Imperator and Elysium (Amiga) - Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
33⚔️ Imperator and Elysium are two 'later' top down RISK-type games in the same spirit as Centurion. They are both in the German language, with little exposure outside of Germany, so lets see if we can shed a little light on these lesser-known games.
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Production Notes:
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Captured: Elysium 25th July 2019, Imperator 27th July 2019
Narrated: 27th August 2019
Edited: 27th-29 August 2019
Rendered: (V2) 29th August 2019
After playing the 4 main games in this series; Hannibal, Carthage, Centurion and Caesar; I went back to these two games which I found in my research. I initially wrote both of those off as too obscure and difficult to understand, but I found some fixed ADFs on the EAB file server for Elysium and this made me boot up the game a second time. On this try, I was blown away by the animated backgrounds, even though I didnt know how to play the game - it looked impressive. So I had the idea of playing Imperator but adding Elysium on to the end of it as a bonus. The only problem was, I still didnt know how to play Imperator. Finally I got the idea to right-click the military forces in the field, and suddenly I was able to move locations and go into battle mode.
As soon as I'd worked this out, and what all the menus are supposed to do, I recorded my first attempt, and this is the playguide on offer. Hopefully people who saw the Centurion review will know how to play it already, as its very similar, apart from the mini-games. I must admit the food distribution and grain planting went over my head, but its good to see some more depth to the game than just the battles.
Elysium was a different story, and again you can see my blundering around my first ever try at the game, but not actually getting anywhere. The recruitment section is where I fell down, and I couldnt work out how to cancel the huge bill of my previous order. Being able to see your cities is a great feature, and was included in several of these types of niche Amiga games back then. But nobody remembers 3D battle simulators like Armada anymore, if ever they did before, and all the other games which had this feature. I recorded a bit of extra footage of the game as I found several more animated screens. On this third viewing of the game, I was blown away by the music, and decided to record it as a special standalone videos for youtube, as nobody else would stumble over it, and the music is perhaps the best I have ever heard in an Amiga game, at least from soundtracker MODs.
I ran out of description space in the Elysium Music video, so here is the music, as both MP3 and also .MOD, which can be played with VLC player. I had to use Pro Wizard to rip the MODs from the game itself, as they arnt available online.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ObQXT7nUj9adjtsdDnyuitPIFPMoslk3/view?usp=sharing
Danscore - Imperator
Looking at the landscape you might instantly notice the graphics are more homebrew than the commercial titles from Psygnosis and EA, giving this a cover disk feel from the start. Pressing the right-mouse button to see the legion icon jigging about is funny, and opens the door to the other side of this game. There is comedy in the form of characters, such as Cleopatra, who say silly things in the game, and generally make light of the situation. Cleopatras bent and crooked nose is more like the real woman, who by all accounts was no stunning looker. On the more serious side we can sway the senate and sow the seeds of prosperity in different ways. It seems most of the game was translated to English, but not all of it, and the person who translated this got a bottle of Calvados for their services, according to HOL. If this had been released in 1988 at the height of the Amiga boom, it would be perhaps remembered today. But Id say 1998 was a tad too late for most people. It feels homebrew so as a commercial title I give it a 5.5. Not bad but nothing special.
Elysium? - I cant really comment on this one. It was released in 1993, it has superb (!!) graphics and music, and maybe it deserves credit as an unknown classic. Perhaps someone out there can tell me where I went wrong, so I can play it and see. ? :)