Fight Back plays pretty much like every other RTS out there, with plenty of resource management, fortification building and combat. I’ll give the developers (GSC Game World) credit for assembling an easy to understand resource management system, and an equally friendly construction system, but the rest of the game is just standard RTS fare. You buy and build, battle and barter to keep your troops or tribes alive, then at some point you wage a full-scale war to end the game. That’s all there is to it, and unfortunately, we’ve seen it way too many times for it to be considered interesting any more.

The game isn’t helped by the fact that the AI is all over the map, with your troops behaving like cowardly buffoons, while the enemy AI fights better than Rome’s greatest armies. The first few missions will end with you dying within 15 minutes of starting the game. Remember the Orc Tower Rush from Warcraft III? Ok, now magnify that by 1,000 and you’ve got your average game of Fight Back. You can’t take your eyes off the things for even a minute, as you’ll find your fledgling fortifications being burnt to the ground by hyper-intelligent AI invaders. And the minute friendly blood is shed, you can expect your troops to scatter in all directions. Even when you herd them back together, they’ll keep peeling off and running away as soon as they get a chance.

For an RTS, Fight Back looks quite good. The soldiers from the various historical periods are well detailed, sporting the colors, weapons and clothing styles appropriate to their eras. During combat, soldiers will front-load their muskets, hide behind objects and generally move around with a great amount of realism. The environments are beautiful to behold, especially the structures. GSC obviously put a lot of work into texturing the environments, so a tree looks like a tree, and log fortifications actually look like they are built from rough-hewn logs.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the sound; suffice it to say that everything sounds realistic. Weapon sounds adapt to their historical era, so a musket shot has that sort of "zip" effect to it, and arrows actually whistle through the air. The music is good enough to keep things interesting, but isn’t overly inspired.

If you’re a hardcore RTS player, then you’ll probably enjoy American Conquest: Fight Back for a short while, especially since it adds five new nations and several dozen new unit types to those of the original title. After a few hours, however, even the most hardcore fan will tire of the limited gameplay and the annoying enemy rush attacks. Only the truest gluttons for punishment will replay the missions or campaign after finishing them. If you’re really interested in this game, I’d suggest either borrowing a copy from a friend, or waiting for it to hit the discount rack.