Review by: Robert Zacny

A successful interface fades into the background, letting the action come to the fore. A poor interface, such as the demon that inhabits Making History II, is unforgettable. It constantly demands more attention and effort. It is more of an opponent than any AI, one bent on sabotaging the entire experience. As a consequence, it is difficult to come to any kind of judgment about Making History II as a strategy game. The act of playing it is so deeply unpleasant that it is almost impossible to comprehend.

The game attempts to strike a balance between the simplified grand-strategy of a game like Axis & Allies and the scope and possibilities found in a historical simulation like Europa Universalis. It pays particularly close attention to the economy, and the challenges of ensuring that it is properly supplied with everything it needs to keep working and powering the military.

Dotted across the Risk-style strategy map are cities, which represent the industrial and intellectual centers of the country. The surrounding regions contain raw materials and natural resources. The game reduces economy and trade to six resources: money, arms, metal, coal, oil, and food. Farms and mineral extractors built across the regions produce higher yields, while more factories increase the cities' output. Technological advances unlock better weapons, factories, and resource producers. For instance, small family farms give way to plantations, which are in turn superseded by collectives.

Since building heavy industrial capacity and a military gobbles down resources, most countries must look beyond their borders for important war materials. They can buy resources on the international commodities market, which is risky if there is a sudden shortage, or they can strike trade deals to secure fixed amounts of resources from other nations. Either path is effective, provided a country is not isolated by embargoes. Since conflict breeds shortages, it's wise to keep large stockpiles on hand.

This all looks like an engaging and approachable set of challenges, perfect for a strategy game that aims at complexity without becoming a hardcore historical simulation. The problem is that the interface quickly and mercilessly sucks all the simplicity and fun from the experience.

From the beginning, Making History II suffers from sprawl, and it just gets worse as the game proceeds. In the first place, the map is poorly labeled and the iconography is tiny and nondescript, so the largest visual element of the interface conveys no useful information. A single tank division and a vast army group are indistinguishable from one another, which becomes a major problem as armies proliferate on the map. In the same fashion, cities and ongoing construction projects are also identical. The map becomes very busy with uninformative icons.