Zdaniem Fidelio: Colonial Conquest jest niby podobny do Riska z 1985, ale...niestety jest słabo wykonany. Ciężko w ogóle w to grać. Do tego ma podejrzenie wirusa zaszytego w grę. Nie, dziękuję.

Plusy:

+ ciekawa epoka (od czasów kolonialnych do I Wojny)
+ przejrzysta mapa świata
+ sporo nacji do wyboru

Minusy:

- zbyt prosta mechanika
- prostacki model walki
- nieprzejrzysty interfejs
- muzyka rani czasami uszy
- ukryta opcja wyjścia z gry
- irytujące efekty dźwiękowe
- techniczne bugi i jest ich sporo
- podejrzenie wirusa w plikach exe

Komu polecam? / Komu odradzam?

+ polecam fanom kolonialnej epoki
- odradzam graczom szukającym dobrej walki w strategii
- odradzam szukającym rozbudowanych opcji zarządzania

Rada 1:

Chcecie pograć w kolonialną grę? To zagrajcie w Sid Meier's Colonization, albo jeszcze lepiej Empire Total War, która do tej pory jest najlepszą grą strategiczną w epoce kolonialnej, jaka powstała.

Rada 2:

Mój antywirus (McAfee) zaraportował wirusa w plikach wykonywalnych. Uważajcie!

Podobne gry: RISK, Empire Total War

+ Steam Kurator Fidelio de Krytyk: ➥ https://store.steampowered.com/curator/10437106/

The visuals are quite nice, with a lovely boardgame-like map to play on, and nice detailing and backgrounds on the menus. They certainly got their hands on a good artist. What you see in the screenshots is exactly what you get. Unfortunately that is the ONLY thing you get.

What the game promises, and what it delivers, are two very different things. The video on the store page suggests a cunning and strategic game of influence and military control over the uncivilized regions of the globe, but don't be fooled: The game itself plays rather like a game of Risk where you can't see your opponent's pieces and every coastal territory is adjacent.

The game proceeds through 4 seasons each year, with the Spring phase being where you do everything, and the Summer, Fall and Winter being largely wastes of time. Troops can be moved around in every season, but it is only in the Spring that you can perform essential actions such as Espionage, Collect Income, and build troops (which can be used immediately).

Espionage is the ONLY way you have of learning about the world. The stats of all provinces are mysterious to you. That troop numbers might be hidden to you is understandable...but their Income and Victory-Point value as well? It is impossible to make any strategic decisions in the game without espionage, but this can only be done in the Springtime and anything you neglected to scout then remains invisible to you for the rest of the year.

Attacking territories has a strong defender's advantage. The defending troops get to fire first and inflict losses first before the remaining attackers get their chance to fire. In fortified territories the defenders get two rounds in the opening phase of combat, and in industrial centers they fight at double-strength all the time. It is entirely possible to have your entire attacking force be massacred in the first wave if you bring insufficient troops to the fight. But that's a big IF. You see, a player will quickly figure out that if you attack with ENOUGH troops, you can just eat the first wave of fire, and then obliterate the defenders on your turn. Anything less than overkill is wasted lives. The power of an army is proportional to the square of their numbers, and you would be a fool to attack with anything short of a "Stack of Doom".

Optimal play will then result in each player gathering their troops together into a massive army coupled with a massive fleet with which to ferry it to any shore in the world. The game becomes like a blind-folded knife fight. Guided by weak and out-of date intel and random guessing, the armies flail at one another hoping to stab each other's vital territories when they are insufficiently defended, block imagined or anticipated moves, and attempt violent retribution when injured. Against an AI with random moves, it is nothing but a guessing game.

Now though I might fault Argonauts Interactive for any number of game design sins here, a little bit of internet research revealed that this is a re-make of an old SSI title from 1991 also helfully called Colonial Conquest. All of the games sins are in fact ORIGINAL SINS.
correction: Argonauts actually changed the combat formula in this version in a way that negatively impacts the game balance.

The product that Argonauts Interactive is bringing us is a Faithful Re-Creation of that old game. Some praise is due to them for reviving a retro-gaming classic. ...But they don't need all that much more praise, since they already had a successful Kickstarter campaign. And really: if you're going to resurrect a classic game from the '90s, shouldn't you pick one that was actually good?
correction: the original was from the '80s and is in fact decently enjoyable.

