Review by: Brian Clair

Journey back to the days of swashbuckling on the high seas when pirates raped the seas and powerful nations volleyed for control of rich land. This is the world you enter in Admiral Sea Battles, the new naval strategy game from Megamedia. You begin the game by listening to a narrative from one of your nation’s Admirals, which is accompanied by a movie sequence. This introduction tells you about some of the game’s background and relates a story of one of the great battles to you. There are also introductory movies for each campaign in the game and your Admiral will relate to you mission objectives and scenarios in each.

Once you’ve watched the introduction, it’s time to begin your first mission – which you choose from one of the 3 available campaigns (18 missions in all). Each campaign has different objectives: in Baptism of Fire, the primary objective is to establish a foothold in the enemy’s territory and to aid your allies; in Corsair’s Gold, your job is to capture and retrieve gold that was stolen by pirates; and in Expansion your mission is to build new ports and forts in your new territory – defending them from enemy attack. The game allows you to play any campaign you wish, but to progress from mission to mission, you need to win! Failure means death for not only you, but for your people as well.

Admiral Sea Battles takes it’s role from history and the ships in the game really did roam the high seas long ago. Each ship is beautifully rendered and quite lethal in it’s own way. You can build and choose from 11 different types of ships including: Galleys, Paddle Steamers, Brigs, swift Clipper ships, Frigates, powerful Galleons, and awe-inspiring 3-Decked Battleships. Each ship has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, just as they did hundreds of years ago when they were used and you will have to choose your fleet wisely to succeed.

To help you on your way, the game employs a very easy to use interface. The main toolbar contains per turn information for each ship, which includes: movement, weapons fire, boarding of enemy vessels, repair (when in port), building forts, towns, etc., changing to the next ship and ending your turn. Each ship also has certain attributes which detail important information like: ship class, life level, movement ability, firepower, fire range, and boarding crew strength (this information is also shown in the game’s status bar for quick access). Each attribute can be critical to survival as smaller ships can be taken or destroyed easily. The game also uses a global toolbar which gives you information on the weather, a tactical map, target window, navy effectiveness, object pricing and a comparison list – so you can see the strengths & weaknesses of each ship compared to each other. Weather is, as you would expect, very important as in calm weather your forces may not be able to move at all and in storms they can be tossed far off course or destroyed on shoals.

Admiral Sea Battles also allows you to play against your friends, where you can test your strategic abilities one-on-one. The game allows you to play on the same computer, via a LAN, the Internet, and null-modem cable. The game even allows you to play offline and send your moves back and forth via e-mail if you so desire. All of this helps to make Admiral, not only fun to play, but very accessible as well.