Ironclads: American Civil War Reviews

Of the various Totem games in this series (Ironclads collection), I found this one the most playable. I believe this was the first one they issued. The interface allows the ships to be separated into individual squadrons. While historically inaccurate, it renders the game much more playable, plus helps illustrate just why ships of this era used the line tactics. Later games of this series only allow grouping the ships, and once a ship is heavily damaged, it (uncontrollably) breaks off. Whilst very realistic, also very frustrating (Hey! I’m gonna go get sunk by running past the main battle group). The projected path feature is really nice, and allows you fair control of the course. The various armaments display when a shot is available, albeit for a split second sometimes. Pausing the ship motion is controlled by clicking icons on the display panel, and judicious use of saved games. The data displayed and ship information is very detailed, and appears fairly accurate. The same applies to the ship names. The models are very well done, and looks like a lot of work and research went into them. I can’t believe other reviews complaining about lack of animated crew jumping about! Really? Overall, I believe this is a fun game and enjoyed it. This was a great work of programming and modelling. Other reviews need to cut Totem some slack – I don’t see any Americans making anything like this. It very much reminds me of the Yaquinto boardgame Ironclads, with some similar elements of gameplay. Recommendations for the Totem staff: apply this control interface to the later games in the series. It was very well done here. Also, muting the soundtrack would be nice. отличная работа!

MAJOR LEAGUE POS. 3 or 4 Crashes to Desktop per night, and am running on 32 Windows XP, old Direct X9, old hardware from the era, so, it can't be "...cause you're running it on Windows7 or up.".

Game is useless junk, spent last half hour just trying to end turn, kept getting error message saying to complete movement for all shipsfirst. I had it just refused to recognize it, clicked on all ships clicked on move button. Also game is rigged against player. The other side move several times as far, canstop infront of you fire then move on while you can barely move an unknown distance and can't fire as you pass right in front of enemy. The guessing which guns on able to fire on a ship is messed up also. Delete time.

No options menu, no skirmish mode, no tutorial. I go, you go type turnbased gameplay isn't suitable for naval combat. Very very very bad game. It's bad, awfull, did i say it's bad? This actually is one of the worst games i ever played.

Ironclads American Civil War HD Edition Official Steam Patch. Originally developed and re-imagined in high definition by Totem Games. 1. download the self-extracting patch http://www.totemgames.ru/Totem_Games_IACW_HD.exe (created with 7zip, virus-free). 2. extract to "/SteamApps\common\Ironclads American Civil War", overwrite files where needed and you're done. 3. start game.

Interesting maneuver and fire type game that made me pull out my old Ironclads wargame from Yaquinto Publishing back in the 80s. Promising start..curious to see how the other games expand on what has been started in this initial effort.

Yet another Russian shovelware. Released at the same exact day with [b]Ironclads: High Seas[/b] and using the same exact assets. Which means that it looks almost identical. Surprisingly, though, while [b]Ironclads: High Seas[/b] felt very scumish with lack of proper campaign and the most basic features, this one is more like an updated version of it. The real-time combat was replaced with the turn-based one (which, ironically, makes the game way, [i]way[/i] more faster, even though it's still slow as heck), there are two “proper” campaigns with a series of missions for both North and South (there are seven missions for each side, if I'm not mistaken), every mission is somewhat different, etc, Unfortunately, like I've said, it's still on shovelware level. And not only because [b]Totem Games[/b] blindly re-used the assets of their other cheap game. You can easily see that everything here was done with the only purpose – to create something that will count as a proper product and therefore won't be removed from [b]Steam[/b]. Nobody cared to actually make something good. Even though battles are technically different now and there are even islands with the guns on them now, all in all, it's the same exact thing again and again. “Survive and destroy the enemy”, repeat. Only the number of the enemies, their ships and their placement will change. No interesting goals, or conditions. The battle themselves still suck too. Almost exactly like they did in [b]High Seas[/b], only now you'll need to manually fire every single weapon. Which gives you more control (in [b]High Seas[/b] your only choices were to shoot, or not to shoot), but also feels pretty annoying. Just because there's no auto mode and you'll need to click on every single gun and then choose the target for it every single turn. Makes the game even slower. In other words, it's pretty much the same dull, empty and boring experience. [b]American Civil War[/b] feels like a finished version of [b]High Seas[/b], but that fact doesn't make it much better. Even though the game is heavily moddable (you can edit every single ship and every single gun in the game with just a basic notepad), it still doesn't worth it. Just because the gameplay itself feels like nobody ever expected you to actually play the game for more than five minutes. Wasting your time and money on something like this? Feels like a crime. Dixi.

I don't recomend buying this game. Don't buy it unless it is below $2.00. It's pretty bad. The gaphics are horrible. The gameplay was evan worse. It wouldn't let me finish my turn every now and then. I had to re-load the game over and over. There ais no way to change the controls or sound level. On the first level it just threw you in the game. It took me 2 hours to complete the first level. The only reason i kept playing was because I was determined to beat the first level. I read the other reviews and ignored them and thought, it's the Civil War it can't be that bad. I love to study the Confedercy and I am a proud Alabama patriot. The game overall was horrible. Just because it was the Civil War I would have to give it a 2/10. The game producers could have made it a really good game. If they had just made the first level on 20 turns at the maximum ,tried to fix the mechanics, and added buildings or forts to the game. I see what they where going for but they failed. (Although I did enjoy watching and moving my little ironclad and gunboats for about 10-15 minutes. Than I realized this game would last for a long, long time.)

Hello and welcome to my review of Ironclads: American Civil War. Where do I begin with this piece of crap. First things first, a key feature that is in every modern game is not there, an options menu. Without the ability to a just sound, resolution, and other normal options, this game is a pain as the music is way too loud. When you start a level, you have to click a button to begin loading, I sat there for 7 minutes thinking somthin was wrong with the game, I would understand if you had to begin the level, but to begin loading, and it doesnt help that the sound stops completely so you think the game is frozen. Then when you get into the level there is no tutorial what so ever, nothing that tells you what to do or how to do it. This wouldnt be a problem if there werent so many damn commads to give. All you d know is that there is enemy ships near by and you have to destroy them, thats it, thats all they tell you. The ships move in a stiff path that either curves way more than you wanted to or is to straight, attacks have bare minimum animation. Bottom line, this game sucks, and the only thing that keeps me from giving it a 1/10 is the fact that is the Civil War, and I got it for 90% off ($ .99). Ironclads: American Civil War gets a 2/10, dont buy this game, it has no redeeming qualities.

Yeah.... um, kinda boring spending half your time waiting for the little ships to chug chug chug around the screen. Add in wierd ships that suddently get three movement phases, really odd damage effects, and a REALLY irritating sound score and you're going to want to avoid this one.