Conflict of Nations: Video Game Review

A Free, Browser-Based Strategy Game with Impressive Depth

Anyone who has sifted through mobile apps and websites looking for free online gaming entertainment knows the challenge and frustration of trying to find a rewarding and enjoyable game that’s not plagued by advertisments and/or crippled by purchase programs or system requirements.

Conflict of Nations is truly free-to-play in an environment where that’s rare. There are never any advertisments, nor are there offered options to view them for rewards (at least not through the browser version). There is an option to buy the game’s in-game currency in order to purchase competitive advantage, but its presence does not dominate the game to the point of making it unwinnable for skilled free-to-play players.

There is a mobile app version of the game, but there is also a browser-based (original) version that requires no download and runs smoothly over any reasonable internet connection. This means that the game — in its entire version — is available to Chromebook users at no disadvantage. This game almost couldn’t require less from the user end.

Such comfort and convenience in games normally comes at the cost of quality and depth of gameplay. Conflict of Nations, however, is emersive, addictive, and nuanced. Players must effectively pair short-term tactical movements with long-term strategic and economic development in an effort to conquer enemy territory and to become the world’s most dominant military force.

Users elect to play as one of more than one hundred playable nations through which they will research, build, and fight with a number of infantry, armored, aircraft, and naval units. The game runs continuously, twenty-four hours per day, using either real-time or proportionately accelerated clocks.

Conflict of Nations operates like a traditional Real Time Strategy game (like Starcraft and Warcraft) in which live players can actively attack and defend in “force versus force” battles rather than like the cookie-cutter city-builder style of RTS games we now see so often offered.

Players who are familiar with Supremacy 1914 and Call of War may recognize the flavor of the Bytro Labs development. The company has also recently release a game called Iron Order 1919, which currently feels clunky and less finished. Conflict of Nations, on the other hand, is a product that offers both the result of years of honing and the promise of new and evolving content at the time of this article’s publication.

The genius of this game is its ratio of value to consumer cost. A player with a basic Chromebook or smartphone has unfettered access to months of truly competitive gameplay and enthralling progress for no more cost than their own time and attention.

The thousands of simultaneously running games thin out the pack of pay-to-win players enough so that free-to-play players are generally able to enjoy themselves without the looming spectre of facing insurmountable disadvantage. It’s difficult to imagine a current and engaging game that offers more for less.