I used to play this all day when I was 12 years old lol. I had no idea what I was doing, or who the people fighting were; I just saw cool uniforms, big guns and group fighting, and was totally sold. Fast forward a decade, and I was participating in the 2015 reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo.
Damn I also played it when I was a teenager, do not remember much but my experience looked something like yours did. Got this video randomly recommended and it did bring some fun memories. I had no idea what I was doing in campaign so I mostly had fun in custom battles.
My cousin was The Producer of Imperial Glory, he gave me a free copy of the game as well as a free copy of the original Lego Star Wars, he now lives in Japan with his wife I haven't seen him since 2005 since his wedding.
@@Michael3851 I'm no longer in contact with him and he no longer works for Eidos, I asked his parents did he have an email but they were BSing me saying "He doesn't have an email"
It's no surprise that having massive battles like Total war is hard to do. I still wish there was some competition so Creative Assembly would have to get their s**t together instead of coasting on a captive audience.
@@jimethota Pharaoh dynasties is actually very good - never played Shogun 2, but dynasties is by far the best bronze age strategy game ever made! (not that there is much competition in that department 😂, but it's honestly lots of fun and has plenty of unique features tied to the setting) So no, they're not dead at all given that this is a 2024 game... 🙄 By the same metric Bethesda would be mega-dead, as they promised TES6 some 6 or 7 years ago and it's not even in late stage development yet!
@jimethota I only talked about them because of your avatar, Fallout boy. I agree Starfield was a disaster at launch (just like some previous games of theirs, like the Fallout multi-player one), and they also take insanely long between releases, but people still buy their games... It's a completely different genre of course but, by comparison, CA just released a good succesful game (well, Dynasties was actually a free dlc for Pharaoh owners, but it's basically a whole new game from Pharaoh) this year, so they're clearly not dead...
I agree. Very rarely does an alternative get released, but they almost never follow up upon it properly. King Arthur, the Role-Playing Wargame was really good, but the sequel unfortunately dropped the ball.
While waiting for Empire, I played Imperial Glory. One of my favourite moments was when I garrisoned a building consisting of several sections. During combat, one of my regiments was taking heavy casualties. I discovered it was the one closest to the enemy, but not due to enemy fire. The regiments in the other sections of the building were all shooting through that section, resulting in massive friendly fire.
You blew me away when you said this came out just 4 years before Empire. I played this game as a kid and I was sure I got it out of some sort of old games bargain bin. When Empire came out, I was already in highschool and had completely forgotten about Imperial Glory. Now I realize Imperial Glory must have just come out when I played it in elementary!
Nice review. It's interesting to see that alternatives and similar games to Total War have existed before. Obviously Total War blew the competition away, but at this point, so many of us are begging new devs to enter the scene again and develop the idea further.
@@Birdy890 I've looked at the games, and they just lack more of a grounded and realistic feel in my opinion. Battles looks arcadey and the units don't behave like they should with firing drills and stuff like that.
@@zrize101 I actually feel the opposite. The ultimate admiral and ultimate general games to me got the scaling of the battles right. Total war battles always felt too small. I'd rather have less detail on the ground to have a bigger scale. Also the units do fire in drills and volleys, the logistics aspect of the game also makes everything all the more grounded.
Oh I remember playing this game... More than 16 years ago lol. It was pretty fun but one thing that annoyed me was that once units got into a melee there was no way to retreat them or exit combat. They'd fight to the death lol.
Kinda the opposite of empire battles where the battle maps are always in the countryside but here they’re in the palace gardens, lol. Goodness I wish empire had actual city battle maps
Oh this game, its amazing, in the end I still moved to Empire, the best thing with this one is the fog of war on the map and how the enemy can just emerge from it, you never really know what your up against until France goes full swarm mode
I really fell in love with musket era games thanks to AOE3 and thus was happy to also play Imperial glory. But then came Empire TW and yea... No much need to go back to this one. Thanks for the nostalgia trip anyway!
At this point I don't even ask for competitor to Total Wars to have real time battles. All they need to have is turn based battles that are well designed and I would be happy. I almost thought Field of Glory is the answer, but their battle system doesn't really translate from their grand strategy map, as in there is no personal connection to my units, that's a bummer for me.
I'm still disappointed that Slitherine backed off from that race, Spartan looked dated, but everything aside of battles was done so much more entertaining than contemporary Total Wars and even for the battle themselves I liked that you had to rely on pre-battle preparations, skirmishers and light units to scout out enemy formation and had only three, one-use commands (all charge, bolster morale, all retreat) once the fighting started.
