After playing Europa Universalis: Rome, I was pleasantly surprised by Europa Universalis III: Napoleon's Ambition in many ways but felt a little let down in others.

Europa Universalis games are designed around bringing a board game to life (see the Europa Universalis Board Game). The game functions a lot like old strategy games — such as Risk or Axis and Allies or Diplomacy — in which the globe is divided into territories, each with their own special benefits and resources. A player can win in a number of ways, including military combat, diplomacy and fiscal earnings.

I walked into the game with the mindset that it was a live-action board game. I had assumed otherwise in Europa Universalis: Rome, looking for real-time strategy or epic city builder, or something different. That was a mistake — a mistake that hurt. Preconceptions are bad news, so I said to myself: "It's a videogame that plays like a board game" and hoped that would work for me this time around.

Look at the game as a board-game-made-videogame made it a lot easier to digest. I had a lot more fun with it with that in mind. Not only that, but I felt that the game did much better than Europa Universalis: Rome. For one thing, it allowed for greater flexibility in the nation builder, such as how religious tolerance affects nations (e.g., the allowances of the Papacy and how they dealt with England).

I enjoyed that element — the flexibility — because it gave me the chance to come up with new ideas and sort of "reinvent" history. Perhaps Henry the VIIIth would have remained Catholic, or perhaps the Italian government would have destroyed the Vatican. I had that flexibility, which was pretty nice. I also enjoyed the close-up shots of various ports of call and new cities. I could see pictures of the cities or countries I was in, and getting to see the different styles or architecture or design was nice, because it helped suspend disbelief.

The game lauds itself as basically being able to do anything from the later 1400s to the mid-1700s in terms of world domination or whatever goal you might have. That's a big claim but is pretty close. In the end, the game does have more options for micromanaging and control than any other game I've seen.

But in the end, I felt like there were too many possibilities. I could do so many things and accomplish so many different goals and missions that ultimately I was getting frustrated. I wanted an ending to the game: a grand epic victory in which I win. Granted, this game does have specific goals a player can experience and move through, and if you complete them, you gain bonuses. But in the end, the goals are unnecessary. If you decide not complete them, it doesn't hurt your leaders — it just doesn't help. But you don't really "win" the game.

Much like a city builder, Europa Universalis III gives players a kick when they complete a specific goal they themselves created. Henry the VIIIth the new Pope? Why not? And if you want to conquer Japan, with the English, you can do it. But having accomplished your goal, you can give yourself a smile and say "cool," but that's about it. What comes next?

When I was a kid, there was nothing quite as satisfying as when I beat an old 8-bit Nintendo game as sitting through the montage of credits after finishing the big boss until it finally got to the usual corny line like "Special thanks to YOU." Then you know you've done something cool.

This game didn't really have that element. In essence, the goals weren't enough for me. Hell, even most city builders that I've played from Sierra have goals. Sure you can have a "free build" in which you just go nuts and do whatever, but they typically work you up from a village all the way until you can become emperor or king or whatever the ultimate prize may be.

Not so in Europa Universalis III — which left me wanting.

The other thing, it still suffers from some of the same stuff I disliked in Europa Universalis Rome.. For example, if you want to move your army to a spot on a map, you click the spot and the computer will tell you how many "turns" that will take. Then you wait the amount of turns until your army gets to wherever it is going. But you can't change course on the way, or your army's advance reboots and you have to do it all over again. That spells trouble when you're half-wary between point A and B and you have to make a hasty detour to put down rebels or some other trouble and the whole thing gets rerouted.

I guess this type of game is not my cup of tea. I would say that board-game lovers would enjoy it, but I'm not so sure. I have found that when I play a board game with my friends, there is a social dynamic that playing a board game has that playing a computer game does not. As such, I believe the developers should have been more aware of that need to make it feel more like you're playing with other people by giving more animated graphics and making the game feel less "clunky."

If you are, however, a fan of the Paradox Interactive game style, I would say that this game is so far the best I've seen in the Europa Universalis series — although I haven't seen much. The developers cleaned up a lot of mistakes by giving you more control of the game, made it feel a bit more "quest-based" for players like me who like goals in videogames, and they give you a whole world to conquer, which is pretty exciting on some level for any gamer.