Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 22, 2021

  Piss Poor game in steam, if you have no idea of what files you need to modify, change, edit this is not for you. If you out the box game that works after starting the game , this is not for you. If you want a game just to play because of the timeline , this is not for you. I had the old game and loved it . worked great on XP and Vista with very little to do on install. STAY AWAY from this if you want to save money, time, and effort.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 29, 2016

  excellent game. i have scourge of war gettysburg and waterloo but i actually prefer this! if you like historical rts you really couldn t do much better. runs well on win7 64 bit. highly recommended.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 30, 2016

  Started with the brigade tutorial for that sweet nostalgia and almost got my ass handed to me in a beautifully co-ordinated assault by Early and Strong. It's incredible how the AI still holds up after all this time. Graphics haven't aged that well, but I never saw presentation as the main priority for this game. An absolute steal, even at full price, compared to the hours I'll be putting into this. Still traumatised by that canister sound effect!
• gamedeal user

  Oct 30, 2016

  Very good game if your into Civil War battles. You're not going to be overly impressed by the graphics. The settings are limited. No way to adjust resolution or change controls. However, if you're looking forward to controlling thousands of troops on the battlefield against a competent ai army then you can easily overlook these flaws. I've owned this game before it came out on Steam and spent many hours on it. It's a bit of a learnig curve to learn how to issue commands but I thought the tutorial did a good enough job showing you the ropes. The battles can be as small as a brigade or if you build your own it could consist of several corps. (If I recall correctly - let's just say you can get lost among the sea of your own men) This game is easily worth the price and though it may not look as good as Total War battles might look, the tactical experience is far greater in my opinion.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 29, 2017

  One of my Favorite games of all time and i highly recommend it to anyone who has a fondness to history and strategy. I rate this game a 9.99999/10 and the only reason for itnot being higher is that the courier system is weird.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 29, 2017

  This is an excellent (slow pace) historical strategy game, with great AI. I love the old school charm of the graphic sprites for the soldiers. They are all hand drawn from what I understand, you got to admire the work that went in to them, I think it looks great. The gameplay/content is worth the non sale price, and a steal if you can get it for a few bucks. p.s. There is a community mod pack that fixes resolution for widescreen and adds content.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 5, 2017

  Great game, but lots of folks having trouble running it on Steam due to a directx problem (see forum).
• gamedeal user

  Nov 27, 2017

  This is a good game. As the name says it places you in direct command of anything from a regiment to an army in the first great battle of the Amercan Civil War. Despite the now rather dated graphics, the gameplay is solid and there is real tension in watching the men of your command live or fall on your decisions. The game is decsigned by Civil War buffs, so there is a lot of detail in the game with a good eye to history. At its price its a good introduction to the "Scourge of War" series. If you're expecting "Total War" battle simplicity this game is not for you. It does however provide a game which allows the same close up view of the battlefield with a more demanding and complex style of play.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 20, 2019

