Make battle plans with General Grant or Robert E. Lee; will your plans work? Will your army succeed at Antietam or will it fall in New Orleans? Do your cannons have range or will their cavalry chew your men to pieces? This game puts you right in the best battles before and during the Civil War.

KABOOM!

Divided Nation allows you to play eight of the most famous battles of the Civil War and other skirmishes before the war such as the Battle of New Orleans. This game puts you on the battlefield of the chosen side and particular battle and lets you command your men to their destiny.

The American Conquest series allows you to play in historical battles for the glory of the Americas. This game tries to allow you to command your troops as a commander would, while gathering resources to continue the fight. The game play for this game is complicated and not for the impatient. First off, there is no tutorial or beginning missions; to understand this game you must be lucky and jump in or read the manual. The manual is written as well as one could be for a game, but if you’re like me you’ll get bored through half of it and just try to play a mission.

There are a lot of complicating factors in the game. Grouping men, having the right commanders, and let’s not forget collecting minerals are all things to worry about. For those history buffs out there who also love games like Starcraft and Warcraft, you’ll feel right at home collecting minerals, for those who don’t know those games, it’ll take a little getting used to. You are required to build the buildings to let you get men and have to have upgrades to get anywhere beyond the most basic of foot soldiers.

Now, after all of the preparations in collecting minerals, making buildings, gathering men in correct formations, and attacking, you’re going to get even more frustrated. The men don’t listen just as the buttons say they will. Attacking looks more like a big stick fight than a war, and it takes forever to finally defeat an enemy stronghold. Not to mention, you need to know the range of attacks for your men and artillery because if you don’t, they’ll end up killing each other.

Seeing the famous battlefields as they are is very nice, as the makers have tried to make them as accurate as possible. This adds a little sense of being on the battlefield, but figuring out the rest will give you a headache.

As for actually getting your game set up, this is easy. You can play a quick mission which gets selected for you, a single mission that you set up, multiplayer, or campaign mode. The multiplayer is just like the single mission, in which you have a specific goal to make. The campaign mission allows you to move through the Civil War as a specific commander and command a famous battle on the field.

Graphics?

Hmmm, graphics, interesting. Well, now is a time to remind those Starcraft lovers out there of your old playing days. These graphics aren’t great. Buildings look okay, troops are generic, and the battlefield looks like a poorly made model. There isn’t much to say here. Turning your graphics card up shouldn’t be a problem here. The troops move smoothly but there are no theatrics here. If you’re looking for a game that is going to blow your mind away with graphics, turn around now.

Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton….

Now, where this game lacks severely in graphics, it semi makes up for in music. The sound quality is good, and the music is period music that you would expect to hear. They give it a little modern twist, but it’s nice. Also, they have warnings for when you’re being attacked, and the music changes when you get into a serious battle. Cannon fire is decently good, but musket fire is un-impressive. To think about it, the horse actually was the most realistic sounding thing in the game, however the good music puts you in a mood to build and fight, and if you’re the Confederates, "Dixie" livens up the spirit during lulls.

Cavalry Attack!

The fun in this game wavers at about the 30-minute mark. Every game takes forever unless you turn the difficulty way down, and sending troops in to the same places seeing the stick men march just gets monotonous. To tell you the truth, at the end I just wanted to see how many men I could get in one long line, even though the formations actually didn’t seem to matter. If you want to win, just overwhelm them with numbers and you guessed it, the game is over.

The buttons for this part are complicated. Hot keys help you in making buildings but figuring out how to attack with the men, and use of the dashboard provided takes time and practice. Just thinking about the buttons will frustrate you. Battles can be historically fought, but the outcome almost always comes down to numbers.

The keys for attacking don’t seem to make the men attack right, or they are just horrible shots. I ended up just sending in mass men on melee attack, and that worked the best.

PlasmaFactor

Here’s about the only cool thing that I wouldn’t have thought about that comes into play in the game. Set cannon down in front of a lot of men, and click "Grapeshot". This button fires hundreds of little balls in the direction of the men being fired at, killing them instantly. Other than that and exploding buildings, not much comes to the imagination in here.

The End?

Alright, here’s the down low. This game takes forever to figure out how to play, forever to win, and doesn’t allot for a ton of variety. If you’re looking into it purely for the historical content and to be able to command as Generals Lee or Grant, then have at it. Being all that’s you expect, this game won’t disappoint. However, if you’re looking for a good looking, hard playing battlefield where cutthroat tactics and where specific placement will surely be the only thing that saves your life, here is not where you want to be. This game just takes into effect too many things to be easy to play, or to allow you to have fun with it. I enjoyed it for the first few hours, but after beating it, I don’t see it as one that will stay on my computer if I need space.