Siege is a real time strategy game that was developed by Mindscape, a publishing house now a distant memory. It was released in the early nineties and would have perhaps faired better on the markets had it not gone up against some stout competition. It did a great number of things right, but just had too much to compete against at the time of its initial release to go down in history as anything more than an average game.
To begin with, Siege plays from the top down perspective, which is very user friendly when a gamer is managing a large expanse of area or controlling any quantity of troops on a field.
The aesthetics of the game, as you begin, are striking, ranging from the very well done menu and introductory screens to the graphics as you enter the game. Siege is scenario based, however, and all of your available armies will be defined by the scenario you are playing as opposed to some stroke of manufacturing genius. Again, the graphical capabilities of the game shine, and units are clearly visible from above, regardless of the terrain, and are easily discernible from one another.
At the very begin of the game, before selecting one of the above mentioned scenarios, the user has the choice of playing as either the attacking side or the defending side. In other words, you will
either be defending the castle in a scenario, or trying to take it. This is a very interesting approach to a real time strategy game and leads to more replay value, since each mission can be played at least twice. The missions themselves are interesting, mainly due to the wide variety of units available. Since Siege takes place in a world of fantasy, there are some really wild and engaging units. Units are moved around in a tactical manner, reinforcing weakened area, providing full frontal attacks or decoys, and so on.
While everything in the game is very pretty to look at, Siege does offer two main drawbacks. The first is that the AI is quite stupid, and it will not take much practice to have repeated success in the scenarios. The second is that the makers missed the boat with the controls. Most all of the commands that you can issue your units are controlled by the numbers 1 through 0 on the keypad. While it is nice to not have to look very hard for the key that you want, it is entirely too easy to strike the wrong one and issue an errant command. If this can be overlooked, you can experience a nice play.