  A game that can manage to be brilliant one moment and then borderline moronic in the next. It can make you go from happy to angry in .5 seconds. In other, and more charitable, words it's a mixed bag. Pros(in no order); 1) Fantastic immersion. Hard to explain this, but there's no other American Civil War game that comes close. Just look up some videos of reenactments and then gaze at the screenshots or a clip of the game, and you'll understand. 2) Historical accuracy. Full disclaimer, I'm no expert on the Battle of 2nd Manassas, but what I do know of it does seem to be faithfully recreated. The various generals and regiments are in the right spots at the right time. All the numerous skirmishes and minor battles that took place before and after 2nd Manassas(Cedar Mountain, Fight at Brawner's Farm, and Chantilly) are also present. Bit of a personal experience here, but I'm currently reading through 'Memoirs Of The Confederate War For Independence' by Heros Von Borcke. He was a Prussian soldier who enlisted in the Confederate Army to gain experience and served under Stuart. At several parts he writes about a Colonel Rossier of the 5th squadron. You know who's in charge of the 5th squadron in the game? Colonel Rossier. 3) A wide variety of scenarios. You've got small scenarios, medium scenarios, and large scenarios. Some have you command only a brigade, some a division, and few a corps or even the entire army. Some last 30 minutes(real world time) while some last almost 3 hours. Just an FYI, you can save whenever you wish and time can be sped up outside of combat. Each scenario also has an element of randomness to them so they never play quite the same. I've done Early's scenario over a dozen times and seen the Union focus on the left, on the right, on the center, equally across the entire line, and a far right flank. 4) Open play AKA sandbox battles. I don't really mess with these too much, as the game kind of falls apart at the seams here, but some people might like them. You know how in the Total War games you can pick the units and the factions for custom battles? Open play works nothing like that. You pick the commander, the place of the battle, then pick your side and a position in the chain of command. You don't get to customize the units or anything of the sort. 5) The main theme. It really captures the moment and it's half the OST. Yep, Take Command: 2nd Manassas has a whopping two songs and there's absolutely zero music during battles. 6) Works fine on my dinosaur(2010ish) of a PC running on Windows 10, but anyone with a modern rig might have some issues. Cons(in no order); 1) Convoluted controls. There's no quick and easy way to do most things. You want to move a division? Find the division commander(aside from a few exceptions, commanders all have the same model) and then issue a waypoint for him personally to go to, and to get his division to move you then need to choose a formation and then they'll take position about 30-50 yards in front of the division commanders waypoint. You can only see where they'll end up(the flags that indicate their objective) after you've issued the order, and only if you have the division commander or one of his superior's selected as otherwise you cannot see this. Sound complicated yet? Imagine trying to do this during a battle with multiple divisions or even multiple corps all attacking or defending different points and each requiring specific attention. You can get used to these awkward controls as I have but it takes time and never ceases to be annoying. 2) The AI is as dumb as one would expect for a game from 2006. I've seen some praise it, but I believe those people are confusing the scripting in the scenarios for AI. One round of open-play AKA sandbox and you'll see just how idiotic the computer really is. The game advertises the ability to have AI subordinates and how they all have different personalities, but from my experience that's either a bold lie or self-delusion. It's consistently inept and incapable of simple tasks. To make matters worse, they also will do whatever they want, whenever they want regardless of what you order them to do. Order them to defend their position? They'll go on the offensive, and never stop. Order them to hold their ground? They'll go on the offensive, and never stop. Order them to return to their original position? They'll immediately discard your order and continue attacking. In summary, your AI subordinates are aggressive morons who'll never listen to anything you tell them. 3) MIcromanagement can be a pain. If you choose to disable the AI for your subordinates then they kind of become vegetables and require frequent attention which is easy on the smaller scenarios, but some of the larger ones it becomes very hectic. You see, there's no helpful roster at the bottom of the screen like in Total War that shows you at a glance the condition of every unit. In Take Command: 2nd Manassas, if you want to know this you must either click on the unit itself for detailed info, click on the immediate commander, or dig through the ledger. Surveying the battlefield can also be tiresome as your camera can only go but so far from your character(the commander you are playing as for the scenario) and that distance is tied to rank. An army commander's camera is almost unrestricted, but a brigade commander's camera can only go maybe a 100 yards. Add in lack of model variety, obstructions such as buildings or tress and it can be quite difficult to keep track of what's going on. There's a map that updates in real time, but the various icons overlap making it hard to decipher. 4) Kind of buggy. By and large everything works fine but on some occasions things get weird. I've had units start moving around on their own even though I'd turned off AI command. I've ordered charges only for my men to stand still despite having near max morale and stamina. 5) Bizarre design decisions. I get this game was made by two brothers on the budget of a pack of Tic-Tacs, but a low budget does not excuse low level thinking. There's too many of these absolutely mind-boggling choices to mention them all so I'm just going to mention the highlights; You can pause the game, but you can do almost next to nothing aside from move the camera. Want to issue an order? Nope! Want to click on a unit to get information on their status? Nope! Want to look at the map? Nope! Want to hover over the buttons to see what they do? Nope! Want to look at your orders? Nope! There are a few commands in the game that cannot be cancelled and two of these are Charge which makes the unit charge the nearest enemy unit, and Retreat which makes a unit fall back 300 yards. Guess where these two commands are located? Directly next to each other! You can tell your men where to move, but not whom to shoot. All you can do is get them within range and pray they aim for your intended target. It is possible for infantry to go prone in order to better shield themselves from artillery bombardment. The issue is that it takes about 15-30 seconds(real world time) for the entire unit to stand up, and a unit, even if you have taken command by turning the AI for that unit off, can choose to do this at any moment if artillery is firing at them. You can order them to stand only for them to immediately go prone again. Fortunately, they won't do this if an enemy regiment is within shooting distance of them, but it still makes rushing artillery a pain in the backside. Despite the equal amount of pros and cons, and some of the bitterness I expressed in the latter, I do love the game and recommend it to anyone who has an interest in The Recent Unpleasantness or to any war boardgamers. As for anyone else, I'd check some videos on Youtube prior to purchase though at $9.99 it's hard to go wrong.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 18, 2020

  A wonderful game! The AI is shockingly good for the game's age. Better even than any AI I've seen in current games! The Historical Campaign will remember what you did in previous battles and it will change what happens in the future! Even if the next mission takes place at the same time chronologically! The morale system, the courier system, and the independent decisionmaking of subordinate officers are all fantastically realistic, without bogging anything down. I used to own this game on disk, until I lost it. I was so happy to find it here on Steam! The only complaint I have with the Steam version is that sometimes the Cursor refuses to appear on startup, but I'm looking into fixing that issue now.