Amercian Conquest: Divided Nations is the latest addition to the American Conquest line of isometric RTS games. I must confess, I’m an RTS fan, but more of the Command and Conquer style than the historical genre.

In that respect, I felt like I was missing half the fun of this game, as American history is not something that interests me.

American Conquest: Divided Nations, is, as I said earlier, an isometric RTS. When I first installed it and looked at the graphics, my mature, enlightened gamer response was ‘Eww’. The environments look very dated, and the units, while well drawn, are hardly the eye candy of many modern games. I put on my dedicated reviewer hat, and played through a few missions.

I found the missions hard at first - not because the AI is good, or the goals set are challenging, but just because the controls feel rather counter-intuitive and the objectives are not always totally clear. I found sometimes that selecting one unit would control an entire group, other times it would not. I also found the lack of ability to rotate the camera infuriating, panning back and forth to try to see something that would reveal itself easily in a normal game.

Those problems aside, there is a good game hiding in here, especially for those with an interest in history and warfare. There are 9 campaigns in the game, across more than 50 maps, including real life events from the 19th century.

The battles can get large, fast, and this is where the game starts to come into its own. Unit production is simplified compared to many strategy games, and it does not take long to end up with an impressive army. The game runs smoothly, even with numbers of troops on the screen that would make Dynasty Warriors look like a 1v1 beat-em-up. When you consider this, the simple graphics and limited camera angles start to make sense. There is a lot going on during a battle, and each unit is animated with re-load, fire and melee animations, which are nice to watch, and do add flavour. The developers have done a good job of keeping performance at a decent level and keeping the system requirements low.

Once you get used to it, you have a decent degree of control over the units, with options for formations (that actually work, unlike in many other RTS games) and for controlling fire, and combat options. By default, ranged units will hold position instead of closing into melee combat, and will refuse to fire into a crowd containing soldiers on their side. Changing formations is not as simple as just clicking a button, different formations require different units to maintain them.

Resource gathering plays a role in this game, but it is much more streamlined than the majority of the alternatives, and you are not at risk of ending up in a resource bottleneck through one simple mistake.

There is a massive choice of units and structures in the game, allowing you to tailor the environment to your play style. If you are the defensive type, the options for defensive structures and barricades will please you, and there are heavy artillery options for the more offensive players.

I found the enemy AI, at least on normal difficulty, was able to grasp the basics of using terrain correctly, but sometimes would run out into the open and charge suicidally.

There are options for online play, which I suspect will be a favourite option for many players, and a map editor to allow players to make their own areas.

The addition of optiosn for player created content was a wise one, and I can see this game being popular with more serious simulation players. If you enjoyed Gary Grigsbys World at War, then perhaps you will like this as a change of pace.

So here we come full circle, from an unimpressive looking game, to one that is actually interesting and fun, even if in a small niche. If more serious re-enactment style strategies are your thing, then this is well worth a look. Still, if they make another sequel, I do hope they improve the controls.

Graphics: 6/10
Interface: 6/10
Playability: 8/10
Longevity: 8/10
Overall: 7/10