Exploration

The Good
Attractive packaging, rousing CD musical score, and a comprehensive CDROM reference guide to age of sail ship types. That's about it.

The Bad
No input into random map creation, and there is no editor. Unfriendly interface is inferior even to those found in much older games. Unforgiving colony management (structures are permanent and you have no clue as to how useful/productive they will really be until they are built!). Diplomacy is shallow and uninvolving. Ahistorical religion model is suited more to medieval period than Age of Exploration. No explanation is given of the model behind combat resolution. Combat with natives (Indians) is pointless, as you gain nothing from it. Assorted historical inaccuracies (game represents sugar as beets instead of cane, etc.).

The Bottom Line
There are so many other games of this kind (Civilization 1 & 2, Colonization, Merchant Prince, Conquest of the New World, Imperialism 1 & 2) and they are all much better than this one. Exploration looks great on paper, but in reality it couldn't be much worse. It was a very bad game when it was released, and it should be avoided like the scurvy if spotted in a bargain bin today.

The Good
I have played this game since it was released and have not stopped. Played last week in fact. The graphics are really dated and seem to have been colorized with unusual color choices but the basic game is really interesting. You chose to play one or more of 5 European countries which engaged in the exploration and colonization of the world. You play against an AI. You start with a small ship (a caravel) and loot Aztec and Inca cities by transporting your sailors to them. You use the proceeds of this loot to build colonies with mines and plantations and then transport the products back to your home port to sell. You uncover the world by sailing around it until you reveal all.

The Bad
The graphics, though the ship graphics aren't too bad. Also, the land battles are quick and lack detail. If you plan carefully, you can capture enemy ships, though this works primarily with caravels and carracks, and only rarely with more advanced ships like galleons and others as the years progress. Only ran it on Windows 95 and 98 with a command prompt, but was not able to figure out how to use it in DOSbox on a Windows 7 machine, though it is possible if you understand DOSbox, which I am too lazy to learn properly.

The Bottom Line
An exploration and colonization game with includes ships, economic management (easy) and building colony production farms and mines like tobacco, cotton, sugar, gold, silver and iron ore. You can leave the native villages alone (stupid) or buy them with trade goods and then either use the population for emigration to your towns or convert the villages to your towns. You could also attack them (you should if Inca and Aztec for loot.) It is like a more ship-building/sailing/exploration game than Colonization, Civilization or FreeCol, but less stressful and in general easier.