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War! Age Of Imperialism is based on the board game by Eagle Games of the same title. It features 2 to 8 players battling with each other and the natives of sovereign nations for world domination. Players have to plan their strategies carefully as the game puts them in full control of their empire. Players decide where to build new cities and industries, where to explore, how to raise their armies, and make key choices about foreign policy both with natives and the other empires.

War! Age Of Imperialism is nothing more than a straight port of the original board game; this PC game has just as much substance. The A.I. opponents’ behaviors are fully customizable. You can have everyone gunning for you or give yourself time to develop and expand? Any mix of those and every style of play in-between can be set into the A.I. Game length can be set to finish when only one player is standing, when one player has been wiped out, or after a set number of turns has been reached. You can even customize such things as whether or not the Suez and Panama Canals are built, or if the map contains the Americas or not.

Visuals and sounds in War! Age Of Imperialism however, are not as thorough. There is absolutely no animation what so ever (not even animated dice!). Opponent’s turns magically end without allowing you to see what happened and requires reading the turn summaries at the end of each player’s move. Scrolling the map around in the window causes graphical glitches wherever the mouse pointer is resting that do not go away. And the game pieces, while true to the original game, are hard to see and unimaginative.

War! Age Of Imperialism’s sounds are even worse! The entire time you play, an incredibly annoying sound of what I am guessing is music (just drums and chimes) repeats itself every thirty seconds or so. The music changes when a battle window is opened, but it isn’t enough to make up for it. Event sounds consist of cheering crowds and the death gurgles of your troops and that is about it.

Despite bring what is an otherwise great, true conversion of the original board game onto the computer, War! Age Of Imperialism has way too many shortcomings. Unless you are a huge fan of the game and want to play it online or against the computer when you travel (or you just don’t have any friends who want to play it) don’t bother. Put down the controller and go buy the real board game if you want to play