Difficult, but not impossible
Keep fit, wargames are not for everyone, and if you do not have the patience to spend a few minutes – reading it now – to learn the mechanics and some craft trick, it’s best if you leave Field of Glory II , and devote yourself to something else.
Despite the multitude of information and its many facets – the manual in pdf is made up of around 150 pages all in English – Field of Glory II does not succumb to supposition, wanting at all costs to fill every corner with figures, modifiers and infinite pop -up. The cleansing of the game emerges from the tutorial, divided into three battles with the progressive complexity, the path needed to learn the basic movements of the troops, the various types of units, their deployment, and the various phases of the battle.Field of Glory IIis a classic turnkey strategy, each platoon occupies a map box made up of chessboard, has certain action points and is equipped with various attacks, distance or body to body, depending on its typology.
Moving the first steps in Field of Glory II is not difficult at all, especially if you have a bit of experience on the shoulders, but do not be fooled by the immediacy of the basic commands because a whole world is hidden beneath the surface. Field of Glory IIit provides just under a hundred different units, depending on the faction and the reference period, each with its strengths and weaknesses: the guys at Byzantine Games have been good at containing all the necessary information in very few lines, which include, for example, the cohesion and the morale of the troops, their action points, the level of armor and offensive abilities. In the Field of Glory, more than the quality of the armies, counts to capture a winning tactic and in this view plays a foreground role map.
The latter, divided into classic squares, is in fact scattered with strategic points to exploit in its favor to have the best and is one of the main protagonists: sending on a hill heavy cavalry is a means of suicide, while catapults open to field are almost unstoppable, as well as hiding in a dense forest the fearsome fromboliers of the Balears guarantee a considerable initial advantage.
What matters most is how to win: as in the various Total War, no physical elimination of all enemies is required, but to get the best out of a fight is enough to flatten a certain percentage of opponents, always keeping in mind the health of their general, the main pawn of the deployment. The combination of the various conditions of victory, combined with the variables made by the map, drives the mind of the player to work and develop different plans, perhaps to isolate the enemy’s right wing, consisting of the most dangerous troops, to concentrate on the belly springs, much easier to run away.
Along with the greats of history
You may have already understood my way of writing, but Field of Glory II provokes a heavy destabilization of his personality in the player, making him believe he is a real general on the battlefield, but that’s what is beautiful. Field of Glory II is pure strategy, nothing is left to chance and every single move must be carefully weighted: fortunately, there are many visual clues, such as the field of vision or shooting of units, or, they highlight the range of action and influence of the general, so as to avoid heavy false fateful steps.
Clarity of UI is one of the main strengths of Field of Glory II, not so prevalent when it comes to a wargame. The good outcome of the battle depends solely on the strategic ability of the player, who must be good at maneuvering with the cavalry to round off the enemy troops, or by squaring the front of the heavy Macedonian falange, capable of rejecting almost any attack. Assaults, ambushes, defenses of rivers, different formations for each unit, folds, shields: more than a game, Field of Glory II is an ancient war manual and it is virtually impossible to describe here the almost total freedom of action that is on the field.
The development team has left little room for the avalanche, though every hitch is characterized by a percentage – a recall on the board game dice – that emphasizes the chances of winning or defeating, but do not expect any special bits of luck if you decide to face the light infantry with a body of armored boaters. Field of Glory IIis also a short treatise of war history, the 89 units present in the game are well represented by their real counterparts and it is a significant advantage to have some notion of the period of republican Rome at the time of the clash.
Among the various factions, including Rome, the various Hellenistic kingdoms – from Seleucids of Antiochus to Macedonia of Antigono – Carthage, the Shields of the Gauls, and not only, find space for example the war elephants employed by Pirro or Annibale, the heavy katafratti who inflicted one of the few defeats to the perfect Roman war machine in that of Carre or, moreover, the Greek Thureophoros.
Despite the abundance, some maniac of the period under review – read the undersigned – may, however, reveal some simplification too much, as in generic Greek javelists, that perhaps they could become the famous peltas used in almost all of the battles of the Hellenic factions.
