Of all the major conflicts in history, the American Civil War is one of the top contenders for the Lack of Loving Award in the category of video games. While it was far and away the most devastating conflict the United States ever fought in (It is estimated that the American casualty numbers from the Civil War are greater than the combined casualties in the rest of this nation's 270 year history, where the United States fought in a major war roughly every 10 years.) the Civil War simply never really garnered much attention in the video game community, where World War 2 tends to take all the efforts of anyone building a war game. Honestly, I am not quite surprised.
Conflict in that period and for the previous 300 years were terribly boring affairs. Wars were still being fought with large masses of troops lining up, facing each other from 100 yards out, then firing at each other and hoping one side simply hit more of the other. Unit types were limited to infantry, cavalry, and artillery with a very limited naval engagement to go along with it. Trying to put together a decent Civil War game in my head is a rough attempt. Real time strategies would be dull as you would just face guys at each other to wail on one another, the naval battles the same. Turn-based would also be dull as you would only have three types of units to play with.
Even with the huge task ahead of them, Mad Minute Games and Paradox Interactive decided to tackle the idea of a good Civil War game in their title Take Command 2: Second Manassas. To do this, they chose to tackle the game as a tactical real time strategy.
Second Manassas is a full range 3D RTS. The game is played out in a battle map that you can move around in full 3D, rotate, get close, pull out, etc. Take Command is built around giving your units orders and maximizing your position. Honestly, this system works out brilliantly as it not only keeps the authentic feel of the Civil War period, but it actually makes marching lines of troops at one another entertaining.
Take Command works around giving orders to brigades, divisions, and even corps. Brigades are made up of around 1,400 men or so (give or take depending on size), but they are graphically made up of a 40x2 line of men, so you're not going to get the Rome Total War type of on-screen troop size (though it does get close to it). Divisions are made up of 2-8 brigades and corps of 3-5 divisions. Basically, trying to keep all of this in check gets daunting.
The key to winning a Civil War battle is position. Get the high ground, get the more defensible position, and put your artillery in a place where it can do the most damage. Doing this with 50,000 men is trouble indeed, and doing it without any form of electronic communication makes it a monumental feat that truly makes one respect the skill of people like Grant and Lee back in the day.
To facilitate this, you're given a set of commands that allow you to move and position the corps level, division level, and brigade levels individually. The problem is, keeping track of everything at the brigade and even division level will prove to be a tough work of micro-management. It is safe to say that keeping your distance at the corps level is preferable, and the game does give you a few tools to play with such as mass unit positioning and using courier riders to deliver orders. The bad thing is trying to mold this sprawling force into a cohesive unit in the days radios did not exist becomes a chore. Units, brigades, and even entire units will fall out of position. Troops will tire, panic, and even break ranks and run. Lower level officers will frequently ignore your orders and go off and do their own thing. The Civil War was pure chaos, and boy, is it ever fun.
If this all seems complicated, fear not. Second Manassas includes an incredible tutorial that eases you into the command of brigades, divisions, artillery, and then up to corps level. Furthermore, the battle system is also well set up to make sure you are fully familiar with the way the game works before unlocking further, and more difficult, battles down the line. Second Manassas does a brilliant job of easing the player into the mass intricacies and difficulties of waging war on such a massive scale.
The environment could have been better utilized though. Wheat fields, while they slow your troops down considerably, offer no notable protection or bonuses to them. Other environment features, such as walls and fences, act as if they are just painted into the scenery and have no behavior factors or modifiers. They don't give your troops a place to take cover behind nor do they even slow them down. Even buildings don't do much to prevent incoming artillery from being blocked or even really hinder face-to-face infantry combat.
Another problem is the pacing of the game. While Second Manassas does offer a fast forward feature, moving units around the field to meet the enemy can take a while. Players should expect to spend a good amount of nothing but dueling artillery before infantry units actually clash in the field.
With all this in place there is one thing that does tend to grind the fun to a halt: loading. That is right, the loading is absolutely horrendous. While, once a battle does load it runs smooth as silk, but the time it takes to get there is a journey in and of itself. The very first time I loaded up a battle was the brigade level tutorial. The game then spent then next three minutes loading up the tutorial. All the while I heard my Playstation laughing hysterically from inside my closet, telling Second Manassas it had some tips to speed things up. The load times don't get much better, though fortunately they don't get much worse either. Load times ranged from 2.5 to 3.5 minutes, which is around 2-3 minutes too long, given that I am not generally willing to wait more than Half-Life 2 level load times, or 30 seconds, to get into a game.
The load times go further into the absurd given the graphical nature of the game. While the maps are humongous, and I am not exaggerating when I say that, the visuals are somewhat built around a combination of a primitive 3D engine and 2D sprites. The world itself is 3D because you can pan and move around in a 3D environment and some of the world, like trees and buildings, are also in 3D. Everything else is a 2D sprite pasted on top. All of the soldiers are 2D in feel, though they are positioned creatively to simulate 3D, and other parts of the game, like field of wheat, are nothing more than painted textures on the ground. The wheat does change your movement, but the soldiers never seem to actually disappear into it. Even other things like walls and fences look like textures as well.
The sound is well done though, as it is with just about all of the titles Paradox Interactive is involved with. The gunfire and artillery sound authentic, the shouting orders and screams of men also gives the world an excellent faire. The rattle of wooden wagons and the tromping of mass troop movements further add to the authenticity of the game. One big thing that Paradox games usually have, excellent music, isn't really present and accounted for in Second Manassas. The battles have no ambient music and the only ambient sounds are natural ones. While realism in this type of game is to be strived for, stripping the ambient music out tends to have a negative effect on the gameplay experience.
The replay of Second Manassas is pretty good. It takes a while to get through the campaign battles and they are no picnic to beat either. After that, you can take on a number of custom built battles using the Open Play option. The Open Play section lets you pick army, leaders, battles, conditions, size, and length of your battles. This opens up a huge level of replay to the gamer.
Ultimately, Take Command: Second Manassas manages to pull off a top quality Civil War military strategy game. Its brutal realism and tough tactics make it a must own for a strategy gamer who is getting sick of the same old fare being hawked out by other companies. Unfortunately, the game does take a patient gamer as the loading and pacing can get a little rough, but it is well worth it given the degree of strategy required to play this thing.
