Ultimate General: Civil War is very nearly the Civil War game I've been looking for my whole life.

It offers a wide selection of battles, units, weapons, tactics, and strategy.

Your soldiers are persistent, and will increase in skill with every battle. Your army will grow over time, and become more powerful. You can even invest in career skills that will change the way the campaign plays out. You are offered a selection of historical battles, and each one is tied together with some optional smaller battles loosely based on historical events.

The graphics are simple, smooth, and polished. Layered 2D sprites give the feeling of a 3D isometric view, holding over from the days of classic RTS games. The color palette is reminiscent of some old Civil War lithographic paintings, and the presentation itself is the very image of a David Greenspan battle map. The puffs of smoke fill the air, the day slowly turns to night, and as the lighting fades from the scene scores of bodies litter the ground amid the brown scars of artillery impacts.

One is left with a sense of horror at the accomplishment of the day's objective, and all of that comes from a presentation that does not rely on blood or gore to convey it's impact.

The sound is basic, but functional. Your muskets pop, your cannons bang, you hear your men cry out in pain as they get hit.
Then the enemy charge rolls in...
Volleys crash together with frightful rapidity, the enemy cheers as they advance at the run, then the lines come together with a clash and an uproar. Every man screams as loud as he can to ward off cowardice as they hack, cut, thrust, and fire into each other's faces. Finally, one side or the other breaks and streams back to whence they came, and the field grows silent once more.

Words can scarcely convey the feel of this game. It has a singular presence I've not felt since a few epic moments in the Take Command series. You get a clear indication of the titanic struggle you're involved with, and it's all wrapped up in a game that is as easy to play as a game of checkers.

So what's not to like?

Well, there's a few things worth mentioning.

1) You never really get a sense of victory as you progress through the campaign. The difficulty of the game ramps up quite steeply even on the 'Normal' mode. Despite winning almost every battle, I never got the feeling I was actually winning the war. The opposing armies were always larger than mine, and by the end of the war the enemy was just as well equipped as I was. There was no sense of a 'turn of the tide' as I stacked enemy bodies upon the battlefield while inflicting three-to-one casualties in my favor. Even with all of the economic career skills maxed out, I never had enough money to maximize the size of my army, and I never had enough money to field even a basic rifled musket like the Springfield in every unit. The Union was supposed to be an economic powerhouse, yet I found myself selling even the fillings in my teeth to equip my army for battle. By the end of the campaign, the enemy outnumbered me two to one, despite the fact I killed far more of them than they did of me at every single encounter.

2) The weapons never really performed the way I thought they would. For example, a unit of 500 skirmishers equipped with scoped sniping rifles couldn't seem to kill more than it's own number of the enemy before running out of ammo. Especially if the enemy was in some kind of cover. Trying to use range and accuracy to inflict casualties without sacrificing manpower never quite came off the way it should. General Sedgewick is safe as houses in this game. Those snipers really CAN'T hit an elephant at this distance.

3) Artillery doesn't work. Period. Having been witness to live firing demonstrations by a 12-pound Napoleon field piece, I can say with absolute certainty the 'King of Battle' has no place on this field. Artillery is hugely inaccurate, and even when it does hit, it does very little damage. This is the exact opposite of reality. Not only is artillery far too ineffective as modeled, but there is no cumulative morale effect on soldiers when being shelled, and cover does not degrade under heavy shelling. Historically, attacking a gun battery was one of the most foolhardy things you could do. It's the sort of thing you would win medals for doing. A simple fix would be to implement a permanent morale loss while being shelled even if it's just one percent morale per direct hit. Another thing I would do is give occupy-able fortifications a number of hit points that would degrade their effectiveness as their hit points are reduced. This would allow the player to bear the cost and restriction of fielding a grand battery in the first place, instead of swapping out that extra field artillery battery for a regiment of foot.

4) Why are there no stabs of flame from firing guns? It makes the battlefield feel a bit sterile. Even just a couple of pixels of bright orange color at the center of the smoke puff would have made a huge difference. I know the real guns don't exactly belch fire when being fired, but in low-light conditions or night battles, some flashes of light and flame would really liven things up.

5) Where is the Rebel Yell? It is conspicuous in it's absence. I never once felt 'that particular corkscrew sensation going down my spine' when the Confederates charged while yelling some generic yelling sound. It just doesn't feel right.

Other than that, this is a fantastic game, well-polished, challenging, and engaging.

The catchphrase for this game is, "Feel like you're part of a larger war effort."
Well, that may be true in some ways, it's certainly not true in others.

In one way, you are certainly a single soldier among hundreds sniping away at the enemy in a trench before getting blown to bits by a random artillery shell. Or picked off by a sniper. Or gassed. Or step on a land mine. Or push down a rocky chasm with some dudes with sub-machine guns, only to die at the end by a machine gun bunker the enemy has been building for the last five minutes.

However, real war has things that set it apart from this game. For instance, in real war there is a plan. There is someone in charge. There is a grand strategic vision. There are unit leaders with responsibility for doing the job and getting everyone back alive. There is a doctrine that determines one's behavior on the battlefield.

This game seems more like watching two ant colonies fight each other. No one is in charge, no one is in command, and a disconcerting amount of players simply wander around without knowing what to do, or why. Spending time on the front lines you will watch as hundreds of players run to their deaths, mauling each other over a 100 yard patch of dirt, only to re-spawn 20 seconds later and do it all over again.

After spending a few hours getting sniped at in the trenches, I thought I would instead try to run some logistical effort. So I went to the training area, figured out how the pieces go together, and then spent three hours driving a boat loaded with construction materiel over to a factory.

I pressed q to exit the boat and fell into the water, because the door is only on the left, and is not context sensitive.
I tried swimming over to a ladder, and drowned. My only option was to re-spawn at the base I left behind three regions ago.

So I'm seven hours into this game and I haven't done a single useful thing.
How anyone enjoys this exercise in masochism is beyond me.

Then again, I suppose that's what war is really like.
10/10