Space sim genre has many good games, from Freepace to Tie Fighter, Privateer to Freelancer. Though Archimedian Dynasty's universe is set underwater, it plays most like space sims. The storyline is not one of the strong aspects of the game. After an apocalyptic nuclear war, humans have to live under the seas. The setting is a mixture of Mad Max and any pirate movie. This is may be the billionth game I've played with the "unknown race threat" story, it's not so original. But Archimedean Dynasty takes the best parts of the best games in the genre: A Tie Fighter-like mission design, Wing Commander-like game design, Freespace like atmosphere (where you don't mind sacrificing yourself for your friends) and a little commerce. The graphics were really good at that time, especially after the 1.20 patch (which added transparent explosions). If you had a 3dfx card, it was even better. Also, the underwater setting gave the producers an advantage over the the games relatives that are set in space: Underwater currents could really affect torpedoes so you had to think twice and learn the environment before firing one (if you don't want to spend your torpedoes you bought with hard earned cash that is). Though its successors (Aquanox series) lacked the quality and atmosphere of this one, Archimedean Dynasty is an absolute classic. If you value atmosphere over the technology, it's worth playing even today.
