Imperia Online

Browser games are pretty popular on Facebook at the moment, especially when you consider the fact that they usually allow you to compete or cooperate with your friends. However, most of them also feature microtransactions and in-game purchases, which can turn quite ugly if you are the type that loses track of money. On top of it all, most browser games are aimed at casual players.

Imperia Online is a pretty simple concept in theory, but you can get hooked on it if you enjoy strategy games. In short, your task is to build an empire, manage your resources and train a powerful army to defend it. Obviously, it is also possible to use the said army in order to conquer other territories and even bully other players, but the mechanics are not as complex as you might think.

To begin with, the whole building aspect is pretty straightforward, since you only have to press a button and then wait, because it takes real-world seconds, minutes or hours for a building to complete. If you can’t stand the waiting, you can throw diamonds at it and instantly finish anything, which is where the real money comes in. Thus, you can still play without paying, but it takes you weeks to achieve what others can do in mere minutes.

As long as you can get over the fact that money is the actual resource, the game is not that bad in terms of gameplay, especially since you can also establish provinces, trading posts and a few other encampments. War is part of the picture as well, since you can use the troops in your army to conquer other territories and battle the other players. A loss can be pretty painful, especially if you happen to invest money in your empire.

As for the graphics and everything else, it’s quite obvious that this is still a browser game, especially since everything lacks animations, and the interface is designed for browsers as well. This shouldn’t be a problem for those of you who are accustomed to this, but it obviously won’t convince new players to give it a try.

In the end, Imperia Online is pretty much what you suspect it to be from the first few minutes: a glorified browser game with simple gameplay mechanics and microtransactions. However, it’s pretty well polished and quite functional, so if the genre is enjoyable for you, then you shouldn’t have any problem accepting everything that comes along with it.