Call to Arms

The Good
A good strategy game, which is simple enough for anyone to understand, & which holds your interest for at least a short while. The CGA graphics do a good job, showing nice maps for Europe & Scotland. Choices on how many enemies & the randomisation of the armies also helps. Even has a nice tune on completing a mission.

The Bad
The main drawback to the game is the long term interest. Despite choices in setup & two scenarios once you gain an idea of how the game plays you can soon beat the computer, though playing another human could be different. Having one skill level doesn't help in this.

The Bottom Line
If you are looking for an early PC game that is fun, strategic, easy to get into, & doesn't involve learning intricate rules this is a good game to play in between other things. The two scenarios involve a modern one of Europe between up to four players & one based in 1750 Scotland which is unusual. Would have been a good game to have had in 1982, but seems to have not been widely released & only for the PC.

The Good
The game is simple strategy game, or more sophisticated board game. Both statements are valid. As I'm not big strategy games player, I liked how game was straightforward with getting into action. The graphics is good, taking into account game's age (in that year when it was released, there were not much games on PC with solid graphics).

But maybe the best part was how I got hooked on the game. It took me several games against computer, until I figured out, how to beat him. And every time I lost, I had that nice feeling: "I'll be back, next time I'll win". That feeling is what makes a game good game. Compared to other board games from that era, it took me more time to figure out good strategy, so computer player turned to be quite formidable opponent.

The Bad
Nothing much to object. Probably most annoying was cycling through countries. You can cycle only in one direction. When I wanted to attack from e.g. France, but I pressed cycle key one more time, by error or haste, I had to cycle all my countries around, to get back to France. And solution would be simple. Just provide cycle-backward key. And probably, if you finally figure out good strategy against computer, then you'll be winning again and again, so once winning over computer, replayability goes a bit down. But there's still hot-seat mode, to play with your friends, which can make for very interesting battles.

The Bottom Line
I played several games from 1982 in my "PC retro gaming" sessions, and this one I liked most. Give it a try, you'll get hooked on the game, at least, until you win over computer for the first time. One game session is not particularly time consuming, which is also plus point for me.