Aevum Obscurum

When it's difficult to reign supreme over a few competitors, world domination seems a laughable goal. Instead of putting the world at your fingertips, Aevum Obscurum falls far short of its ambitions and reveals itself to be just another mediocre Risk wannabe.

The game charts ancient and mediaeval wars for European and Middle Eastern supremacy through turn-based strategy much in the style of the classic boardgame. You control an empire of your choosing, recruiting armies for massive battles in the hopes of dominating your opponents and seizing as much territory as possible.

Scenarios include the Punic Wars and duels between ancient empires, though these wars play out on the same expanded European map. Victory comes as a result of accumulating 100 points, which is done by annexing enemy territory. The seat of your empire makes some difference in how you go about achieving this, but for the most part the strategy remains consistent.

Simply put, it's a matter of flooding territories with military units. Strategy plays a minor role, guiding you to attack one territory over another, but you're rarely pressed by the computer into contriving complex plans. Instead, you're able to effortlessly recruit units and then send them into battle with taps of the screen.

The problem is not that Aevum Obscurum is easy so much as that it lacks depth. Hard and Extreme difficulty levels bump things up, but this doesn't change the fact that the game is fundamentally shallow.

Fortifications and towers can be built to support your military efforts, boosting defence and increasing surveillance, though they're completely unnecessary. Enemies are so effortlessly routed that you're better off spending cash on recruiting units than on static structures.

Perhaps if multiplayer had been implemented from the get go, Aevum Obscurum would be a mildly compelling package. It's wholly missing here, vaguely promised in some future update. That alone takes it out of the fray, leaving this well-intended game as nothing more than another failed attempt to recreate Risk.