What we have is a skilled team who have brought us a broken classic. The original wasn't any good, and so the remake isn't any good. This game has the potential to become good, but this can only happen if the developers abandon their nostalgia and change this into a NEW game.

Update:
I have done some research on the original game, and found to my surprise and pleasure that it did NOT descend into a blindfolded knife-fight. The 1985 SSI classic is a better game than I had been lead to believe. Better than this game in fact. The developers made a mistake in their implementation of the combat system, and this change wrecked the game balance present in the original. A windows-compatible version of the Original can be found here for comparison: http://lightquick.co.uk/coconet-version-1.0-ssi-colonial-conquest-is-back.html

There is still much work that needs to be done before I can honestly recommend Argonauts-Interactive's game.

Nędza nie warta dysku twardego. Trudno to nazwać strategią. Warcaby są sto razy bardziej skąplikowane. Jak ktoś grał kiedyś w karcianą grę "w wojnę", to Colonial Conquest" to prymitywna wersja tej gry karcianej. Rozgrywka w najdłuższej kampanii trwa 20 min po czym można spokojnie grę odinstalować.

Simple, addicting and fun. While this doesn't have the depth of a Hearts of Iron game, it's still a hell of a lot of fun to build massive stacks of armies and steamroll every country that dare stand in your path. It all really plays like a board game, the seasons that limits such actions as spying or subversion to the "RISK" like combat system. It's definitely a good game for those days when you don't feel like spending a whole weekend fighting WW2 in HOI but rather conquering the world in just an hour or two.
P.S. Don't attack the AI too early. Big mistake.
Review and Tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-4liP6LbfI

UPDATE TO THE VIDEO:
Sorry about not mentioning the event system that is in the game, someone clarified for me that there is an event system already set up in it! :) Add that to the pros.

The name of the game and nostalgic but vague memories of the 1985 SSI version gave me high hopes.
Even if it didn’t measure up to my rose-coloured memories, I also harboured optimistic thoughts that it might play a little like a simplified version Victoria 2 in board game form.
What I actually got was a game more similar to a mobile port of RISK.
I realise that a few of the negative reviews have compared this game to RISK which is only partially accurate as there are some tactical considerations for terrain types and fortifications as well as about double the number of territories. But in the end if you have ever played RISK with players whose only strategy is to make a giant hoard and bust loose every few turns then you know how this game plays.
There is really only 1 type* of combat unit (Infantry) and every battle more or less becomes entirely dependent on who has the larger stack, (with only a small consideration for forts and terrain). *(Yes there are ships but they are really only used as transports for your 1 type of land unit; and this is made tactically dull as any coastal province connects to any other coastal province in only 1 turn.) So perhaps slightly more depth than RISK but certainly less than another board game classic like Axis & Allies.
The premise of managing an economy is also enacted too thinly as there are far too few things to spend your money on; infantry, ships, forts, or spies – that’s it. The card collecting strategy in RISK has as much or more depth. Could we not have cavalry, artillery, fort upgrades, both transports and fighting ships, factory placements, research upgrades perhaps leading to aircraft?
Based on the current price of the game $7.99 USD / $10.99 Cdn compared to the play / replay value I cannot recommend this game.
Fun: 4/10
Tactical Depth: 2/10
Historical Value: 2/10
Playability (does it run): 8/10
Replay value: 2/10
Overall: 3/10

This is essentially a remake of an old Microprose game (though another Steam reviewer thinks it is an old SSI title). While I can't recall the name of the game this one seems to be closely modelled after, it was released circa 1985-86. I would load it off of a 5.25" floppy to play it on my dad's Comodore 64 or very early IBM when I was a pimply-faced youth who thought INXS, The Church and U2 were good music. The Church is still ok, I guess.

Anyway, enough nostalgia. You play as one of six countries: the UK, Germany, France, USA, Russia, and Japan. Just as in that old game, the UK is the best team to play, as its units are the most combat effective, but also the most costly. The combat effectiveness of the remaining five countries is roughly in the order I've listed them. While cheap units might be nice when fighiting lots of indigenes, they won't try to invade you. So given that you need to send ships to conquer the whole planet, and each ship is laden with 1,000 troops, troop quality really does matter.

