Rules of Engagement II

BUT WHERE'S THE MANUAL!! GOG!! Please get your self straight OKAY? Young people deserve to enjoy this game but ROE2 is more complicated! They need the manual!! you can find it online on some sites but GOG you need to include it!!!!! Also anyone still having issues should reconfigure dos box rune ROE2.exe instead or better still run the setup file. The problems people have been having involve that. Also, to run Breach 2 scenarios you have to manually place the Breach2 game into the ROE2 directory. Breach 3 unfortunately is a problem. The idiots who compiled it messed up and I'm scared hoe GOG will handle it. Also I only know of one instance someone got B3 maps to work and unfortunately sound didn't work. So well have to wait. Hopefully they'll put this all on steam. GOG please fix this and get the manuals up OK??? I give you better rating then.

But it's nothing without its manuals. Nothing.

It was fun to plan your strategy, assign your ships and captains, and deploy the fleet, however once you get past the planning and deployment phase, the crux of the game is you are looking at, and interacting with, a control panel with a bunch of buttons that control your ship and it's systems. The main screen can only show you four panels at one time, so if all your tactical panels are up on your screen and you need to communicate to your captains, you need to sacrafice one of your tactical panels to bring up the Comm panel. It's just very combersom. As for eye candy, once you get into combat, there is none. There is a tactical 'view screen' of the ship you are engaging, but it's severly lacking in sexyness (I can remember playing this game in my youth and hitting the self-destruct button on my ship, just to see a neat little video of my ship exploding). You issue commands to your captains and they go do their best to acomplish their tasks, most times they do. If you chose to directly engage an enemy ship, expect your engines to be targeted first and completely destroyed. FYI, when your engines are completely taken out, you are dead in space and the game becomes completely un-fun. You can use emergency thrusters to get to a jump point, but due to the distances involved, it takes hour/days to get there. Meanwhile the battle is unfolding elsewhere and hopefully your captains are able to acomplish the mission, but without your flagship, it will be difficult. Other than these main gripes, I did have fun for a while in the game, but it just does not hold up to modern space combat games and even nostalgia will not permit me to purchase it. The game's lore is right up there with the best of them. It's a solid universe to game in and in my personnal opinion, it is due for a modern sequal/reboot! PLEASE!!!

To resolve any sound issues with the game DO NOT launch the game through the DOS Box that comes with the game. Instead download and install Dos Box separate from the game; from the Dos Box website. Access the game from that Dos Box, not the one that comes with the game. If sound is still an issue run the r2setup.exe for the game in Dos Box and select the option that includes SoundBlaster16. Then run the game in dos box and you should have full sound. Where to install the game so you can access it using the original Dox Box? The easy non technical way: Create a Directory called "ROE2" or whatever on your C drive (OS drive) and then copy and paste the installed GOG Rules of Engagement 2 files in to that directory. When you start dos box type the following "mount c c:\ROE2\" Then navigate into that directory by typing "c:\" "cd\ROE2\" then run the game by typing "rules2" You can create your own enemy races to fight, or to be allies on missions/campaigns you create. You can create ships to play in the game. You can create enemy ships to play against in the game. You'd need to edit or create your own missions/campaigns to add them to the list for the enemy AI to use. You can create your own star systems to fight in. You'd need to create your own campaign to use them though. Very fun game, highly recommended. Someone should make YouTube tutorials going over the basics and more advanced aspects of game play. I'm up for the challenge on that. :)