Birth of America Image
Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 14 Ratings

  • Summary: The year 2005 marks the 250th anniversary of the start of the French & Indian Wars. Twenty years later, the War of the American Independance began. These two events marked the real start of a new era, the end of an empire, the birth of a nation. In Birth of America, the player controls one of the major contenders of these 2 conflicts, trying to achieve military and political victory. It is a rather complete and detailed simulation of the two most important wars in Colonial America - from 1755 to 1783 - but with a simple and elegant new simultaneous turn-based engine. [Strategy First] Collapse
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 8
  2. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. It's the best evidence of games' actually having some value beyond entertainment, and it's a total bonus and not necessary for game enjoyment. You can play it just as a game, and it works fine too. [July 2006, p.62]
  2. The beauty of BoA is the way it captures the unique character of American Revolutionary warfare without drowning wannabe Washingtons and Howes in detail. [May 2006, p.81]
  3. This is the kind of game nerds play when they’re waiting for new Dungeons & Dragons campaign books to come out.
  4. For those willing to tolerate a few boardgame-style abstractions, a little thumb-twiddling (sometimes turn calculations can take a minute or two) and the odd bit of bafflement (fundamentally simple, the game does have a few confusing elements like supply simulation), purchase options are pretty diverse.

See all 8 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 5
  3. Negative: 1 out of 5
  1. Chriss
    9
    Would be a 10 easy but it plays a bit slow. It was such a nice change from base building rts.
  2. Very solid title coming from a big-time strategy game fan. I don't like shooters or sports titles or fancy graphics in lieu of content. Stategy, simulation, or adnenture games for me. I have played many titles and I just recently stumbled across this one. Wow! Good stuff. If concepts are more important to you than graphics then this is a very solid war stategy game. It seemed too complex initially but after about 11 hours I understood how simple and streamlined it really is.

    I gave this game a 9 but considered an 8. Although I haven't finished it yet I can already tell that it will be pretty much the same thing with just more challenges thrown at you. That is why I considered 8. But after reconsidering I realized that this game completely achieves its objectives and definitely makes you feel like you are the 5-star general moving your officers around the map. It accomplished this with very simple ideas that are actually very complex. Micromanagement, which I like however, is at a very minimum.

    Had this title included economic, political, and domestic features that were more fleshed out then this would have easily been my 2nd all-time score of 10. Instead it is in rare company with a 9. Game is worth $30, at least; Im so I glad I got it for $9.99.

    It's definitely worth it.
    Expand
  3. DavidY.
    8
    Fun strategy game, much like a board game but would be good if you could control production or influece how the locals think about your side. AI seems pretty good too. Expand
  4. DanW
    0
    I played this game for about 10 minutes before realising how poor it was. Don't waste your hard earned on it like I did.

See all 5 User Reviews