But otherwise the strategy is the same as the old game. It's somewhat like Risk, except troop and ship quality vary by nationality. You can subvert neutral countries, as well as bolster their defenses, and both actions require cash money. Your country's resources are not deliberately upgradeable, but you can build forts. Random events can also improve the productivity of your home regions, or make troops and ships cheaper. Random events can also destroy your foritifcations, eliminate half your forces in a region (though the revolt still leaves you in control of it), and other somewhat pestery predicaments.

WHAT'S NEW?
What does this game do better than the first version? The graphics overall are improved. It also has the ability to scroll in and out the map scale on the fly. Additionally, there is some impassable terrain, usually in mountain ranges, making it more fifficult to blitz across the continents. There might also be an ability to randomize the combat effectiveness of the different countries, but that isn't entirely clear. I'm pretty sure that the four seasons in one year mechanic is new. Not sure if the season actually matters, though, for combat or movement purposes.

OVERALL SCORE:
So, I'd give it a 6.8/10 on the Ontario university marking scheme, which translates into a C+ to USians. Heck, maybe even a 7/10, which translates into a C+/B-. If you want a blast from the past, this will do it. If you can get it on sale, so much the better. I paid 10.99 CAD for it, and I still got a good 6 hours out of it before I wrote the review, and will likely play it again.

A very fun strategy game. While this game isn't too in-depth I feel this is a positive point. We focus on conquering the world and not spending an hour on every battle. It is like playing a Total War game auto-resolving every battle and not having to build anything. As for those people that say you can't do anything but one turn a year, I say move your darn armies fools. My armies move every turn four times a year. At the start of every year I am buying more armies. Once the game gets going a bit I have two or three armies going conquering the world. Navies are purchasable too and will attack with your troops in certain instances as well as fighting other navies. I usually use them for dropping off troops on other continents and when not doing that bolstering the defenses of my homeland. Recruiting is done at two provinces of your starting areas so defending these are crucial. I enjoyed this game for what it is and it is fun and not impossible to get all the achievements in a reasonable time. If you are still not sure if you will like it buy it on sale and try it out.

I am so mixed about this game. When Colonial Conquest first came out on the Commodore 64 (in 1985 - heyoo), it was incredible, to the extent that it remains one of my top games of all time. This version, sadly, pales in comparison. I want it to be good, but, apart from improved graphics (not 30 years' worth, mind you), it is inferior to the original. Which is a shame. Yes I have played a bunch of hours on it (did I mention that the original Colonial Conquest was one of my favourites?) ... but I cannot recommend this in good conscience. The random events are a joke.

It's mindless fun. Certainly worth $5.

This game is actually really fun and I see great potential. Nice music, some things I could ask for though would be more provinces in some places, like Russia. And more in depth diplomacy. More events, the ability to construct factories in conquered regions, war declaration notifiers, peace deals would make the game really good. It's already a very nice game though.

It looked like it should be fun, but wasn't. I hate to run down anyone's creative output, but this game just doesn't offer anything except a version of Risk that doesnt work as well as Risk does. It is simplistic like Risk (simplistic=too simple), then adds the concept of seasons and some other things, but the add-ons increase the tedious work of playing. Never enough boats to transport the troops, or else never enough troops for the huge amount of boats. Nothing happens unless it's Spring. There is no real strategy, just build massive piles of armies and easily (but in a protracted and tedious fashion) conquer the map. Meanwhile the computer AI will do silly things: playing as the USA, Japan kept invading South America while ignoring China/Manchuria. Really? Japan wants Honduras so badly that they keep taking it over while I gobble up their backyard in Asia? I hate to be so negative, but this is barely an actual game. Compounding the problem is a huge quantity of territories, any one of which or small collection of which don't really matter. No territory is very important strategically. If you know Risk, you'll recall how you can block connections between continents and fortify them. In this game, you just build lots of ships and take over any random place on the board...and the computer does the same.

The graphics are attractive, and perhaps the game is simply someone else's cup of tea, but I would avoid.