Storyline wise, this game has a relatively short story. Apart from the early rush of the story that create a sense of story, the story just peters out in the end. At some point in the game you would feel that there is nothing else to the story. The game have one main story and few minor stories, but the main story is not long enough. The developer are working to create more content for the story, and from what I can see, the story is quite good, but for the current version, it is way too short.

Gameplay is excellent. The game have three main gameplays:

First one is the strategic map where you tell where your ship to go, upgrade your ship, do missions, and whatsoever. You can upgrade your ships, change weapon loadouts, and generally customize how your ship do battle, more on that later. You can also hire crews, The game have lots of different types of crews: soldiers, gunslingers, and swordsman for crew battle, and tons of others: E-Tech, Gunners, Crew Dogs, Engineers, Mechanics, Navigators, and so on to help your ship either in ship to ship battle or in the strategic map.

The strategic map is very cool as you will interact with factions, and generally your standing with factions will change depending on missions you take. Higher standing with a faction will result in military promotion, better trade warrants, better bounty hunters warrant, better weapons, and so on. Lower standing with a faction could prevent your ships from being refueled, medical treatments, trading, and so on, which on some systems, is quite disastrous as your crew is quick to go mutinying if they did not have good morale.

The variety of things you could do is excellent. The faction will offer you missions starting from transporting prisoner, killing someone, hiding certain things on certain place, killing someone again, spying over a planet, do a blockade, and more. You can also trade, like in other games. The trade is quite interesting as each planet have different trade laws and different production, so you have to know where to sell the goods.

On the other hand, there is no fleet management mechanic, base building mechanic, or research mechanic in the game.

Second main gameplay is ship-to-ship battle. The affair would be one to one, there is no fleet mechanic in this game. The ship battles is great as they have lots of styles, and all are great. Some people prefer maximum-range engagement with torpedo launchers and missile launchers. Some prefer medium-range engagement with railguns. Some prefer close-range engagement with lances or with boarding action. All are great and all could be played.

Third main gameplay is crew battle. The affair is 4 of you against 4 of them. There are lots of classes for crew combats: Bounty Hunters and Soldiers that specialize in rifles, Snipers, Officers that specialize on leading the team armed with pistols, Combat Medics, Swordmen and Assassins that specialize in swords, and other classes.

UI design is excellent. All of the information (such as ship stats, faction relationships, etc.) is easily seen, and all the text is clearly seen. The game design is great, the artwork is great.

Great game and should be bought.

Pros

- The game looks beautiful. The game map is crafted beautifully. The hills and the names are aptly named, thus you could create some interesting imagination on the battlefield itself. The contours of the map makes things interesting too, in terms of gameplay and in terms of aethestic.

- The game runs smoothly. No issue whatsoever, no really glaring bugs.

- The theme of the game is very interesting. The game correctly identifies key battles of Civil War, and also put the names of the commanders correctly. The historicity of the game is quite well-researched. The game uses weapons of the era (down to their name of the rifles and cannons) and also really brings out the theme of Civil War in good fashion.

- Great strategy game. What is important on battle is not just going in with bigger guns or more man, but also about positioning, and extensive scouting to know the best place to put your man and to know the intention of your adversary. Placement is very important, as cannons should be placed at a higher ground for better range, and infantry may benefit in cover in the woods as opposed to be in the open.

- Troops could be customized. You can choose weapons for each of your units. You can furnish them with the best weapon money could buy, or you could just give them the worst weapon but cheap, or you can live by just looting the dead enemy. This also allow you to choose how each of your unit behave, especially for cavalry units (you can give them sabers to engage in close quarters, or you could give them rifles to act like dragoons). Also with skirmisher units (sniper rifles for them to act as marksman, or skirmisher rifles to them act like skirmishers). Also with cannons.

Cons

- Only campaign battle. There is no custom battle. Major downer point.

- Campaign is not a living campaign. No matter how badly beaten the enemy are, they will be back with better weapons. No matter how good you beaten them, the order of the battle will always be the same.

- There is no what-ifs in the campaign. All battle, win or loss, will only affect your "reputation" and rewards, but not change the battle at all. If you do so well in the campaign, nothing will be different if you did bad.

- No clear explanation on what your troops will be doing. While the goal of a particular battle is given, the order of battle is really unclear. For instance, you are told to assign troops on Left Wing, Center Wing, and Right Wing. But it is not explained on what is done for each Wing. Will the Right Wing be the pusher? Or the Center? Will the enemy push on the Left? Which one have the best cover? This kills a lot of vibe in the campaign as you sometimes put your veteran troops on the easy position while your more green troops on a sorely pressed one.

- Bad battle phase objectives. Some big battles are fight with "phases". The first phase may be you defending Hill X but the second phase may be you must retreat to Hill Y as the enemy reinforcement are coming in hard. This is good in paper, but really bad implementation in the game. If you defend Hill X so well, there is no reason to move to Hill Y. Not to mention that there are "timers". Lots of casualties while you leave a well-defended position of Hill X to move stupidly to Hill Y, lots of unnecessary repositioning of troops. If you can defend Hill X, you should be allowed to defend Hill X until the last man. Even if it is stupid, choices should be present in the game.

- You have to win every battle phase, or you lose the whole thing. If you won gloriously in phase 1 but lose phase 2, in phase 3 you will immediately be defeated, with no recourse. Allow me to rectify my mistake in phase 3. Allow me to be surrounded by the enemy, cutoff from reinforcement, but do not just assume that I would be defeated utterly. Again, the campaign is just following a set of rules instead of responding to your activities.