@Donolohe I didn't use the in-game battle simulator, but used the separate tactical game that can import battle from the campaign game. On another thought, the battle simulator is pretty nice as well. But I still would've liked the units to exist individually, have their own experience level, etc.
This was a fork year we ended up with bad ending of, and Total War domination. Back then there was still hope that Slitherine would release Legion II, I don't care that the screenshots they had barely rivaled first Rome, Spartan economic gameplay with a more modern-ish looks is a dream to this day.
To fix the crashes after battles you can set the game compatiablity mode to windows 98 or windows xp. Right click on the imperial glory exe file and select the compatiability tab. It worked for me and never crashed since then. Have fun :)
@@Powerhouse1 Cossacks 2 is different from the other cossacks (cossacks 3 is basically a remaster of the first one). Sadly, cossacks 2 has it's issues with running on modern systems like IG, but the fix is easier. If you want any reccomendation, Cossacks 2 Battle for Europe is my go to Cossacks game. Campaign sucks but the Battle for Europe mode is amazing imo.
Cant play this game anymore on my new laptop. Something about initialization error. On steam and pirate versions....shame i used to play this when i was a kid. Got a link or know any other sources for this game? I really want to play it again.
The diplomacy of this game was peak and is still fun up to this date.. The tech tree really has an impact and you can feel the progression of it. Lots of games should learn from Imperial Glory... You actually had a sense when the balance of Power was shifting and alliances counted alot. Regarding the melee troops vs missile .. This game forces you to use Square formation .. If you use Square formation against melee ... you can do 1 musket unit vs 3 melee or cav... these small tactics have huge impact. They should definitely revisit this game and improve it !!
That is a good point I didn't mention about these alliances. It was very interesting how I went from being enemies with Austria-Hungary and allied with the UK to the power dynamic shifting AH and I teaming up to take out the UK. And the problem with the square formation is the AI almost will never use it, and if they do, an easy counter is to have a missile unit shooting for support and for your front melee to attack with a cavalry charge from behind.
I made a Steam review (in french) several years ago, and my conclusions were exactly the same : - very interesting ideas about the campaigns. Plenty of options and the ability to craft our nation as we like (the starting year perfectly match for a french campaign by the way) ; - Battles are bad ; - Crashes after some battles. That was what killed the game for me. Even with mediocre battles, I wanted to continue to enjoy the campaign ; but constant crashes were too much.
There is a way to fix the crush. I think it had something to do with the option when you choose the game to cooperate with older windows version Ever since i have changed it it never crushed again
Tried that and unfortunately doesn't work for me. Trust me, I tried almost every fix out there to give this game the best chance possible. All I found is that it'll delay crashes, but they will happen at one point or another.
Man, I used to love this game when I was a kid. Maps were so great! As to the crashes, maybe it is luck, but I never had any crashes. I understand it isn't a great game for today's standards, but at the time it was so amazing.
The easiest way to play this bug free today is via the Mac version unfortunately. I think the Windows version was just as buggy on release on the right hardware. This game was pretty good fun though! I do like the way campaign armies move around the map, similar to the first two total war games. The quests and diplomatic options for conquest were also fun mechanics. Thanks for covering, this game doesn't get much love!
Saddest part of this is that CA broke Empire, Shogun 2 and Napoleon Total War for mod users. Especially if you're trying to play DarthMod, which is super buggy and basically broken for these games now and the author left the scene years ago so no fix in sight. CA broke these games by putting a 10+ year old patch that literally only removed the multiplayer chat functions from their older titles, like the absolute wastebins they are.
This game was very ambitious for being such a small game with a small team and budget compared to Total War. And was heavily outclassed by Rome Total War which came out the same year, or the year before. I dont remember. The battles was very arcady and lacked features like a proper morale system, and it was impossible to disengage from melee. The AI also made some very weird and stupid army compositions on every difficulty. But despite all it's flaws it did the campaign much better than Empire, and Napoleon. And still to this day (mostly) does diplomacy better than any TW game except Three Kingdoms. I don't think Imperial Glory is a must play for most people in 2024 (having revisited it myself quite recently). Empire with mods, or Napoloen and fall of the Samurai is the overall better experience for gunpowder TW. But This game deserves a full on remake or a sequel to iron out the flaws and add depth where the devs didn't have the time or budget, and Imperial Glory could be a very strong contender against TW. It has some very strong ideas and mehcanics escpeically in the campaign department which would work very well even to this day. Sidenote. The crashes with the game is only the Steam and/or GOG version. The game installed from original disc works flawless 99% of the time. I have played for hours without any crash on Windows 10 and even Windows 8:)
That's interesting to note in regard to the crashes. Usually, the GOG version is supposed to be the more stable version optimized for newer hardware. I don't think I'll track down a disk anytime soon, but I will keep that in mind.
