[Elias Nordling]

Jag saxar ur min nästa småspelsartikel. Själva recensionen av detta spel i den är längre:

We Must Tell the Emperor is a strategic simulation of the War in the Pacific, with the player representing the Japanese. It uses the company's States of Siege game engine, and is no less than the 7th game from the company to do so.

The basic idea of the States of Siege engine is dead simple. In the center you have your home country, capital or whatever it is you are defending. Around it are a number of different tracks. On each track is a different enemy force, moving along the track towards the center. If any of the forces reach the center, you lose.

The movement of these forces is governed by a deck of cards. Each card represents a historical event that features an advance or retreat of one of more specific enemy force as told by the card. The card also gives you a number of attacks to conduct. Each enemy force has a number on it, a combat strength if you will. To conduct an attack, roll against this number. If you pass the roll, you push this army back one space on the track. There are usually positive or negative modifiers for attacking certain forces listed on the card. If you manage to stave off defeat until the deck of cards has run out, you have won.

In its basic form, I think this game engine comes dangerously close to the old joke about the Really Simple WWII game: Roll one die, if it's 1-5 the Allies win, if it's a 6, the Axis win. Or as the Pacific version goes, roll two dice, 2-11 the Allies win, 12 roll again.

It is the embellishment that makes all the difference. Zulus on the Ramparts, for example, a game I quite liked, introduced a number of clever concepts, hand management of the cards even, that really added to the experience and showed how far you could push this engine.

We Must Tell the Emperor is a much less radical adaption of the States of Siege system, and the additions have more the character of chrome plating than any tweaking of the underlying engine. There are tracks for the strength of the Japanese military, prestige and oil supplies, but functionally they are so close that they could pass for three more enemy forces if you squinted. There are kamikazes and fortifications with a few simple rules.

There is also something called battles, famous naval engagements. When these come up, the player can gamble an attack on a better outcome than historical, but risk an even worse result. You might wonder what exactly the difference between an attack and a battle simulates. It is one of many signs that this is a game designed to fit a system, rather than the other way round.

Did I enjoy playing the game? Absolutely! Much more than I expected, given my stated ambivalence to the system. The game provides a real challenge, and playing it really weaves a story about trying to beat back numerous enemies and then dig in and ride out their worst, all while managing diminishing military and oil resources. Just when I think I have things in hand, a dormant Chinese or Burmese theater will awake and bite me in my tail. Simple little chrome rules show how the Allies get tougher and tougher, and the oil harder to bring home.

But the enjoyment comes mostly from the storytelling aspect of the game, not from any tough gameplay decisions. You wouldn't go much wrong if you simply rolled for whatever track was at the lowest at any given opportunity. With this simple AI algorithm, you could make a zero-player game out of it and let it play itself.

On the other hand, you could compare it to a solitaire card game. It plays quick and is a challenge, and you usually don't mind the lack of player decisions. Granted, you paid more for this game than for your deck of cards, but you also get a lot more flavor.

Is it The Great Pacific War? Not as we know it. The game provides for some tense back and forth, but the real war was more of a short burst of forth followed by more or less uninterrupted back. In the game, you will see things like Nimitz beating at the gates of Okinawa, quite possibly while the other Allies are far behind, and then being pushed back all the way to Guadalcanal again.

There is an expansion to the game, adding numerous cards and the ability to add to your army by withdrawing troops from China, the Soviets coming in near the very end, as well as shorter scenarios. Another welcome addition is a scoring system, where you can calculate a final score to use as comparison to better your previous result, even if you keep losing the game. If you didn't like the game to begin with, the expansion won't alter your opinion. If you did, you probably want it all, even though the expansion doesn't change the game a lot. If you like games that tells a good story as it plays through, and don't mind if they distort history or are short on player decisions, you'd probably belong to the latter category.

Min hjärna och mitt hjärta är inte riktigt överens om betyget på detta spel, men utifrån hur kul jag hade måste betyget bli en svag fyra av fem.