It is almost enough to make you want to break into a chorus of Rule Britannia … almost, but not quite.

Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun is a PC release from Strategy First and Paradox Entertainment and it is a mapboard-based strategy game that combines a political-economic base with the turbulent times between the mid-1800s and the early 1900s.

The game features three main scenarios in the single-player game, and each scenario has 11 available countries to play as – these nations comprising some of the top powers of Europe as well as the United States.

The game has a fine pedigree. After all Paradox Entertainment was the force behind Europa Universalis.

So far so good.

But while the intentions of the game are grand and the focus is finite, the execution may have some players foundering in the stream of evolving gameplay and wondering what they missed. It is a good thing this game comes with a pause feature.

Take, for example, the first scenario offered – Grand Campaign 1836. You pick a side and launch the scenario. There is no real mission statement, but that’s Ok. You are presented with a mapboard, which basically is a static overview of your nation, broken into provinces or territories with icons denoting what is in each province or group of provinces.

Click around a bit and see what each has; is there a Navy in the Channel across from France? Should you build one? What resources are available?

Check the clock – whoops, a couple of months have passed while you have been looking around. Other nations are building and you have been stagnant. Where is that pause button?

The goals of the game are rather easy to understand. You are tasked with recreating world history given a certain political and historical base and span your empire across Europe. To that end there are five main areas that each player must pay attention to, and they are the economics, military, diplomacy, technology and politics.

The models for each are sound in principle but stumble in actual gameplay. You can move your nations politically from a monarchy to a parliamentary system; you can budget your country’s resources, creating military units and build for an invasion; you can broker peace and alliance with another country; or you can research new technologies that are the outcome of necessity and events within the game.

There is no tutorial for this title, so players will be thrown into the maelstrom of the game without the benefit of walking through some of the principles behind it. That is not a really big problem for those familiar with strategic games, but for the newcomer to the genre, it may leave your scratching your head and wondering what happened. The manual does an adequate job of explaining the basics, but it does concentrate overly much with the minutia of the game. And with the minute details popping up and that clock winding quickly, unless you are on top of all of the elements of the game before you launch the scenario, you will fall behind fast.

The game is keyboard driven and the controls are rather easy to understand. The interface is also well designed.

The graphical quality of this game is simplistic. Victoria is a mapboard game. The interface provides players with a wealth of information either on the bar on the left, or you can right-click on areas and get a number of options, which can be opened. The musical score of the game is quite well done and truly a highlight of the title.

Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun is fast-paced and challenging, but it is not for the newer players to the genre. The pacing of the game will drown them. Better to step back and pick up a copy of Europa Universalis. For the veterans of the genre, if you are looking for a game that is quite cerebral in nature, then this title may fit that bill.

This program is rated for Everyone.

Gameplay: 6.8

This game is on a quick pace and unless you are firmly in touch with the pause button, you will fall behind. While the game has a lot, it is slightly out of balance.

Graphics: 6

This is a static, two-dimensional mapboard game. The GUI is the only thing that adds life to the title. The map looks nice, but offers nothing that will truly get players to sit up and go ‘wow!’

Sound: 7.8

The musical score is very good, but the rest of the sound effects are average at best.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard

Concept: 7

This is a title that has packed a lot into a finite space. The economic base is deep, the political base is deep and then you are confronted with the evolving goal of creating an expansive empire. The game’s pacing really needs to be tweaked to allow players a chance to breathe and plan.

Multiplayer: 7

The game has Local Area, Internet and Valkyrienet support. If you like Risk, with depth, this is a solid option.

Overall: 7

Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun is a fine idea with several stumbles in the execution. It is not for the new player to the strategic gaming genre. It will likely provide a challenge to veterans due to its frenetic pacing. The game has depth, but hurries through it rather than allowing players to savor the experience.