For Liberty, by developer Hussar Games been out for awhile, though I never noticed the box art in any store that I frequent. Needless to say, it's a new game to me. Hussar Games must be an independent developer as I had never heard of them till playing this game. I checked out the Web site and noticed the games they had developed. Kudos to Matrix Games for giving independent developers a chance to show what they can do. Since war games are a niche market, they don't normally receive the level of acknowledgment other genres can. Most times, you'll notice an advertisement in one of your popular gaming magazines or maybe come across another review on a Web site.

I would like to say that it is strictly a Revolutionary War game for the American colonies, but you can also play a series of Hungarian campaigns as well. Since I'm not well-versed, historically about Hungary's wars, I'll stick to the American Revolution side. That puts it from the years 1775 to 1783 for the long campaign. All turns are a week long, allowing for a reasonable amount of play time, unless you prefer shorter campaigns.

Setup is simple with three difficulty settings. Your options are easily changeable, not that there many choices to begin with. Scroll speed, animation, FPS, effects and music are easily adjustable. After that, play the tutorial as this will be the easiest way to familiarize you with the controls. The tutorial is easy to understand and, in most cases, will require you to only brush up on the manual if something technical puzzles you.

What you see when playing is your large tactical map, a small mini-map broken into three sections and, to the left, your information panels. The tactical map isn't overpowering with tons of information. It displays the troops and towns with various terrain features you would come to expect, i.e. roads, mountains, rivers and plains among other things. You can see this by left-clicking anywhere on the map, which brings up a small display on the bottom left portion of the side panel. This way, you can plan battles that would be favorable to the armies in the field.

A nice feature is that all the armies and towns have flags over them indicating who controls what. The mini-map also shows what towns and troops belong to whom with colored squares making it simple to point and click on the mini-map getting to all those hot spots fast. Everything is turn-based — Americans first, then the English. The pieces are surrounded by six hex sides but only noticeable when you click on them. This keeps the visuals simple and clean and doesn't clutter the map with lines. The mini-map is divided into three sections, and each section has its own weather climate and does affect how armies will fight.

Movement is simple, left-click who you want to move, then right-click in the hex you want to move to. Left-click then right-click an army, and you bring up a small panel that gives you various commands that can be applied. There are two types of combat, computer-controlled or tactical, if you select human control. By allowing the computer control, the game moves faster, but the army might not fight the way you intend. Tactical control adds more depth to the game plus doesn't affect the weekly turns as these are considered sub-turns. Your troops are controlled by generals, and they affect such things as morale and combat and influence the ability to rally the troops. The sphere of influence is a ring centered on the general and can be one hex to three hexes wide.

Supply is taken into consideration, which caught me by surprise as you can run out of ammo. When that happened, I basically could do nothing but charge the enemy, which is only good if you have high morale. Morale is your enemy. You might be winning the battle, then realize your troops are breaking in front of your eyes because their morale was negative. The left side panels give you information on supplies, recruiting, zeal and other various functions. I could go in depth, but I've given you a general idea.

Recruiting brings up a panel that is very intuitive to use. Select what you want the army to be comprise, and a general to command it, then close the panel, and there you have your army ready to command. All recruiting is done in towns, by the way. You can transfer troops between armies, and you can have as few as 400 men in an army if you so desire. You can have militia, infantry, cavalry and artillery.

There is more, but I've given you a small idea on how the game functions. I liked how the map was laid out, with the side panels to my left, but not intruding. The armies are represented as little figures, which are clearly defined. Panels are easy to open and close, and all necessary information is given. What I found a bit annoying was the left- and right-clicking of the information or movement. All things are selected with a left-click, but all action is done as a right-click. Moving armies was a bit annoying. Since the action was right-clicking, your destination you would have to reselect if you left-clicked instead. Sometimes, you would end up right-clicking twice and bring up the panel to manage your targeted army when you didn't want it. That requires you to select a terrain feature and left-click to make the panel disappear.

Also when in tactical combat mode, you can get a bit frustrated when the command to do something won't work and you're trying to figure out what the problem is only to realize that it was telling you all along but in red words. I can't tell you the number of times I'm trying to get a troop to charge and being told it has low morale but didn't notice the explanation. The same goes with running out of ammo. These are minor annoyances, though, and really didn't spoil the game as a whole. For me, this was one of the easier games to play but still had a bit of complexity that kept me wanting to play more. If you like the American Revolution or even playing the Hungarian campaigns, or just like war games in general, then this one might be your cup of tea.