"Just like the board game"

So we get another Diplomacy video game. Since I am no longer able to find six other players and twelve hours to play a game of Diplomacy and I'm not quite willing to play by email or get involved online community, I was quite happy to see this game on the shelves of my local retail store.

Before I speak of the video game, I should tell more about the board game for those of you who don't know it. Beside, the video game is a faithful adaptation of the board game so this explanation applies to the video game as well.

In Diplomacy, each players plays one European power at the beginning of 20th century. There are seven: France, England, Russia, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Austria. The goal is to conquer more than half of Europe. To do so, you order your troops to attack adjacent territories in the hope of conquering them which in turns enable you to build more units. But there is a catch. Nobody is strong enough to do it alone and there is absolutely no luck involved so wishful thinking will get you nowhere. To win, you'll have to negotiate with the other players to get help or at least to make sure they won't attack you while you're busy attacking someone else.

And therein lies a second catch, giving order to your troops is done secretly and simultaneously and nothing forces you to fulfill your promises. Of course, nothing forces your 'allies' to respect their promises either.

Now, specifically about the video game.

The presentation, UI (user interface), music and sound effects are lackluster. Except for the UI, it doesn't necessarily matters so I didn't consider it in my final score.

I wish the UI had been better on one aspect. I wish there had been more report available after the resolution (which occurs after everyone orders are revealed and resolved) to summarize how much my 'allies' have respected their part of our treaties and how much they broke their promises. The 'grunts and groans' system, which reveal how each player reacts to each move, just isn't enough.

I wish I could see an history of my past treaties and how they were broken (most are not meant to be permanent, but there are different means of putting them to an end, some more treacherous and others more diplomatic).

However, giving order to your troops is as simple as it can be considering we are playing Diplomacy. Negotiating with other players is not too hard and there are plenty of negotiating options.

Obviously it's a bit more limited than around a table with six other human players, but really it is not much more limited.

I can't talk much about the difficulty since I played only the easiest level so far out of three. I can say that everyone should be able to pull a victory on the easiest difficulty setting after no more than a few games, and most people will be able to do so on their first game.

The game offer a solo mode (a human player and six computer players), a free mode (where you play all players, so you can test your strategies) and online play.

Now, should you buy this game? If you never played Diplomacy before, find some online community not related to this game, where you can read the rules. Playing in solo is way faster than playing the real thing, an important consideration for me. I haven't played online, but my guess is there isn't that many players out there playing the video game online. People interested in playing Diplomacy online have done so by email for years now and they didn't have to pay for anything.

It's your call, but apart from the solo mode, I don't see many reasons to buy this game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/30/06