Game Reviews

Rebels and Redcoats II - Almost a revolution

Star onStar onStar onStar halfStar off
Get
Rebels and Redcoats II - Almost a revolution

As a British gamer, I delight in re-fighting the American Revolutionary War.

Think of all the disasters we might have averted if we'd won. They'd be no "International English" and no leaving the vital letter U out of lots of words.

There's another reason I was happy to see a sequel to last year's Rebels and Redcoats. It was almost a very good game. All it needed was some AI improvements and a slew of minor bug fixes.

This sequel has received the makeover it needed. The result is a fine strategy game, which may prove a little too meandering for some.

Deep

The Rebels and Redcoats series are iOS versions of venerable tabletop wargames. The sort you play with paper maps and fiddly cardboard counters.

You'd be hard pressed to believe that given the makeover their digital counterparts have had. Units march into life on your screen. Gunshots ring out of the speakers. You can zoom in and out, an essential feature for some of the bigger maps.

If you've played some of this studio's previous strategy games from the age of rifles, you might think this was more of the same.

You have infantry and cavalry, artillery and leader units. They have a numeric strength value to indicate their size and a rank to indicate their training. You can change formation, and order them into hand to hand or rifle combat as you choose.

The difference is that here, those choices actually matter.

Leave your infantry in column formation and they might be fast when marching on roads but they'll be canon fodder in combat. Artillery can devastate targets but will collapse if fought in hand-to-hand combat by other units.

Wide

New players may have a hard time learning to master the strategic depth in the game, however. The tutorial is is bare bones and rather repetitive.

The good news is that all the information you need is available. You just need to mine the menus to find it.

There's also a new combat odds calculator that pops up when you select a target. It shows you what the modifiers are, such as terrain and troop quality, and the likely outcome. Not only is this useful in the heat of battle, it's a great learning aid.

You can put your new strategy skills to the test across eight scenarios. All have the option to play as either side. In theory that gives you sixteen battles to fight. In practice a few of them are almost unwinnable for one side or the other.

Still, it's an extra challenge if the three difficulty settings aren't enough for you. Changing these levels seems to result in you facing more or less opposition.

The AI doesn't get better or worse, but its default level should be tough enough for most players.

Wet

Some of the later scenarios on offer are sizable. They have significant turn limits and lots of troops, often spread out over a large map.

You can end up spending quite a lot of time doing very little in these games. Massing and reorganising your troops for breakthrough attacks, that sort of thing.

It's material that will be bread and butter to certain historical gamers, but may prove tedious to more casual customers.

The price reflects that - this is a premium product designed for hobbyists. Unlike its predecessor, the quality of this game is just about good enough to justify the cost.

It's lacking multiplayer though, which is a big omission at this price point. As a result, the game doesn't have the replay value it should have. Once you've been through the campaigns, you're pretty much done.

Still, this is a good treatment of an under-gamed conflict. If you want to daydream about not losing the colonies or the extra syllable out of Aluminium, this is your go-to title.

Rebels and Redcoats II - Almost a revolution

A good and challenging treatment of an unusual subject, but lacks some of the polish you'd expect at the price
Score
Matt Thrower
Matt Thrower
Matt is a freelance arranger of words concerning boardgames and video games. He's appeared on IGN, PC Gamer, Gamezebo, and others.