Ultimate General: American Revolution Reviews

TLDR: Its tedious. I wanted a sequel to Ultimate General Civil War. Instead It's got an arduous campaign slog where I have to micromanage every troop, rifle, and bullet in real time. The battles are clunky and although the game tries to bridge the UGCW Ui with a Total War-style RTS, it end up being boring as well, requiring serious micromanagement to ensure troops don't just stand around shooting their allies.

I really like it. The engine does struggle a bit when the whole map is unlocked but it's a fun game.

Too complicated and unplayable unlike the original version which is great fun

I wish this game was like Ultimate Civil War General. This was the entire reason I purchased this game. There are aspects of it I enjoy, however there is way too much going on and little details that you may miss that impact this game. It is too much for the casual gamer to really enjoy how great it is.

Enjoyable game in which there is a lot to do and will keep you entertained. However, if you are the sort of gamer who wants a finished product this is not for you. There is a list of defects as long as my arm and general design flaws that at points made me want to pull my hair out when learning the game. However, I am glad I have persevered as I am enjoying it. I hope they put some serious effort in to bug fixing though.

Barely playable and totally rushed, I don't know what the dev's were smoking to decide to bail on something with so much potential, but they deserve every ounce of criticism and shame for doing so

Have been playing since beta launch and game has only gotten better. It is very layered and complex, which I enjoy. The AI responds differently each time based on the situation which is pretty cool. Challenging and engaging, have lost long hours to this game

If you enjoy the American Revolution and its history, this game scratches that itch that is impossible to find anywhere else. If you're just looking for a strategy game, there are plenty of other games that do it better. It's fun, but half baked. I'm impressed this was released at all, as Game-Labs is located in Ukraine and the war interrupted this project early on. It's an unfortunate situation as this game still requires some work. It plays like a modded version of Total War that was never fully completed.

200 hours in. I don't understand the negative reviews: "the game isn't finished", and so on. It feels finished for a 1.0. I have seen a couple of bugs, like when stopping the creation of a unit midway and then the leader is sometimes duplicated. (i'm sure someone has started a bug list, and I am surprised that the wiki efforts to date have been minimal.) No big deal - just don't do that. The game is very stable in my experience and has never crashed. Having played these games before (UG:CW) I stared on "Hard", and the difficulty seems about right, for both campaigns. The fog of war leads to a few lost battles when caught-out outnumbered, but mostly I can decide to fight on my own terms, when I outnumber them. When the British landed at NY (is that really a spoiler?) I ended up staying up all night due to the adrenaline rush. It feels like the outcomes and progression are historical, that is: (1) it is a long slog and the long game is about outlasting your opponent, and (2) building infrastructure to win popular opinion and to create soldiers and guns and ammo. The British campaign is a long slog, having to fight so many small battles on land (using cavalry to mop up stragglers) and on sea - I'm 50 hours in and only to the middle of 1775. I've not really tried to automate control by giving the AI tasks. The economic mechanics are difficult to understand; there should be a primer available from the developer. What is going on with American sea trade? How much does it cost in pay to keep certain units, and what about Mercenary upkeep? Perhaps this is why the other reviews suggest that the effort as a whole felt rushed or incomplete. Basically I build Printing Presses everywhere, also learning centers if American and merchant stalls if British. One has to use the dedicated commanders to speed this process up.

