One of the chief ways to make extra money is to enter, and win, jousting tournaments. A prime example of how bad these sequences are is jousting. But beneath that beautiful surface lies a threadbare roleplaying adventure, driven - all too often - by predictable and ultimately annoying arcade sequences. On the positive side, the game is gorgeous: the scrolling landscapes, dotted with great cathedrals and majestic castles - russet in autumn, blue-white in winter, and lush with that special "wet-green" pastoral beauty of England in the spring - are magically evocative, almost Tolkien-esque. Once you develop the local economy and raise an army, you have two (not mutually exclusive) basic paths to take: Expand your power and wealth until you're ready to march on London and rip the crown from William the Conqueror's head, or search out and destroy the enormous and elusive dragon that's been scorching the countryside for years.
The game starts you off as a you control of a small fiefdom. The pity of it is, with some creative redesign and some minor additions to the basic engine, Conqueror could have been a classic medieval strategy game, worthy to inherit the mantle of Cinemaware's masterpiece. You get the impression of a hastily-licensed product gussied-up in a spectacular package and shoved out the door to turn a fast buck as best it can.
Ostentatiously a spiritual successor to Cinemaware's Defender of The Crown, Conqueror AD 1086 offers little more than pretty graphics. Yet another game that proves beyond all doubt how great graphics does not automatically make a good game.