Conquest of the New World: Deluxe Edition

The Good
Conquest of the New World begins with excitement and ends with it. It grabs the player's attention and refuses to let it go, offering in-depth exploration, management, combat, and diplomacy. The story line is simple: a re-creation of the exploration and settlement of the North American continent.
The turn-based gameplay fits very well with the overall flow of the game, and also gives a chance (on slower machines) to read very interesting tidbits from the mid-turn "newspaper" that is displayed while the computer calculates the other player's moves. The graphics are very well-done, and the sound is incredible (not only in quality, but in delivery - as you view different portions of the areas of the new world, the sound effects reflect the changes in scenery). There is a whole separate combat portion of the game in which battles are fought, with very specific rules and tactical advantages (this is fun to play on its own, just for a little excitement). The game offers much re-play value, with a different "world" being generated every time, options to play as the europeans or native americans, and the Combat Demo. The game settings are very flexible, allowing for many different styles and methods of gameplay. It has network capability, but I never found anyone else who had the game!

The Bad
In the original version, there was one very obnoxious bug, which resulted in a complete inability to move units later on in the game. Whether or not this has been fixed, I don't know. Also, the diplomacy aspect of the original didn't operate as it should have, but it seemed impact the course of the game very little.

The Bottom Line
In general, this title is fantastic if you're into turn-based strategy and tactics. It's a real sleep-killer (I've done several all-nighters with this game).