The Grandest Fleet originally released in 1994 by QQP is personally my favorite DOS game ever released. After 10 years of playing this game on and off I still find myself returning to it.
Although this game may be able to be played in windows XP if you’re lucky I’d recommend using a dos emulator such as DOS-Box.
A Naval combat style game with several different types of ships where you invade cities, and build the cities up to produce more and better ships (Super Ships), while trying to keep the opponent from taking your cities.
It has several different styles of play such as Hot seat, Play against the computer with the option of selecting different levels of the AI so as you get better you can increase he level of the AI and gain more points as you advance through the different ranks at levels from Citizen up to President (which I am currently striving to become). It has several historical scenarios where u can be the underdog and prove the battles can still be won or random maps and random conditions from small maps to giant maps with only a few or zillions of cities. Customize victory conditions set starting build points; randomize damage, and Supers Ship rules.
Now let’s speak about the drawbacks of the
game. The lack of internet play meaning there basically isn’t any it does support a null modem cable if your lucky enough to have two computers and two people in the same house who like the game or connect through a modem so that limits the game to local calls unless your lucky enough to have unlimited long distance. It also supports play by e-mail but who wants to wait around for that next e-mail to play their next turn. The only other problem I found with the game is the amount of time it takes the computer to make their turn in larger games, it seems like a long time for a computer that’s 100 times more powerful then what I originally played the game on.
You’ll probably find yourself turning the mini-movies off as u play the game more as it takes longer to play the movies are actually quite boring and low quality. The final drawback is the original copy protection where u have to go digging for the manual to find a certain word on a certain page which can be quite frustrating when u have shelved the game for a while.
The game play is great, what I like about it the most is it doesn’t have a fixed number of units you can always rebuild your fleet and retry that invasion again.
So I give this game 2 thumbs up or 5 out of 5 stars.