- Hard to master. The game is really punishing. The morale melts too fast, even the best veteran troops would immediately scatter after one volley from their side (not their rear!).

More than 50% of my time in this game is spent on using modded game mode, namely LSPDFR where I could be playing as a policeman.

Online is fine, but most of the time it is "Loading Simulator" . It is fine, but the "pay to win" scheme that use Shark Cards makes a casual gamer unable to enjoy the fullest of the feature offered.

Police the online mode, but let any single players do what they wanted with the game. At least if R* wishes to stop OpenIV, they should provide alternatives for modding scene of this game.

This is not really a game. Most of the time you would only be pointing out "data chunks" to relevant character, and the said data chunks has been conveniently pointed out to you by the highlight, so you can't miss it. The only time you get a little pressure is on the final episode, when there are "data upload" limit imposed on you.

There is minimal gameplay, as it is mostly just drag and drop something. The clues are too easily pointed out to you. Sometimes there are some conflicting data, but it is easy to resolve this kind of things. It is also bad that you don't know how the data chunks you are given is processed. A wrong data chunk could suddenly net a very violent response although previous data chunks you have given it is not the way.


However, the story in the game is excellent. It is not overly long and complicated, but it is quite complicated enough to keep you guessing on who is who and what is the truth beneath all of these things. All of the characters are alive, and the way they are chatting with each other, with you snooping in, at times make you guilty for snooping on someone's conversation. You will also see another person's life, and at times you will feel guilty that you are the one that send them into prison, sometimes by bending the truth so they can be arrested. And seeing their hobbies and their life, but watching their conversation, their blogs, or their social medias, sometimes makes you really hopeful that this guy/girl is not guilty so you could release them, and make you guilty if you have to arrest them.

Of course, this game is quite a political game, on the issue of mass surveillance. It subtly asks the player on how far the government could go in the name of security, and how is privacy should be treated if you have connection with a terror group. The game beautifully does not refer to any country or any political party (though a subtle jab at "Freedom" and "Peacekeeping" is done).

Overall a beautiful game.

A Lifetime Of War playing after Christmas Carol - PDX when engaging in Thirty Years War seems very....ironic.

One of the best Paradox DLC, instead of just musical instruments give us more of things like this!

Please add more songs, and if possible, Manowar songs. They are great for Norse countries and also for "never-ending warfare" theme.

Just buy this one.

A great game that demonstrates about the battles of Gettysburg, that allows we to change history, by altering strategies, and creating new opportunities. The game is played on real-time. There is no base building in this game, or unit building in this game, in this game you get new units/reinforcements as in history, thus this game have no unit building at all.

What is quite different with regular RTS is that this game have few types of units : infantry, skirmishers, cavalry, and artillery. There is only few differences between Union and Confederates units, the Confederates are better at charging, where the Union are better at shooting. This game use "truesight", which the shooting range of a unit is defined by whether it can see its enemies or not, and unit on elevated/higher position can shot farther than units at lower position. Also, hills and terrain contours play a lot of effect in this game, as ridges and hills could afford a defensible place to shot down, and units could also take cover behind the hills from pounding artillery or from other units. Aside from elevation, terrain also play a key, units located on wooded terrain will be protected better from enemy fire.

Units fight by firing each other, and get to melee/hand-to-hand combat. Because of the similarities of unit statistics, the important thing is not the units itself, but how the player positions the units. Some units do have "veteran" status, like the Union Iron Brigade, but the most important thing is where you place the unit.

• This game have no political correctness. This game properly displays the Confederate flag as it is, as in history and as in facts that has happened and can't be changed again.
  
• Allows change the tide of history. This game is separated into few battles : the first day, the second day, etc. If the Union didn't manage to slow the Confederates advance to Seminary Hill on day one (which they did in history) the Union position on the next battle will be more pressed towards Culp's Hill. If Union manages to counter-attack and capture McPherson Ridge, the Confederates will lose a strategic hill to position their artillery on the next battle. After each battle, you are given a choice on what to do. As a Union who has successfuly delay the Confederates, do you wish to counter-attack and try to regain McPherson Ridge? Or counter-attack to the North East? Or fortify your position with "fish-hook" position on Cemetery Hill? So much option.
  
• UI is good. The UI clearly show how your units is doing, and what type of units that is. Though the UI could gain improvement by giving out small details on what is cover or what is this thing or that thing.
  
• Quite accurate historically. The brigades, division, and corps name are named as they did in history. The name of places also accurate enough, complete with elevation, contour, terrain, etc.
  
• Graphic is great. I really love the "arrow" you made when you order your units to move somewhere. The overall "drawing" really appeals to me.

• This game have no clear tutorial. The tutorial are only bunch of videos which are not clear enough.
  
• You can't deploy your units according to your will. After each battle, though you can choose your strategy, you can't place your units by yourself. If your Cutler Brigade is somewhere east, they begin the battle in the east, though you prefer them to be in the west.
  
• Lack of content. This is a minor gripe. After playing and replaying the game for some time, I get bored and wishes for more battles.

This game is very recommended for RTS players, most notably people who are interested in American Civil War and gunpowder era.

I don't recommend this game.

The premise of this game is simple, a tycoon game. But as with many other tycoon games, most of them fails to deliver what is the "tycoon" itself, or what is resource management itself.

Here is why the game still need to improve :