After reviewing Hinterland, a true diamond in the rough, I was excited to dig in to Mosby's Confederacy.
The latest Tilted Mill title, Mosby's Confederacy is a dynamic small unit RTS. You can shape your units (and Mosby himself) by the way you use them in the battlefield. A cowardly foot soldier could become your greatest asset with a bit of luck and prudence. It's also dynamic in that enemy placements are entirely randomized, much like Hinterland before it. A "panic" system for the AI lends some innovation to battles, and faux open ended gameplay makes each path to victory a bit different.
Sounds fun, I know. Sadly, the greatest strategy you could employ in this game is to bring along a book. Mosby's Confederacy has the slowest pace I've ever seen. Here's a great example: I attacked a single Union soldier with all six of my men in the second mission. My units fired at least fifty shots altogether, from ten feet away, and the enemy soldier was STILL ALIVE. I understand that the rifles were crude, but this is ridiculous. You'll spend twice as much time watching these apparently blind soldiers trying to hit each other as you will actually playing the game.
When your enemies have finally fallen (or surrendered and ran away... kind of anticlimatic after all that shooting), put on a movie, because you'll likely spend an even larger amount of time searching for your randomly placed objective. The map is next to useless, the battlefields have very little in the way of landmarks, and your units are painfully slow, even when mounted on horses. A simple rotating arrow or more accurate map marker could have eliminated enormous amounts of eventless wandering, and made the game a bit less of a drag.
Your reward for eventually slogging through these repetitive missions? Fame points and munitions to better stock your crew and butter up the locals toward your cause, as well as a new skill for Mosby. Depending on how well you do, merit badges and the like may also be doled out. You might even nab yourself an achievement or two, if you're playing it through Steam. Whee.
The graphics are yet another aspect of the game that may induce drowsiness. Units are tiny and heavily pixellated, and the fields are basically comprised of the occasional building, random encampment, dirt road, and a metric ton of trees. All of this can be had in either snowy or grassy varieties. Outside of the missions, you are treated to bland portraits and tactical maps. I'm not a graphics whore, but a tiny touch of detail goes a long way. As it is, a Sega Saturn could run this game without slowdown.
At least, it COULD, if the game was at all optimized. There is no reason at all for the system specs to be anywhere near what they are. My computer should not hiccup while trying to render a tree that would not have been amiss in a game made in 1996. It doesn't get as bad as Hinterland's optimization issues, but it's definitely a bit of an annoyance all the same.
Maybe the sound will make up for the other shortcomings, right? Nay nay. And again, sir, I say nay. "Boom. Boom. Argh. Generic music." That's about it. Over and over again. I'm starting to wonder if Mosby's Confederacy should have been titled "Mosby's NyQuil: The Game Based On The Hit Cough Medicine".
If Tilted Mill has accomplished anything with Mosby, it's that the historical accuracy appears to be very spot-on. I personally know little about the real Mosby, but what I do know is represented faithfully in the game. (Although the real man could probably hit a target at point blank with less than 15-20 shots, unlike his virtual reincarnation.) So, you know, there's that at least.
Thankfully, there's some comic relief, albeit entirely unintended. When you start the game, you'l be informed of the many strategies that can be performed with keyboard combinations. Now here's the punchline: None of them are at all needed. I did just fine by using nothing but my left mouse button. Highlight my units, click on the enemies, another victory for Mosby and his merry band of blind Confederates. To be fair, there are times when you'll need to be stealthy to survive, but 99% of the time you'll be able to scrape by even the toughest battles by simply drawing a few enemies away from the pack and picking them off a few times.
I've tried to be as nice as possible during this review so far, on account of how much I enjoyed Tilted Mill's previous titles. But let me lay it out straight for you.
Mosby's Confederacy is just not fun at all.
It is truly and completely uninteresting in every single aspect. It's not a fun kind of bad, like Postal 2 or even Big Rigs. It is just plain and simply a chore. I received absolutely no entertainment from playing this, outside of learning a bit about the man who inspired the game.
I can't understand how such a talented company could put something like this out. Maybe the Civil War isn't an easy subject to turn into a game. Maybe It's just a failed experiment. I can't honestly say. All I know is, Mosby's Confederacy is exactly the opposite of what I had expected.
I do not recommend this game for anybody but the most dedicated Civil War buffs, and even those folks might be less than satisfied with what is presented here. If you want a game that shows what Tilted Mill can really accomplish, stick with SimCity Societies, Children of The Nile, and Hinterland, and give Mosby a pass.
There is one place where this game would fit well, though. With it's historical accuracy, schools could make much use of Mosby's Confederacy. It may not be a good game from an entertainment point of view, but you can't help learning a few things while playing.