Fair enough. I personally prefer the medieval era due to the various weapons and technologies involved of the time as well as the political struggle. Still, I don't mind the occasional bout into musket warfare.
This game is very lame. Very little regions to conquer, some countries are just a one area. The peacefull conquer is too OP AI on the map is a disaster Battle AI is stupid There are very little differences among those empires There are not that much things to do in each turns Resources are just a one thing which is lazy.... But do i like this game? Yes. (Around 120 hours for now)
I used to play this all day when I was 12 years old lol. I had no idea what I was doing, or who the people fighting were; I just saw cool uniforms, big guns and group fighting, and was totally sold. Fast forward a decade, and I was participating in the 2015 reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo.
Damn I also played it when I was a teenager, do not remember much but my experience looked something like yours did. Got this video randomly recommended and it did bring some fun memories. I had no idea what I was doing in campaign so I mostly had fun in custom battles.
same XD
did you survive the battle of waterloo?
Good music too
@@---gk9vebro died fighting with napoleon
My cousin was The Producer of Imperial Glory, he gave me a free copy of the game as well as a free copy of the original Lego Star Wars, he now lives in Japan with his wife I haven't seen him since 2005 since his wedding.
Man say to him to make Imperial Glory 2, I love this game to the core!! Hahahaha'
Have a great 2025!!
@@Michael3851 I'm no longer in contact with him and he no longer works for Eidos, I asked his parents did he have an email but they were BSing me saying "He doesn't have an email"
It's no surprise that having massive battles like Total war is hard to do. I still wish there was some competition so Creative Assembly would have to get their s**t together instead of coasting on a captive audience.
I haven't bought a TW game since Shogun 2. The last time they made a proper TW game was Rome 2. CA is dead
@@jimethota Pharaoh dynasties is actually very good - never played Shogun 2, but dynasties is by far the best bronze age strategy game ever made! (not that there is much competition in that department 😂, but it's honestly lots of fun and has plenty of unique features tied to the setting) So no, they're not dead at all given that this is a 2024 game... 🙄 By the same metric Bethesda would be mega-dead, as they promised TES6 some 6 or 7 years ago and it's not even in late stage development yet!
@@Vict0r1984 Bethesda was possibly the worst company to reference, they've lost their spark as well, Starfield is a dumpster fire
@@jimethota rome 2 sucks so much
@jimethota I only talked about them because of your avatar, Fallout boy. I agree Starfield was a disaster at launch (just like some previous games of theirs, like the Fallout multi-player one), and they also take insanely long between releases, but people still buy their games...
It's a completely different genre of course but, by comparison, CA just released a good succesful game (well, Dynasties was actually a free dlc for Pharaoh owners, but it's basically a whole new game from Pharaoh) this year, so they're clearly not dead...
That is a legendary title. It was not like any other game we ve ever played back then. Way ahead of its time.
This needs to be revived man. Total War needs competition
I agree. Very rarely does an alternative get released, but they almost never follow up upon it properly. King Arthur, the Role-Playing Wargame was really good, but the sequel unfortunately dropped the ball.
@@Powerhouse1 god, i loved the first king Arthur.
Played this game so much when I was a child, It was my first game of this genre , those Naval battles were such high quality
I wouldn't be shocked if this was the inspiration for the naval battles in Empire. They play very similarly.
I remember playing this game. It was fun, but limited. Even with all the bugs, Empire/Napoleon Total War are still superior games IMO
While waiting for Empire, I played Imperial Glory. One of my favourite moments was when I garrisoned a building consisting of several sections. During combat, one of my regiments was taking heavy casualties. I discovered it was the one closest to the enemy, but not due to enemy fire. The regiments in the other sections of the building were all shooting through that section, resulting in massive friendly fire.
You blew me away when you said this came out just 4 years before Empire. I played this game as a kid and I was sure I got it out of some sort of old games bargain bin. When Empire came out, I was already in highschool and had completely forgotten about Imperial Glory. Now I realize Imperial Glory must have just come out when I played it in elementary!
Imperial Glory was great in it's day. It won't even load anymore.
Nice review. It's interesting to see that alternatives and similar games to Total War have existed before. Obviously Total War blew the competition away, but at this point, so many of us are begging new devs to enter the scene again and develop the idea further.
Played Ultimate Admiral yet? It's made by guys that made Darthmod for Empire and from what I remember it was a pretty good game if a little short.
@@Birdy890 I've looked at the games, and they just lack more of a grounded and realistic feel in my opinion. Battles looks arcadey and the units don't behave like they should with firing drills and stuff like that.
