Reviewed: April 29, 2006
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Paradox Interactive

Developer
MadMinute Games

Released: April 19, 2006
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

9
6
7
9
7.8

System Requirements

Take Command features:

• 48 Scenarios from the three most important battles of the 2nd Manassas Campaign:
  • The Battle of Cedar Mountain: August 9, 1862 (5 Historical Scenarios)
  • The Battle of 2nd Manassas: August 28-30, 1862 (40+ Historical & “What if?” Scenarios)
  • The Battle of Chantilly: September 2, 1862 (3 Historical Scenarios)
• Linked Scenario Tree: Results of one battle carry over into the next
• 5 Gigantic battlefield maps based on historical records from the Library of Congress, making them the most accurate American Civil War battlefield maps available in a PC game
• 3 Modes of gameplay: Historical, Open Play, & Custom/User-Created Battles
• Control thousands of troops, including Generals, Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and Supply Wagons, and direct them over 3D terrain
• Accurate weapon ballistics
• The ability to play as any leader in Custom/Open Play battles

Once your troops are fighting you have to watch your battle area and ensure no one out flanks you. You also have to resupply troops when they run low or they’ll be caught in the middle of a firefight with no ammo. You also have to watch their fighting status to make sure your troops don’t become too fatigued in combat.

All these things and more come into play as you work toward the goals of your side in this national conflict. To see your troop’s line up orderly and trade gunfire with others on a huge scale is a unique sight. I wish I could have seen it more often or quicker. My first views in Take Command: 2nd Manassas were watching my men go every which way but where I wanted them to go. This was no fault of the men below me in rank or the actual fighters. This was the fault of their commanding officer, me, who was either impatient or could not understand how the men were supposed to fight.

Your men have to be in line and set before they will return fire on the enemy. I found this out one of the first times I went into battle. I waited to see where the enemy was and then sent my men in too late to be of any use. I found out that this game is all about tactics and letting your decisions fully come to an end before making new ones. You cannot change your mind in the middle of your troops deploying or you get that neat confusion of men going all over the place that I had the first few times I played.

I then went to the forums for help and found out how to fight Civil War style with the tactics they used. The level of command that this game uses is great and a bit confusing to begin with. You are always in charge of at least a company of troops and have to lead them correctly. When you’re in charge of the entire army you have to worry about all of the infantry, cavalry, artillery and supplies.

You can play in three modes, Historical, open play or custom scenarios you or others have made. The Historical mode is real battles that you have to try to win as any one of several commanders. The game plays like a campaign for the Historical mode where one battle and its outcomes affect the next battle and so on. When you do good in one you have more troops to jump into the next fray and have that much more to start with. But when you do badly, you get the results of not enough troops to continue on with.

Open play is where you get to pick the size of your forces by choosing the commander, the battlefield and your opposition. You’ll have the battles of varying sizes and different objectives like capturing and holding specific points on the map or just hunting and killing the enemy. This is a good place to start after completing the tutorials to get used to the game and the tactics you need to use.

You can also download the SDK package and create your own battle scenarios and then play to your hearts content. You can download many battles others have created on MadMinutes’ website. Many are finding out the fun of modding and creating variations of real battles or fictitious ones and making them available for others to play.

Whichever type of game you choose the story is basically the same, you’re in charge of troops and they depend on your leadership to win the fight. The gameplay is very well done considering the size of the armies and all the various commands being carried out during some of the larger battles.

The command structure of the AI is very impressive considering how many levels of command you see being affected on a battlefield. Orders can go through several layers of command before getting to a particular group of soldiers and this is hard to accomplish in a game engine.

The AI works very well even when it is in charge of your army when you choose to only be in charge of lesser divisions and follow the lead of your General. This is how to learn the tactics, use of various troop types and effects of different types of attack or defend commands. It’s a good way to learn other than the simple tutorials that come with the game. When you do try your hand at the main battles of the 2nd Manassas you will try many times to win the day as the computer does a very good job of planning it’s tactics and countering things you try to throw at it.

But the game does pretty well with the graphics it uses. Trees and ground details look fairly well while you’re playing and the combat looks good. The shooting with the billows of smoke is a good thing in this game as it helps to know which units are actually firing. Sometimes you get orders mixed up or you don’t have units attached and it helps to see them actually firing and confirming you got their orders correctly.

The screens for loading are very informative and well made with facts from several of the real battles with some historic maps. The in-game screens for your commands and information of your units are nicely laid out and easy to use. For the infantry and cavalry each soldier you see represents about ten men so the troops you see on screen are not all the troops you have. You need to watch your units strengths and each units count to get accurate information for your whole army.

The trill of cicadas or the lonely call of a bird is the sounds you get while you’re scouting areas with no one else around. But the real thrill is when you hear the “wheet” a bullet makes when it goes by close to you while in combat. And you’ll get plenty of these while you play. The sounds are the usual ones you would expect to hear in combat with some extras like the cicadas when appropriate.

With all of the various battles available in 2nd Manassas it would be a pretty good game but you also have the community that is creating mods for extra fun and gameplay. The game will take awhile to master and there is quite a variety of modes in the open play plus you can play on either side of the conflict in all of the historical battles. Even if you have played the previous Take Command Battle of Bull Run this sequel is well worth the cost and a great addition to the historical line of RTS games.

Take Command: 2nd Manassas makes a great strategic addition for anyone who enjoys a finely crafted RTS game.