the whole experience started to turn sour. It just did not seem very interesting to rehash the AGEOD wargame system again, especially since most of the people who are genuinely interested in Rise of Prussia probably already know what they think about it. AGEOD’s bare-bones approach is what really dragged this game down.
So let me be honest about some of my expectations. With a mature series like this one, I start to look for more refinement and polish in later titles. When Birth of America came out I thought it was a breath of fresh air: handsome art assets, a solid and inventive portrayal of Revolutionary warfare, and a smart treatment of command and logistics. I wrestled with the interface a bit, and always felt like I was being asked to hunt down and interpret too much information. That paled beside the game’s obvious achievements.
But with Rise of Prussia, I find that I’m still battling the same problems. The core game is as good as ever, and AGEOD have made some nice improvements, but shouldn’t the presentation be better by now? Should I still be tasked with being my own supply officer? Couldn’t the ledger have some better sorting options by now, so that I spend less time hunting for specific units and generals?
On top of that, there are far fewer scenarios, and everything is large-scale. With the first game, Birth of America, AGEOD wrote a lot of different scenarios at different scales. I could try a grand campaign covering an entire war, I could focus on Montcalm’s opening offensive against the British, or Amherst’s sprint up the St. Lawrence. I could play Birth of America on my own terms. Rise of Prussia can be played one way.
Even little things, like the way you run email games, seem clumsy and user-unfriendly. Why do I have to do so much file management for a play-by-email game? Why can’t the game do it for me?
Personally, with experienced developers iterating on a familiar design, I look for signs of caring, thoughtful craftsmanship. Rise of Prussia did not have them.