I have finally played this game enough to write a review. I beat both the Conquistador and Aztec campaigns on Normal difficulty.
Good:
1. Tactics- good depth of strategies involving unit synergy, terrain, range, and a wide variety of different units on both sides that are different enough from each other
2. Graphics and animation are adequate
3. Replayability- not a lot of games let you play on both sides, and with varying difficulty levels
Bad:
1. Music loops and game sounds got annoying after a while and lacked variety (maybe make different sounds in each level?)
2. Small playing field- a lot of times I had trouble clicking on a unit or square because the mouse kept switching from one square to another, or I clicked the wrong square or unit by accident because the areas are so small. When there were a lot of units, it was also hard to see who was where, especially in regards to straight line of sight. The playing field should have twice the number of pixels as it does now.
3. Computer AI was stupid. Most of my victories came when the opponent's leader charged to the front lines and got ganged up on by my units. Also, the computer's archers ignored friendly fire risks and killed as many of their own troops as they did mine by shooting their own units in the back. In fact, both of my campaign Final Victories came when the opponent's ranged units fatally shot their own leaders in the back (archers on Aztec Leader in the first campaign, and a cannon on Conquistador Leader in the second campaign, where the cannon was two spaces from my unit and in the middle was their Leader, and the cannon aimed at my unit and killed their Leader lol) Maybe the AI should be able to protect their leader and keep it in the back and hesitate to friendly fire.
Ugly:
1. Lack of thorough instructions. For example, I didn't know you could knock an opposing unit into the Pit and kill them instantly until the enemy did it to me. There was no mention of this anywhere in the instructions. Every potential gameplay mechanic should be described and explained in the instructions of a game.
2. I would rather have had the Aztec campaign start in Tenochtitlan and have the final battle end at the coast at Cempoala, pushing the Spaniards back to their first and final stronghold, rather than use the same geography movement as the Conquistador campaign and end in Tenochtitlan.
3. There was no way to tell which levels were easier or harder in a particular region- smaller villages were often harder battles than larger ones, and named villages weren't always harder than unnamed villages. Often times, I would start a region with a very hard battle and lose the battle permanently, and then click on another battle and crush them. The levels should be guided so that easier levels always come first and harder levels come later, after my units have leveled up.
4. It was also impossible to win a campaign without beating the "optional" stages in each region. When I advanced farther into the game without winning those "optional" stages, I found that my units were too weak to kill enough enemy units to win the game.
Overall, a promising game with several flaws that keep it from being higher than 3.5. Other suggestions I have for the game include hovering status boxes that appear only when you hover your mouse over a unit and disappear when you move the mouse away from the unit instead of the awkward Unit Info system there currently is, letting us customize our own armies or maybe even our own units, and maybe a live multiplayer version.
