The board game was exactly the same way, but there is a chief difference in the PC game that I think is another thing that makes me favor the electronic iteration over the cardboard one: the artwork in the board game was very serious, rendered in solemn “brown and darker brown” tones and period artwork. But the PC game has very French comics-style artwork and a general tone of irreverence that I found to be much more in line with the raucous, frivolous tone of the game if not its historical context. The battle animations in particular are inspired- the fights are rendered in a cutout style of animation similar to Terry Gilliam’s work with Monty Python. Imagine if someone cut the images of knights out of a tapestry from the period and wiggled them around with some random battle noises over the top. It’s funny, and even though I’ve seen it a thousand times I still find it pretty charming.

The PC game does have a unique annoyance. There are only two speeds at which the AI players can take their turns and neither one of them is fast enough for my liking. The result is that the human player has to watch the AI players duke it out and that can be uncomfortably long during a War turn in a five or six player game. It does get you to pay closer attention to what’s going on, but an overall outcome is more important than watching what the die roll was on a particular battle. The ability to skip over the animations- even though they’re really neat- would be a great option that would shave a pretty serious amount of time off the game. It’s one thing to watch other players take their turns in a face-to-face game, but it’s another when you’re playing alone at the PC. Playing a two to four player game reduces the amount of time it takes to finish a game greatly,

On the technical end of things, the game seems to run smoothly, doesn’t require much horsepower, and the only problem I’ve had is an apparently random desktop crash every so often. Of course, those crashes have a tendency to somehow happen right in the middle of a ten turn game that I happen to be leading.

The graphics are nicely rendered, clear, and even the text translations are much better than what I’ve come to expect from the English localization of French PC and board games. Of course, if you want the fullest cultural impact of the game you can run the game en Francais as well as English. The game is also very user-friendly with a simple interface, plenty of contextual help tools, rollovers-a-plenty, and various metrics to track game information.

I’m extremely pleased with the PC edition of MONTJOIE- I never expected to play it again, let alone as an improved and enhanced electronic edition. At last I can play a game that I like a lot that no one else seems to without listening to whining or complaints or playing in fear of the game completely tanking (see Cracked LCD 5.7). It’s a fun, easy-to-play game with a lot of punch and counterpunch that I think in a lot of ways was ahead of its time in terms of bridging the gap between light wargames and Eurogames (what are now called “Weuros” for some godforsaken reason) and I definitely recommend it for fans of that style of game.

I’d like to think that Mr. Bernard’s design will be granted a second chance thanks to the PC version in hopes that one day someone will see the game in my collection and actually ask to play it. The thing is, at this point I’d be happier playing a hotseat version of the PC game even though it doesn’t have the cool stone castles.

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com .

Previous Cracked LCDs: Version 1.0 Version 1.1 Version 1.2 Version 1.3 Version 1.4 Version 1.5 Version 1.6 Version 1.7 Version 1.8 Version 1.9 Version 2.0 Version 2.1 Version 2.2 Version 2.3 Version 2.4 Version 2.5 Version 2.6 Version 2.7 Version 2.8 Version 2.9 Version 3.0 Version 3.1 Version 3.2 Version 3.3 Version 3.4 Version 3.5 Version 3.6 Version 3.7 Version 3.8 Version 3.9 Version 4.0 Version 4.1 Version 4.2 Version 4.3 Version 4.4 Version 4.5 Version 4.6 Version 4.7 Version 4.8 Version 4.9 Version 5.0 Version 5.1 Version 5.2 Version 5.3 Version 5.4 Version 5.5 Version 5.6 Version 5.7 Version 5.8