@@zrize101 I actually feel the opposite. The ultimate admiral and ultimate general games to me got the scaling of the battles right. Total war battles always felt too small. I'd rather have less detail on the ground to have a bigger scale. Also the units do fire in drills and volleys, the logistics aspect of the game also makes everything all the more grounded.
Oh I remember playing this game... More than 16 years ago lol. It was pretty fun but one thing that annoyed me was that once units got into a melee there was no way to retreat them or exit combat. They'd fight to the death lol.
War Leaders Clash of Nations is another total war-like which is forgotten, but interesting. Wish it was on GoG. I lost one of my CD roms.
Kinda the opposite of empire battles where the battle maps are always in the countryside but here they’re in the palace gardens, lol.
Goodness I wish empire had actual city battle maps
I agree. The maps are the best part about the battles in this game.
Oh this game, its amazing, in the end I still moved to Empire, the best thing with this one is the fog of war on the map and how the enemy can just emerge from it, you never really know what your up against until France goes full swarm mode
Yep, which is why it's vital to get into alliances and protect your borders at all costs.
I really fell in love with musket era games thanks to AOE3 and thus was happy to also play Imperial glory. But then came Empire TW and yea... No much need to go back to this one. Thanks for the nostalgia trip anyway!
At this point I don't even ask for competitor to Total Wars to have real time battles. All they need to have is turn based battles that are well designed and I would be happy. I almost thought Field of Glory is the answer, but their battle system doesn't really translate from their grand strategy map, as in there is no personal connection to my units, that's a bummer for me.
I'm still disappointed that Slitherine backed off from that race, Spartan looked dated, but everything aside of battles was done so much more entertaining than contemporary Total Wars and even for the battle themselves I liked that you had to rely on pre-battle preparations, skirmishers and light units to scout out enemy formation and had only three, one-use commands (all charge, bolster morale, all retreat) once the fighting started.
@Donolohe I didn't use the in-game battle simulator, but used the separate tactical game that can import battle from the campaign game. On another thought, the battle simulator is pretty nice as well. But I still would've liked the units to exist individually, have their own experience level, etc.
I still play this. Whatever you do, do not press windows button
This was a fork year we ended up with bad ending of, and Total War domination. Back then there was still hope that Slitherine would release Legion II, I don't care that the screenshots they had barely rivaled first Rome, Spartan economic gameplay with a more modern-ish looks is a dream to this day.
Played this as a younger, before Empire Total War there was Imperial Glory. Great game.
I got this game when I was like 12. I didn't get very far into it. Went back to og shogun, og medieval, and rtw as a child as they had more to offer.
To fix the crashes after battles you can set the game compatiablity mode to windows 98 or windows xp.
Right click on the imperial glory exe file and select the compatiability tab.
It worked for me and never crashed since then. Have fun :)
We need another cossacks 2, that would be wicked
I have those games on GOG, but haven't played them yet. Maybe I take a look at them one day.
@@Powerhouse1 Cossacks 2 is different from the other cossacks (cossacks 3 is basically a remaster of the first one). Sadly, cossacks 2 has it's issues with running on modern systems like IG, but the fix is easier. If you want any reccomendation, Cossacks 2 Battle for Europe is my go to Cossacks game. Campaign sucks but the Battle for Europe mode is amazing imo.
Cant play this game anymore on my new laptop. Something about initialization error. On steam and pirate versions....shame i used to play this when i was a kid. Got a link or know any other sources for this game? I really want to play it again.
The castle for the England battlefield is the Tower of London.
The diplomacy of this game was peak and is still fun up to this date.. The tech tree really has an impact and you can feel the progression of it. Lots of games should learn from Imperial Glory...
You actually had a sense when the balance of Power was shifting and alliances counted alot.
Regarding the melee troops vs missile .. This game forces you to use Square formation .. If you use Square formation against melee ... you can do 1 musket unit vs 3 melee or cav... these small tactics have huge impact.
They should definitely revisit this game and improve it !!
That is a good point I didn't mention about these alliances. It was very interesting how I went from being enemies with Austria-Hungary and allied with the UK to the power dynamic shifting AH and I teaming up to take out the UK.
And the problem with the square formation is the AI almost will never use it, and if they do, an easy counter is to have a missile unit shooting for support and for your front melee to attack with a cavalry charge from behind.
I made a Steam review (in french) several years ago, and my conclusions were exactly the same :
- very interesting ideas about the campaigns. Plenty of options and the ability to craft our nation as we like (the starting year perfectly match for a french campaign by the way) ;
- Battles are bad ;
- Crashes after some battles. That was what killed the game for me. Even with mediocre battles, I wanted to continue to enjoy the campaign ; but constant crashes were too much.
