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.

Multiplayer: 7.0
The multiplayer options include LAN and online matches.  Not too many matches are available currently since it just arrived here in the states.

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.