1503 A.D.: The New World

The Good
Well, the music's nice and some parts of the game seem interesting. It's got an interesting starting cut scene, and interesting little interludes between missions. Wolves hunt deer, even though the deer just sort of stand there while they're doing it, which is a nice touch. Also, animals seem to have some sort of lifecycle, and suddenly drop dead at random times.

The Bad
It's extremely complicated, but terrible at explaining that complication. It has a bare-bones tutorial and an even smaller manual that comes with the game. Then it's got an in-game "help" section that just gives a line or two about the topic, like "Gold coins are the currency used in 1503 A.D. Mining gold doesn't give you gold currency". How that's supposed to help, I really don't know. But I do know how aggravating the game is. In my first two tries at the game, I ran out of Tools before getting the necessary level and buildings to get more tools, and with no one to Trade with (you're supposed to trade with someone, but you end up just giving them Salt in return for nothing), I got caught in a catch-22, unable to continue with neither Tools nor the means to make Tools, and had to restart. On the third try I finally got Tool-making buildings, and things were looking up. Then I ran out of money. I loaded a game just after I started making Tools, but for the life of me, just couldn't stop my money from slowly trickling down to nothing. Not even shutting-down, then destroying all non-essential buildings requiring upkeep money stopped the downward flow of money. Worst part is, I didn't really know what to do. There's no Money Flow screen, like you might have in Civilization or Age of Wonders that shows what's draining money and where you're getting money from, and the tutorial, manual, and in-game help doesn't even mention money beyond simply that Gold Coins are the in-game money, so I really didn't know what to do. And all this is just on the first level! I'd hate to think what later levels might be like.

On top of that's the extreme nonsense of the game. You supposedly sailed to the Caribbean. You're in this area with a bunch of islands. But for some reason, it's snowing on the northern islands and it’s desert on the bottom ones. Near the bottom are Africans, not slave Africans but wild ones, and most boggling of all, to the east of your first colony is a colony of Mongols. And not just Native Americans mistakenly referred to as Mongols. I'm talking the steel-using horseback-riding Chinese-killing juggernauts that forged the largest empire in the world while Europe was in the High Middle Ages, and then disintegrated about 2 centuries before the game takes place. What the bloody heck are Mongols doing in The New World? And why are they allowed to take my Salt and give nothing back?

Ship cannons are unrealistic, the cannonball slowly exiting the cannon well after the cannon's fired. Increased number of cannons on ships simply decreases the delay time until your next shot, instead of being able to fire all the cannons on one side of your ship at once. To top that off, the cannonballs explode when they hit the other ship. Cannonballs of that time period were all solid shot cannonballs, not shells, and designed to just splinter and punch holes in the enemy ships. Then there are other little things, like the deer and wolves walking around your town like they own the place. Plus the time scale is really out-of-joint. During a mission supposed to take a few weeks, maybe a year at maximum, you see the lifecycle of trees, crops, and animals cycle over and over. By the middle of the first level, you should have died of old age, which would save you some aggravation anyway.

The music, while very good, is sporadic. It sort of just starts up and stops willy-nilly, even when you’re just looking around your town. It’s even worse when you get near another settlement, and music keeps switching between the music of the natives and your regular music. Plus, though it looks like there’s a good selection of music, the game is so long and slow it soon gets repetitive. I’ve probably already heard the Scarborough Fair song a dozen times, and I just started playing last week.

Finally, in the start cut scene, someone gets splashed by water, but it looks like someone dumped a bucket of mineral oil all over their head. Such is the state of this game's starting 3D animation.

The Bottom Line
It’s very overrated game, not worth the $10 you'll need to buy it. It's got a few nice things that at least whet your appetite for a pretty cool game early on. Then you realize how needlessly complicated and nonsensical the game is, not to mention its slow pace. After spending 10 minutes waiting to get enough wood, bricks, and tools to build what you want, building it, then realizing your money's going down now because of the upkeep, and there's no way to speed up or slow down the game, you start to realize how boring the game is. Nothing happens very fast, and nothing gives you a sense of accomplishment enough to offset the slow pace and the terrible aggravation this game gives you. If you were in a waiting room, and had to choose between playing this game and reading a Sears catalog, I'd suggest the Sears catalog. At least that would be simpler, more exciting, and more entertaining than this game.