Libertad o Muerte!

Review

Soon after Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Spain in 1807, the Spanish American Wars of Independence started. On one side, you had the Royalist camp who wanted to stay under the great Empire of Spain, while the Patriots were fighting for freedom and independence. Which side are you on? Will you lead the Patriots to victory and independence, or are you a fair dinkum Spanish royalist wanting to keep the Spanish American countries under Spain by crashing down the revolt? It is Libertad o Muerte!

Libertad o Muerte is a turn-based strategy game Developed by Headquarter S.L. and published by Avalon Digital on the 12^th of June 2020 on Steam.

The game consists of 5 scenarios from the early years of the conflict (1810 – 1815), the great campaign (1810 – 1825) and three scenarios based in specific areas within the conflict. The game can be played single-player against the AI, on a hotseat or PBEM mode.  

In the single-player mode, you can choose to play in one of the 5 available scenarios straight away and you can select to play either the Royalist or the Patriots! The AI has three levels of difficulty, which are Basic, Voluntary and Expert. Interestingly, you are not able to pick which level of difficulty the AI will be before launching a scenario; you’ll have to pre-select the difficulty in the options tab, which I find a bit odd.

Whichever side you play, the aim in each scenario is to take control of as many regions as possible within a certain number of turns to win the game. For example, the great campaign has 31 turns in total. Each turn has 7 to 8 phases before any battles or sieges take place, depending on whether or not you have naval units in your army. If you do, each turn will have 8 phases before the battle and sieges.

The Summary will be the first phase where you can see where you stand in regards to your victory points, how many regions your army occupies, how many battles you won or lost the last turn, how many units you lost and how many cards you have in your deck cards.  The card draw is the next phase; on the first turn of each scenario you’ll be able to pick up several cards, but each turn after that you’ll generally be able to pick up only one (sometimes more if you use a few cards from your previous turn). Then you’ll have the reinforcement followed by the income and maintenance phases. If you have enough resources left, you’ll be able to purchase additional units in the next phase. When you’ve done all of that, you’ll be able to move your naval units first then your land units.

If you move one or more units into an enemy region that is not defended with a unit, you’ll automatically take over the region. However, if that region has a city with one or more enemy units within the city, that city will still be held by the enemy force until you have one of your leaders in the region to activate a siege. On the other hand, if you attack a region which has enemy units in it, with or without a leader, you’ll activate a combat phase.

Talking about the combat phase, first the AI will draw the dice for the attacker and the defender. Whoever has the highest score will take the initiative (fire first) in the battle. If you have a battle card in your deck, you’ll have to use it before the battle starts. The battle will be decided after three rounds (sometimes fewer), and the camp that eliminates the most enemy units will win the battle.  If the region has a city, then a siege will follow.

So far, I’ve played the Bolivar scenario entirely, which took me around 4 hours to complete, and I am currently playing the Great Campaign which I am halfway through.

I must say that it took me a bit of time to get my head around the game, as you don’t have a tutorial as such, but you do have a comprehensive written game manual which you can access in the rules tab.  Bear in mind, it is about 50+ pages to read, but you’ll figure out how the game works a lot quicker than I did if you read it.

I do enjoy this type of strategy game which gives you a few historical facts and takes you a fair bit of time to complete a scenario.  The graphics are ok, and the game runs well. I didn’t encounter any problems in my entire gameplay, which is good. The only thing I can complain about is that the AI is far too easy to beat, in my opinion.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!