Wake up your musket or grab a tomahawk in this challenging historical game where role-playing meets real-time strategy. Grow your character through the American conflicts of the 1700's, learning new skills and acquiring wealth and power, while managing real-time battles and looking after your base, your resources, and your friends: altogether a more human way to command and conquer.

Back again with another review, I, this week, get to review Fields of Fire. I'm going to try a better style of reviewing this week so hopefully, it'll be a little more interesting.

Fields of Fire (FOF) takes place in the early 1700's, placing you either as a Frenchmen or a Redcoat fighting against each other in the early colonization days of the United States. The game is VERY detailed. I first thought it was just a RTS with a colonization theme. However, it goes much further. It's a RTS, an RPG, and a Civilization type game all rolled into one. This leads to somewhat of a micromanaged game that will chase away those who just want to go and kill things.

When you first start out, you get to pick one character. This character will be you throughout the game, so if he dies, game over. He'll be able to learn new skills from others as the game goes along as well as teach them to the other characters. He has attributes that affect his accuracy, his speed, and more that gradually increase throughout the game.

You have at all times, two different groups to manage. The NPC-type people that guard your fort or who you get to control in some of the missions and your party, which is led by your character and other characters you find in the game. This party is the one you definitely need to watch. All characters you find in the game stay with you and are available for every mission unless they die. Therefore it's in your best interest to keep them alive, since down the road you'll be out of party members to run missions with.

The game works in two parts. One is your main fort screen. This is where you are when you're not in a mission. Just because you're not in a mission doesn't mean there's nothing to do. It works basically the same, your fort can be under attack from Indians or the opposing side, or could be attacked by bears or wolves, so you need to be prepared to defend it as well. You can recruit men to man the fort to keep out the ugly nasties. The second part is the actual mission. These tend to be much harder than defending your fort. You create a party from the available characters and try to beat the missions. Some include ambushing an opponent or taking out a cannon that's attacking one of your forts.

Your currency is mainly brought in from hunting animals for their skins, which can be done during missions or around your fort. You also can collect items from killing people such as telescopes that let you see farther.

All in all, it's an in depth game that if you're a war gamer you'll probably like it. If you're an RTS gamer, it's probably not your type as it consists of quite a bit of management and keeping tabs on your characters. If you're a turn based gamer, this game might be for you, it's not turn based but it's got the feel that TBS players like.

Graphics 12/20

When I started playing this game for the first time, I was not impressed. The graphics aren't real interesting. The game appears to run best in 800x600 and if you try running it any higher it looks too small. It does have character shadowing and raised terrain, but it's not anything real interesting. All the menus are PCX and bland, but it's enough to get the job done.

Sound 9/15

Once again.. nothing too impressive here. You've got the generic background birdie chirps. Wolves and bear's growl and howl when they attack you or something else in the game, which alerts you to a possible danger. Gunshots sound like gunshots, just not real exiting.

Gameplay 21/25

The gameplay is outstanding. There is so much going on in the game, it keeps you busy. This could also be a bad thing for those of you who don't like trying to figure out what's going in. You can be out hunting or protecting your fort from animals or natives or be out running a mission and engaging in skirmishes with your opponent. The interface is pretty easy to use. You'll probably want to turn the game speed up all the way since it ran a little to slow for my taste.

Fun Factor 14/20

It definitely attracted my attention this entire weekend. The replay value is probably pretty low however, since the missions are the same, but that's no different then a Starcraft or what not. It's probably a little too deep for the average gamer but those who liked Civilization or some of the better strategy games (RTS or TBS) would probably like this game once they got into it.

Multiplayer 3/5

I gave it a try and I must I say, I wasn't real impressive. It mainly comes down to finding your opponent and shooting him until either you're dead or he's dead. After playing the single player it really leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. There's no development of characters and it appears to have very little strategy involved. One bonus: I didn't have any lag on my superfast modem connection. This is definately not something to buy for multiplay only.

Packaging 3/5

Overall Impression 8/10

I liked it... it's complex, but not enough to confuse someone. It has good aspects of strategy, character development, and action/adventure. It may be a little too historical for some of you that must have your nukes and lasers. I happen to like the simple muskets and bow and arrow combat you get to experience here in FOF.