The first strategy game I seriously played and loved was Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. Before that, I was absolutely not interested in this genre. I never found it particularly exciting to virtually push some combat units around on a map. But Dune 2 nevertheless cast its spell on me and has not let go of many of us to this day. A whole bunch of successors poured over the audience in the years that followed. However, these clones soon lost the appeal of the new. Perhaps I would have found these fresh ideas in other – less well-known – representatives of the genre back then. In search of such pearls, I enter the famous hexa fields of The Perfect General II.
It was around the turn of the millennium. Not a good time for computer games. The market consolidation on hardware side (IBM PC + Playstation + Nintendo 64) had also left its strong marks on the variety of software. For years, few game formulas had been ruling the market. Console-style racing games (with the camera behind the car) were going strong. The predominant computer game genres were 3D shooters and so-called real-time strategy. Adventure games were dead as a doornail, what would become the big RPG renaissance was actually just starting to bloom (though nobody suspected it yet) and apart from that… yet, a bit fat nothing. And that's just covering the standard, previously established niches. Experimentation, low-price or indie games were all non-existent. It was an awful age of uniformity. Not quite incidentally, it was the time I launched this website – to show there had been so much more in the gaming sector once. Based on a personal recommendation, I bought the totally atypical Europa Universalis and later its sequel, Europa Universalis II.