I never remember having any crashes and I played this on a few different machines.
if you havent yet i recommend checking out "war leaders clash of nations" its a ww2 total war like game
I'll add it to the list. Thanks for the recommendation!
There is a way to fix the crush.
I think it had something to do with the option when you choose the game to cooperate with older windows version
Ever since i have changed it it never crushed again
Tried that and unfortunately doesn't work for me. Trust me, I tried almost every fix out there to give this game the best chance possible. All I found is that it'll delay crashes, but they will happen at one point or another.
Man, I used to love this game when I was a kid. Maps were so great! As to the crashes, maybe it is luck, but I never had any crashes. I understand it isn't a great game for today's standards, but at the time it was so amazing.
Does anyone know for sure if the Steam version runs smoothly on Windows 11?
It’s ok not good but not bad.
I loved this game, and still think the soundtrack is one of the best of any strategy game ever!
The easiest way to play this bug free today is via the Mac version unfortunately. I think the Windows version was just as buggy on release on the right hardware. This game was pretty good fun though! I do like the way campaign armies move around the map, similar to the first two total war games. The quests and diplomatic options for conquest were also fun mechanics. Thanks for covering, this game doesn't get much love!
Glad you enjoyed it! I do wish the game was just more stable in general.
I remember Naval battles being really cool
Developer behind Commandos
And Praetorians.
That cover goes hard.
Saddest part of this is that CA broke Empire, Shogun 2 and Napoleon Total War for mod users. Especially if you're trying to play DarthMod, which is super buggy and basically broken for these games now and the author left the scene years ago so no fix in sight. CA broke these games by putting a 10+ year old patch that literally only removed the multiplayer chat functions from their older titles, like the absolute wastebins they are.
this takes me back...
I bought it while waiting for empier to get realeased. It's like a vegan verision of empire total war.
Imperial Glory was so much better than empire total war... Idk what you played but I thought it was far superior.
On launch, most people couldn't even play Empire: Total War it was so buggy, lol. Let alone complete a campaign.
Yes, I remember just spamming militia and overrunning everything. Too easy.
this game deserves a propper remake. Id love to have a good alternative to TW
This game was very ambitious for being such a small game with a small team and budget compared to Total War. And was heavily outclassed by Rome Total War which came out the same year, or the year before. I dont remember. The battles was very arcady and lacked features like a proper morale system, and it was impossible to disengage from melee. The AI also made some very weird and stupid army compositions on every difficulty.
But despite all it's flaws it did the campaign much better than Empire, and Napoleon. And still to this day (mostly) does diplomacy better than any TW game except Three Kingdoms.
I don't think Imperial Glory is a must play for most people in 2024 (having revisited it myself quite recently). Empire with mods, or Napoloen and fall of the Samurai is the overall better experience for gunpowder TW. But This game deserves a full on remake or a sequel to iron out the flaws and add depth where the devs didn't have the time or budget, and Imperial Glory could be a very strong contender against TW. It has some very strong ideas and mehcanics escpeically in the campaign department which would work very well even to this day.
Sidenote. The crashes with the game is only the Steam and/or GOG version. The game installed from original disc works flawless 99% of the time. I have played for hours without any crash on Windows 10 and even Windows 8:)
That's interesting to note in regard to the crashes. Usually, the GOG version is supposed to be the more stable version optimized for newer hardware. I don't think I'll track down a disk anytime soon, but I will keep that in mind.
im glad there was competition, but i will be honest gunpowder era isn't my cup of tea
Fair enough. I personally prefer the medieval era due to the various weapons and technologies involved of the time as well as the political struggle. Still, I don't mind the occasional bout into musket warfare.
its more like Napoleon total war not empire. I loved this game as a kid, but not the campaign i focused on historical battles.
I played it back in the day - I did not like it a all even back in the day
Alternative Napoleon total war
This game is very lame.
Very little regions to conquer, some countries are just a one area.
The peacefull conquer is too OP
AI on the map is a disaster
Battle AI is stupid
There are very little differences among those empires
There are not that much things to do in each turns
Resources are just a one thing which is lazy....
But do i like this game? Yes. (Around 120 hours for now)
napoleon is still better.
Kinda rip off tbh
Gosh this game looks absurdly stupid. I prefer not to waste time even installing it.
Yeah, nowadays it probably will feel that way, but at the time it was great. Campaing is really good, maps are great and it has amazing sound design
Why stupid? Looks unpolished and half baked, but stupid?
@@xdz1039 it's just bad, no polishing could fix this crap
@Juvelira I bet you haven't played nor listened the entire video.