While it could use some polishing, this has turned out to be one of my favorite games. As a former Naval Action player who felt the open world experience was very lacking in that title, Ultimate General: American Revolution is the merging of economic, political, naval and land action I've been looking for in a game of this time period. For something that tries to combine all of these complexities into one game experience, I've overall been impressed. The land combat in this game is like a blend of UG: Civil War and Empire: Total War. It's an easy system to learn. Combat tends to progress at the same pace you would expect in UG:CW. I like the ability to bunch up infantry units into larger groups for quick deployment, and split them into smaller detachments when the AI attempts to flank you. The AI will consistently try to stretch out your forces to gain the advantage on your flanks, so cavalry and skirmishers play an important role. As expected, the British enjoy an immense advantage in military quality early in the game. Trying to throw a similar number of militia armed with civilian muskets against the battle-tested redcoats frequently ends poorly. This game's campaign is not intended to progress quickly, particularly for the Americans. Successful strategy early on will involve slowing the British down (rather than trying to overwhelm them on the open battlefield), biding your time to purchase or manufacture better weapons, drawing out smaller enemy detachments from larger forces, and choosing your battles wisely. Don't expect to start a new game and just walk into Boston in a couple of weeks. You may perform well in the first tutorial battle at Concord (with friendly reinforcements), but things get much more difficult afterwards. When you think you have sufficient armies, a British invasion force will land and quickly humble you (and it's unlikely you'll ever be properly prepared to fight the elite Hessian forces who land in New York - tough fight!). Establishing a strong economy is the key to to putting you on equal terms with the British regulars several game-years into the campaign, when funding professional fusiliers and military-grade muskets / artillery becomes feasible. For the former Naval Action player, the sea battles and ship models will be familiar. The concepts of keeping the weather guage, maintaining proper range, stern rakes etc. still apply. While the ship combat isn't as detailed as in NA, the format in this game is better suited for managing larger sea clashes. Capturing a ship as a prize, particularly early in the game, can be very rewarding: sell it on the market for needed gold. Or repair it, assign it your own captain, and send it out on its own ventures for your cause. Protecting your own sea trade routes is important in this game, as is raiding your enemy's trade routes and plundering their resources. Ships are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and each will have its strengths and weaknesses. The crews and ships will gain experience over time, with 3 tiers for leveling (much like the system in Ultimate General: Civil War). These tiers can focus your ships on gunnery, rigging or boarding. I've had the most fun pairing the agile / fast (and hard-hitting) Hermione with a heavier 4th rate frigate and taking on British fleets 2 or 3 times larger for an enjoyable challenge. For the Americans, it is difficult to finance a proper navy early in the game to compete with the British. Things become easier later in the campaign if you can gain alliances with the French or Spanish, whose navies will greatly assist in the balance of power on the waters. While this game is no city building sim, I do appreciate being able to build and upgrade the settlements and cities. Produce manufacturing, tax / merchant buildings, shipyards, forts, barracks, schools, colleges, structures that maintain or enhance loyalty, and carefully grow your agriculture facilities to prepare for the brutal winters. On that note-whenever you think you have enough provisions to feed your citizens and army, you probably need 10 times more. The campaign will give large crop yields during the summer and fall seasons, which must be fully taken advantage of. Failure to stock provisions in the warehouses of your cities will result in huge loyalty hits from your citizens (or even rebellion), and desertion in your armies / poor morale. An army marches on its stomach, and you don't want to end up with your own Valley Forge moment. It is easy to focus on mining infrastructure early to acquire badly-needed raw materials for manufacturing, but getting those crops built is an important priority. Aside from infrastructure and buildings that benefit food provisions, you will constantly be short on construction materials (which you need for building anything). Lumber mills are crucial for producing these goods and you'll probably want them in most-if not all-your settlements. The fur trade is particularly lucrative in the campaign, so targeting settlements with these resources is beneficial early. Just try to stay on good terms with the Indian tribes during your hunt for furs, as much of it will be found around their territories. Having a war with the British on one side and the natives on the other is a quick way to get overwhelmed early on. This game is intended to be hard, and most will find it challenging-particularly on the more advanced difficulties. I'm a big fan of games that require you to develop your economy, and this game has a detailed one. While it becomes easier to understand after a couple of campaigns, I found learning how this system works to be the more difficult aspect of the game. A couple of YouTube videos were more helpful in explaining how to understand the basic concepts (unlike many of the in-game tips). While I have enjoyed all of the Ultimate General games, I feel like the area where most Game Labs products falls short is tutorials. Nothing is easily explained or demonstrated. While I often enjoy figuring game mechanics out on my own, many players may find this lack of game education frustrating. Handling the economy may seem overwhelming at first, and understanding what resources you are short on, what your current resource incomes are, and how these resources tie in to manufacturing or trade may be a bit of a head-scratcher. But if you are patient with learning how this game's systems work, it's enjoyable. The gamer who wishes to figure everything out in the first 10 or 20 hours will likely want to pass on this one. For anyone coming from the Ultimate General / Admiral, Total War, Hearts of Iron or Civilization series, this game is a winner. I find it to be a melting pot of features from all these series. I do agree with some reviewers that with the unpolished nature and occasional bugs present, the purchase price could be considered high. Is it expensive for most gamers? Probably. Would I consider it too expensive for the entertainment it provided me? No (particularly if you enjoy history or the Revolutionary War era). None of the issues I have encountered have been particularly negative to the overall game experience. After around 200 hours of gameplay, I've yet to encounter a single crash. As a casual gamer, I'm running an ancient 4690K build with a Titan X GPU, and the game's performance has been pleasantly smooth. I imagine most modern builds would run this without a hiccup. With the future of Game Labs apparently up in the air, it remains to be seen if this game will continue to be developed in the long term. It feels like it's still in the beta stages with places reserved in the game for additional content. It seems like this game is off to a great start based off what I've played so far, which makes me all the more hopeful that it could be even better with future updates. Time will tell.