by Tim - November 11, 2003

Following the success of American Conquest, the creators of the widely-popular Cossacks series has brought us "Fight Back", an expansion to the game of discovery, exploration, and invasion of the North American continent. With a seven-month gap between the U.S. releases of the game, much has changed…

A good expansion

Fight Back isn’t a sequel, but an expansion to American Conquest. Like most expansions to real time strategy games, it introduces new nations, units, buildings, campaigns, and missions. The unique thing Fight Back brings to Conquest is a new playing mode: "Battlefield".

The new "Battlefield" playing mode allows the player to not worry about economy or city building and just play head to head with one army against another. Upgrades are selected before the battle starts, and you basically get to play out a large scale battle and use tactics to win, rather than worry about resources and structures.

Although American Conquest included a dozen nations, Fight Back added Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, and Haida to make a total of seventeen playable nations in the game.

Not on par...

With all the 3D real time strategy games being released this year (Rise of Nations, Command & Conquer: Generals, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World to name a few), the graphics in American Conquest: Fight Back aren’t exactly up to speed. It’s using the same engine as Cossacks, which was released during the time that Age of Kings reigned over the Strategy genre. The terrain and unit details aren’t changed at all for the expansion. Perhaps GSC will bring us better graphics with Cossacks II when it’s released.

Still a good soundtrack!

The one thing I have to admit is that Fight Back has as sweet a soundtrack as American Conquest. The musical score is great, and it doesn’t get old. If you like your strategy games to have a good soundtrack, then you can count on GSC Game World to deliver.

As for voice acting and sound effects, they could be tweaked a little but they weren’t really an issue in the game. The one thing that bugged me was the sounds of exploding buildings…it just didn’t sound right.

Not for the Average Gamer.

Fight Back, like American Conquest, isn’t as easy to learn as other strategy games of today like Command & Conquer: Generals and Age of Mythology. After all, its complexity makes it as realistic as possible.

Standing Out

Being the only real time strategy game that extensively covers the early ages of America, from discovery to colonization to the American Revolution, American Conquest is not only accurate in gameplay but also historically. Play campaigns and learn history all the while. Not up for a history lesson? Fight Back can be played via multiplayer through its internal matchmaking service, or you can play single missions or the "Battlefield" mode.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, Fight Back is a sufficient expansion for American Conquest. If you’re a fan of American Conquest or even the Cossacks series I’d suggest checking it out. If you’ve never heard of Cossacks or never played either game, try the demo first. Leave no mistake: Fight Back is no Command & Conquer or Age of Empires.