I really enjoyed the simplicity of the user interface Risk had on the iPhone. I had a lot to overcome, having not played Risk in 15 years, but I picked it up immediately and the user interface worked exactly how I wanted it to.
I picked up Conquist on the iPad because it looked like Risk with more features, iPad support, it had great user reviews and it was on sale for $1. In spite of its strengths, I hate this game. Terrible design choices make this an extremely annoying game for me to play.
At its core, Conquist is designed to be played with the iPad lying on a table with upwards of six people surrounding it. The game expects you to not rotate the iPad whatsoever. In concept, this sounds fine. In execution, I find it horribly annoying. When playing by myself and I’m holding the iPad in my hands, if I don’t start the game in the bottom two slots, all of the game prompts will be displayed either sideways or upside-down.
Because of the nature of the design, no player will ever be able to read all of the data on the screen clearly. Even when it is your turn, text will display diagonally, at a 90-degree angle or upside-down. This concession was made to make it play ‘better’ as a board game, but this isn’t a board game. It’s an iPad application. Having played Risk with others, I’d rather be able to hold it upright in my hands and see everything without having to contort my head to read angled text.
I understand that the angled text complaint may be specific to me. Maybe over time, I would just ignore it. What I can’t ignore though are the game’s battle controls, especially when you’re on the defensive. In Risk for iPhone, you always had the option for “Total War”, which allows you to complete a conflict in one turn without having to roll the dice multiple times. For many battles, “Total War” is fine and allows for the game to move very quickly. Conquist doesn’t have that, making turns move much slower.
Defense in Risk for iPhone is always handled by the computer, so that an individual can complete their turn without requiring input from another player. With Conquist, both defensive and offensive players have to roll the dice on every single skirmish. Not only does this game not feature a system to quickly complete battles, but it more than doubles the amount of times you have to manually roll the dice. Facing off against the computer is a nightmare, because the computer requires you to roll the dice on defense for every single skirmish with no quick way to end conflict.
I don’t care if Conquist has more maps, more mission types, prettier graphics, a better AI, a more realistic table-top experience and is on sale for the lowest price point on iTunes. To me, the game’s poor design choices leave an awful taste in my mouth by making it unnecessarily difficult to read information and by making the experience as a whole slower though forced manual dice rolls on every single skirmish.
There are too many other Risk and Risk-like games you could be playing other than Conquist. Buy one of those instead.
In Third Person 
Perhaps if you buy some friends at the local store you will understand why this game is rated 4.5 on itunes.
I’m all for talking about varying opinions on games, but your trolling brings nothing to the table. Your friends argument holds no weight because my friends (believe it or not, I do have some) and I play Risk without being forced to look at everything on the screen upside down and sideways. We’re also not forced to roll to defend on every single attack, which makes the game run much quicker. That’s important for me, but your taste may differ, and that’s cool.
As for your iTunes point, everyone is entitled to an opinion. That’s nice that the average review score is 4.5, but are the 20 people that rated it 1 or 2 stars wrong? No. Have you ever played a game that everyone liked that you hated? I bet you have. I’m not going to blindly accept that a game is good just because someone else said it was good, even when I played it myself and didn’t like it. You have the right to disagree with my ‘review’ of Conquist just as much as I have the right to disagree with iTunes reviews.
If you want to intelligently discuss the finer points of Conquist and not resort to lowest common denominator trolling, let’s talk.
I bought Conquist before Thanksgiving and finally got a chance to play over the break. I agree the UI is a little hard to get used to at first and some of the buttons don’t seem to make sense. However, I really like this game despite you have to turn the iPad to read some of the text. You can speed up attacks, but I do agree there should be a way to battle to the end so to speak. I do recall there was an option on a PC version of Risk where you could click “Do or Die” or something like that were it would just keep rolling dice until there was a winner. Still a little slow but better than having to keep clicking to roll.
One thing I do wish would change is how the computer attack. If you have multiple troops in two countries, say 30, the computer takes away the dice rolling panel just to bring it right back up again. I wish it would just stay on the screen to move things along.
Risk was on sale of the weekend but I passed in it since it’s not designed for the iPad. It will work but it needs to scale and I’m getting tired of that sort of thing. If EA makes an iPad or HD version I will see how it compares. But I think for the $1 it’s a pretty damn good game.
A lot of people talk about Dominion HD by Chilingo. $4.99 seems a bit high at the moment so I will wait for a sale to check that one out.
Thanks for the comment Pete!
I’m glad you enjoy Conquist. It does have it’s problems, but if you can overlook some of the design issues, it’s fundamentally still a good game.
Risk works really well on an iPad stretched out. Some games don’t stretch out well, because the button’s scale way too big, but Risk works great. The big downside to Risk is that you only get one map and that’s it.
I’ve heard Dominion is good too. I think there’s a demo for it if I’m not mistaken.
Just as an FYI, Blood & Honor which looks to be a Risk style game by Sandstorm Interactive is free for today. I’ve never played this one, but it looks like it could be pretty good. Seems to have a lot of the same elements, but introduces some new things with specialty cards. It’s a universal app so that’s a bonus right there. I figure it’s free so no reason not to at least download it and check it out.
http://itunes.apple.com/app/blood-honor/id373002953?mt=8#