Peninsular War Battles

I’m just going to be honest, while I like the visuals and the units look neat, the gameplay past the first main campaign (I don’t consider Invasion to be a demo campaign) just falls short of being bearable. Of the four campaigns played, all of them had at least one mission that was unplayable for either side, and the worst offender was Terror for the Allies. I found myself losing interest in continuing the campaign purely because of poor balancing or the game deciding it wants to cheat it’s way to victory. The base game was fine, and so was the bonus mission, but until the developers actually decide to go back and fix some of the balancing issues for the other campaigns, I simply cannot recommend this game in any capacity. Please, fix your game Devs, I know you can do better because your other titles aren’t anywhere near as frustrating to play as this one was…

I have a lot of experience with these hexwar games. I’m writing a review of this one because it deserves to be noted as having the best designed scenarios. Very well balanced. Forces you to use some actual strategy. Much better than most of the civil war and American revolution scenarios.

This is a great game with lots of variety and complexity. A real challenge and a wonderful semi-historical treatment of the Napoleonic Epoch in Europe. I highly recommend this for whiling away the hours anywhere.

Hexwar has recently butchered most of their Napoleonic and Civil War series with a new silly Arcadish animation style. I grabbed this one before they broke it as well. For the Civil War, only Civil War Battles is in tact. All the others seem to be shot now .... Beware ....

I've been interested in Napoleonic warfare and played board games since I was in high school. I downloaded this game and at first it didn't really impress me much, but as I have played it more, I realize this game has a lot of great features that are subtle and if you just randomly play the game you might not appreciate how much is going on in this game. The differences in formations really make a difference as do troop quality and morale. I am not going to pretend that I fully understand all that is going on there but when I see a unit in line break and run from a cavalry charge I realize that there is a good deal to appreciate in this game. There are certainly things that could be done to improve the game. One of those is that I would propose it would be more realistic if every unit that engages in melee were disorganized after the fact. This is particularly true of cavalry. They do not seem to "feel" the ill effects of engaging in melee after a charge. They should probably require a turn or two to reorganize. Secondly units should probably rout/disorganize more if as they lose troop strength. Also it would be nice if there was a way to create your own scenarios. And of course it would be gret if you could play another human, but overall, two big thumbs up for these Napoleonic era games. Please make more!!

I got the game exited to play, and then I found out that you can't play as Portugal, why? Portugal is the reason the entire war started, there should be at least one mission where you can play as them, or maybe purchasable content to play as them, but it's incredibly stupid to not include them, disappointed.

The biggest change from other Hexwar games are the very large units of 13-20 troops. I found the French campaigns fun and engaging. But when I switched to the Allies, I encountered a frequent game crash where the enemy turn would just cycle forever with the little flags waving. I wound up having ti save and restart the game, which seemed to give the enemy a free turn. On Assault - Tamames, I found myself wondering if this closing map had been playtested. I would like to see a play-through on youtube, as I was not able to complete this map even on Easy. I would charge a single enemy unit with a 13-strength unit, and see my formation flee in terror. If I was a real-life commander and that happened, I would have thrown down my equipment and raised the white flag. The Conquest and Engagement expansion campaigns on the Allied side seemed to have this same severe game imbalance bug, where enemy units on Easy behaved as if the game was on Hard. I couldn't complete their opening levels. When you watch three 12-strength units all miss a 5-strength unit right in front of them, there's no tactic to overcome that sort of wacky game mechanics. Try the game if you want, but beware the expansion campaigns until Hexwar sees fit to support their Ipad customers more.

As another reviewer noted, this game plays a lot like the old miniature-based game system, Empire. I too am an old gamer familiar with that system, and the other reviewer is correct, there are several similarities to the former. A few more historical additions such as desultory cavalry, negative charisma, and nationalistic battle tactics would be interesting additions. Even so, this is a good and entertaining game in its own right.

Very well done game. The game rules remind me of Empire (for all of those that have done miniature war gaming). Missing are formation directions, flank vs rear attacks (both melee and firing) and cannon limbering - include those and we really have a game system!