Yeah.... um, kinda boring spending half your time waiting for the little ships to chug chug chug around the screen. Add in wierd ships that suddently get three movement phases, really odd damage effects, and a REALLY irritating sound score and you're going to want to avoid this one.

Hello and welcome to my review of Ironclads: American Civil War. Where do I begin with this piece of crap. First things first, a key feature that is in every modern game is not there, an options menu. Without the ability to a just sound, resolution, and other normal options, this game is a pain as the music is way too loud. When you start a level, you have to click a button to begin loading, I sat there for 7 minutes thinking somthin was wrong with the game, I would understand if you had to begin the level, but to begin loading, and it doesnt help that the sound stops completely so you think the game is frozen. Then when you get into the level there is no tutorial what so ever, nothing that tells you what to do or how to do it. This wouldnt be a problem if there werent so many damn commads to give. All you d know is that there is enemy ships near by and you have to destroy them, thats it, thats all they tell you. The ships move in a stiff path that either curves way more than you wanted to or is to straight, attacks have bare minimum animation. Bottom line, this game sucks, and the only thing that keeps me from giving it a 1/10 is the fact that is the Civil War, and I got it for 90% off ($ .99). Ironclads: American Civil War gets a 2/10, dont buy this game, it has no redeeming qualities.

It's not good.

It looks bad, there is only music on the title screen (which is one track and repetitive) and none in the game, there is some basic sound effects in the levels but it gets annoying hearing the sounds of the ships over and over. There is a 'help' screen to learn the controls but it's a bit confusing at first. The game is slow and boring. It crashes a lot. There are missions where you need to destroy coastal batteries but you have to come very close to the shore to get a shot - and if you go too close to the shore you run aground - it's very frustrating. Need to save the game a lot because of things like that as well as regular crashes. NO options - no resolution, volume or other options menu... games take literal hours just to complete one level, due to the enemy ships moving at the same speed as yours during the AI's turn (so it's not like total war where you can speed up the AI movement turn etc). Hitting anything is very random, it can have 75%+ chance to hit and you might miss 3-4x. 'Best' way to play to win 'easier' (but taking even longer to play) is to save regularly and cheese it by firing and reloading the save file each time until you get a hit, and then saving the game again after each hit. AI is stupid and can run aground or ram their own ships. It's not hard to beat once you understand the mechanics. Price is way too high for this level of quality, and the fact that the game is now 14 years old. The package including 'all the Ironclad' games is similar price to a AAA title... insane. DO NOT BUY. It's sad that there isn't a good game featuring Ironclad / ACW ship combat, this definitely isn't good. I wasted a night playing it just to suss it out so you don't.

There's a sequel, the gameplay looks totally different but it has better reviews. It seems to be more of a strategy game rather than just tactical ship battles like this one.

Another reviewer says there is a HD patch that was once available, but the link / developer's website doesn't exist anymore.

I don't recomend buying this game. Don't buy it unless it is below $2.00. It's pretty bad. The gaphics are horrible. The gameplay was evan worse. It wouldn't let me finish my turn every now and then. I had to re-load the game over and over. There ais no way to change the controls or sound level. On the first level it just threw you in the game. It took me 2 hours to complete the first level. The only reason i kept playing was because I was determined to beat the first level. I read the other reviews and ignored them and thought, it's the Civil War it can't be that bad. I love to study the Confedercy and I am a proud Alabama patriot. The game overall was horrible. Just because it was the Civil War I would have to give it a 2/10. The game producers could have made it a really good game. If they had just made the first level on 20 turns at the maximum ,tried to fix the mechanics, and added buildings or forts to the game. I see what they where going for but they failed. (Although I did enjoy watching and moving my little ironclad and gunboats for about 10-15 minutes. Than I realized this game would last for a long, long time.)

Yet another Russian shovelware. Released at the same exact day with Ironclads: High Seas and using the same exact assets. Which means that it looks almost identical. Surprisingly, though, while Ironclads: High Seas felt very scumish with lack of proper campaign and the most basic features, this one is more like an updated version of it. The real-time combat was replaced with the turn-based one (which, ironically, makes the game way, way more faster, even though it's still slow as heck), there are two “proper” campaigns with a series of missions for both North and South (there are seven missions for each side, if I'm not mistaken), every mission is somewhat different, etc,

Unfortunately, like I've said, it's still on shovelware level. And not only because Totem Games blindly re-used the assets of their other cheap game. You can easily see that everything here was done with the only purpose – to create something that will count as a proper product and therefore won't be removed from Steam. Nobody cared to actually make something good. Even though battles are technically different now and there are even islands with the guns on them now, all in all, it's the same exact thing again and again. “Survive and destroy the enemy”, repeat. Only the number of the enemies, their ships and their placement will change. No interesting goals, or conditions. The battle themselves still suck too. Almost exactly like they did in High Seas, only now you'll need to manually fire every single weapon. Which gives you more control (in High Seas your only choices were to shoot, or not to shoot), but also feels pretty annoying. Just because there's no auto mode and you'll need to click on every single gun and then choose the target for it every single turn. Makes the game even slower.

In other words, it's pretty much the same dull, empty and boring experience. American Civil War feels like a finished version of High Seas, but that fact doesn't make it much better. Even though the game is heavily moddable (you can edit every single ship and every single gun in the game with just a basic notepad), it still doesn't worth it. Just because the gameplay itself feels like nobody ever expected you to actually play the game for more than five minutes. Wasting your time and money on something like this? Feels like a crime. Dixi.

Bad interface, bad graphics, bad gameplay. I though the next gen Ironclad games (Chincha Islands, High Seas, Schleswig War, Anglo-Russian War) would be better. Well, they're almost good ones, but NOT enough.

Ironclads American Civil War HD Edition Official Steam Patch.

Originally developed and re-imagined in high definition by Totem Games.

1. download the self-extracting patch http://www.totemgames.ru/Totem_Games_IACW_HD.exe (created with 7zip, virus-free).
2. extract to "<Steam Installation Path>/SteamApps\common\Ironclads American Civil War", overwrite files where needed and you're done.
3. start game.

Just a bad game with completely outdated graphics, no depth, no fun to play out all.

Interesting maneuver and fire type game that made me pull out my old Ironclads wargame from Yaquinto Publishing back in the 80s. Promising start..curious to see how the other games expand on what has been started in this initial effort.

No options menu, no skirmish mode, no tutorial. I go, you go type turnbased gameplay isn't suitable for naval combat. Very very very bad game. It's bad, awfull, did i say it's bad? This actually is one of the worst games i ever played.