Review: Europa Universalis II

Reviewed By: Bill Stiteler

Review Computer: 800MHz iMac, 256MB RAM, GeForce 2

Review Date: September 6, 2003

Genre: Real-time strategy

Format: CD

Developer: Paradox Entertainment

Publisher: Virtual Programming

U.S. Distributor: MacPlay

Minimum System Requirements: 333MHz PowerPC, Mac OS 9.0 or Mac OS X, 128MB RAM, and DrawSprocket 1.7.6, InputSprocket 1.7.3, QuickTime v4.0 for Mac OS 9

Network Feature: Yes

3D Support: No

Retail Price: $29.99

Availability: Out Now

Rating: E for Everyone

What if Sid Meier's Civilization were real-time instead of turn based? That's the question that Europa Universalis II tries to answer as it presents a game of world building and world conquest, set among the nations and cultures of the 1600s.

The whole point of a "real time" strategy game, though, is that it eventually becomes a plate-spinning act; trying to organize a war in one area while harnessing your resources in another. And then there's the diplomacy and economic aspects to think about. The game gets around this by fudging the concept of "real time." You can pause to take care of your administrative functions—religious policy, troop deployment plans, and things like that—but you must unpause the game to execute these decisions.

Europa Universalis II (EU2) has all of these aspects, as you take control of one civilization and attempt to build it's strength, capturing territories and building territories while managing your population and governmental policies to make all the fun stuff possible. The playing field is laid out like Risk; nations are divided into parcels of land into which you must move troops to capture from other nations or native peoples. Once you've accomplished that, you can start building the infrastructure of the territory so it can produce trade and units.

If all this sounds a lot like Civilization, well, it only sounds that way. EU2 has its own groove, and one that'll take you a long time to get into. It incorporates a lot of complex themes into the gameplay, giving different map views and simple interfaces for issues like diplomacy, religion, trade and the like, and while there is a multi-section tutorial to walk you through the game's interface and style of play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time to learn the nuances that make this possible.

And I'm not sure if it's worth it. EU2 strikes me as one of those games that gets all the elements perfect, yet never manages to come together as a great game. For one thing, it feels very sterile. Watching the battles, the trade, the diplomacy, I never once had any sort of attachment to the outcome. I never cared about my armies, priests or diplomats; they were just numbers...abstractions. I felt like one of those disembodied Star Trek brains, bidding Quatloos on the newcomer. If my army goes into battle, I want to feel like I'm in command of it, whether in a specific sense like the Myth or Age of Empires games give, where you can micro manage individual troops, or like the Civ games do, maneuvering representations of units around a space. But with EU2, it's like watching the NASDAQ scroll by on the airport television. Gaul down 25... Welsh up against invaders by 2... I get the feeling this should be important, but I can't connect it to anything.

The game might appeal to history buffs; the game is set in the real world, and the territories are accurately named. There are 500 historical missions and over 200 historical events. But frankly, I care a lot less about the lifestyles of men who used lace handkerchiefs and wore powdered wigs, and more about my own egomaniacal blood lust for world conquest. So, the historical accuracy of the game wasn't a big sell of me. Oooh! Look! There's Dover, right where it's supposed to be!

Apparently a lot of attention was paid to getting the uniforms of the troops right, but for me, it's just different levels of buffoonery as I watch the health bar go down. Which is another thing; until you invest large amount of time necessary to learn the ins and outs of the game, it's hard to know exactly what you must do to be successful. The tutorial explains how to move your troops across the sea, but gives no hint as to what your minimum garrison in a new territory should be. I wasted a lot of time reconquering territories because my armies kept getting wiped out by insurgent forces. A tutorial that walked you through a simple game, rather than just explaining the concepts, would have been helpful.

For hard-core wargamers, however, this may be just what the doctor ordered. The game presents the abstractions of Old World exploration, conquest and government in surprising depth. It just never made me care.

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