Review by: Jonathan Houghton
Published: February 17, 2001

About a year ago, Talonsoft released its latest foray into the world of historical strategy with Rising Sun, a follow-up to its highly successful European Campaign series. This title was everything that a strategic purist could want — hours upon hours of contemplative tactical action, where every move you made would count against you in the end — if there wasn’t a great deal of purpose behind each marching and firing order.

Fans of the Campaign series were also gifted with a small boost to Rising Sun with the release of Imperial Strike, the official expansion pack that never appeared in stores, but was instead offered for sale through Talonsoft’s webstore. Now, Talonsoft has released a compilation of both the original Rising Sun and the expansion pack, combined with twelve never-before-seen scenarios. Rising Sun Gold combines everything that this unique series has to offer into one extensive package of tense strategic action.

Anyone who has played the original version of Rising Sun — or any one of the Campaign series for that matter — will immediately recognize the interface and play style of Rising Sun Gold. One of the series’ trademarks is complexity, and while veterans will certainly have enough in the way of challenges, Talonsoft has made an obvious endeavor to make this compilation something that players from all skill backgrounds can enjoy. To this end, there are several bootcamp missions designed with only one purpose in mind — familiarizing players with the play style and nuances of the Campaign series.

During bootcamp you will need to print out a rather large text file that contains instructions in the form of a written tutorial for you to follow. This help section begins by explaining the hex-grid system, which is the foundational basis for the gameplay in Rising Sun Gold. Each map area is composed of a large hexagonal grid wherein all tiles on land or sea are divided up between these hexes. Your military units move between these hexes performing different functions, the most obvious of which is to destroy enemy forces. Each unit is assigned a number of action points, which decrease each turn based on the orders you give. Every action takes up a certain number of action points with the two most common actions being movement and attack. Movement depletion depends on the type of terrain you send a unit over. Order your rifle squad to walk through a rice paddy and they will consume almost twice as many action points as if you had ordered them to walk down a road the same distance. This is an easy method of simulating the time and difficulty inherent in sending military forces through harsh weather and terrain. Firing your weapons, on the other hand, normally requires only a fraction of your action points. Other modifiers to your basic functions stem from several statistics including strength, morale, fire cost, action, assault and defense. Of all these stats, fire cost is probably the most complex, with variables like terrain type, weather and time of day all playing significant roles in the final score to your fire cost.

Regardless of firing cost, each unit has a specific firing range based quite obviously on the type of weaponry used. Infantry have a very limited range, and are normally required to be within one hex distance from the enemy to attack. Other units such as tanks can fire shots from several hexes away, adding another dynamic to your attacks by requiring a basic level of troop positioning. In the event that your regular troops prove insufficient in attacking a target, you will sometimes be given the opportunity to call in air strikes with the hope of decimating enemy forces from above. Amphibious transports, artillery, basic infantry and armored units will all be brought under your command from one time to another. If you have the strength and cunning to survive you will need to master a strategy that involves more than merely shooting at your enemy.

Victory in Rising Sun is not achieved by massacring all enemy forces on a given map. Since you are limited in the number of turns you have per scenario, the method you must use in order to win is the systematic completion of your objectives. Though you are granted points for every enemy unit you destroy, the points you gain from battle are mere pocket change to what you net from meeting the scenario victory conditions. Each mission has a specific number of points needed for a victory; both success and failure come at multiple levels. On each side you have the possibility of scoring either major or minor points in both defeats and victories. You might, for example, spend all 15 turns in the scenario attacking barricaded enemy troops. Even if you kill four or five enemy units, if you don’t complete your mission objectives you won’t score enough points to achieve victory.

Rising Sun Gold has all of the missions from the original version and the Imperial Strike expansion. Single scenarios number 60 in total and encompass many of the most famous battles from the land war in the World War II Pacific Theatre. Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima are just two of the names certain to foster recognition among gamers, even those of us who fell asleep during high-school history classes. Players can even see Douglas MacArthur’s self fulfilling prophecy over the Philippines come to pass with his famous catch phrase, “I Shall Return.” Aside from the multitude of scenarios, there are also a total of nine campaigns you can take part in, including a fictional scenario where Japan invades the United States. Rising Sun Gold comes with several mission-editing tools designed to keep players busy in both single- and multiplayer. The final component of Rising Sun Gold is a battle generator which lets players set a large number of options to create a customized scenario for immediate play.