The Ancient Art of War at Sea

The Good
This game had me hooked for years as a kid. It was totally engrossing, which is more than I can say for a lot of newer strategy games. The scenarios were well thought out and often offered the player numerous options. The best was that moment of anticipation when two squadrons would engage, the game would zoom in, and you'd have to make that critical decision in realtime as to how to approach the enemy's line, taking into account the ships involved, wind, damage, opposing commander, etc. The manual was awesome as well. It didn't just tell you how to play the game - it had basically an entire section within the manual illustrating tactics, recountings of famous historical battles, pirates, etc. This game actually got me interested in learning more about old sailing ships...

The Bad
Well after many years mine began to crash - I think that was just because the disk I was using started to become corrupt from so much use (yes this was in the days before most people had hard drives. :) ) The graphics were extremely cheesy too, since it only supported 4-color CGA.

The Bottom Line
An excellent and underrated strategy game, still fun today if you can get past the cheesy graphics.

The Good
I didn't like this game at first, probably because I was hoping it would play similarly to The Ancient Art of War (at land). But this old duck's quack grew on me. It is kinda fun. Broadside your opponent's ship into oblivion. Or try to board and take over a untouched (and therefore fully crewed) merchant ship. The interface is very easy to learn.

The Bad
The computer AI was too dumb. The game would have been a lot more fun if it were harder.

The Bottom Line
This game is fun as is, but the real potential is if they remade this game using modern day sound, graphics, and most importantly, multi-player features.

The Good
Thankfully the blokes at Broderbund were creative enough to introduce the sailor's way of war and not create just another sequel of Ancient Art of War. (Die ye land lubbers!)

Besides being more complex, from a general point of view, it's still similiar to AAoW I. There are still the village and fort concepts but they changed it for ship repairs. The terrain was much more difficult, as hostile waters can actually sink or damage your ship(s).

The battle's are GREAT! Totally real-time, it's the ancestor for real-time ship battles for games such as Pirates! and Star Fleet Command. The game also introduced "fleets" which are a bundle of ships all in one combat. A unique point worth noting is that the makers of the game gave great trust to the player to control multiple ships, with a little help from AI. The great thing is, they made it in such a way that controlling your own destiny creates a greater difference than letting the AI do all the work. This is what games should always be about! Leaving the critical parts of the game to AI is an insult to the history of all computer games!

If ship battles were not enough, they somehow knew we guys and gals of combat wouldn't feel in a proper battle without some blood n' gore. They also introduced melee combat in this game (shall we board'em sah? - Quote from the Asterix Comic). The melee combat occurs when one of your ships 'collide' or ram into another ship, hence the sailors prepare themselves for melee combat. Where AAoW I introduced 3 melee units, AAoW at Sea introduced only 2 melee unit types (if I'm not mistaken). That is the swashbuckler (with yer sword or cutlass) for close range combat (melee) and the musketman for long range combat.

The Bad
There are a couple of things I recall from the game that I considered lacking: 1. If I'm not mistaken you couldn't create your own ships. But you could capture shps though if you wanted to enlarge yer fleet.

1. You couldn't control the number of melee units in your ships, or their type either.

2. There's no formation of combat at melee units. It's pretty much been done for you, unlike AAoW I, where combat formations ultimately decided the fate of a battle. Then again, melee combat was only a secondary form of battle in this game, as you could win the game without boarding any ship, but that would mean you couldn't capture enemy ships either...
   
   The Bottom Line
   This game give yer some sea legs without going into the water!

"It's the Gau...gau...gau...the Gauls!" - Quotation from a Numibian Pirate from the Asterix Comic.