The board is made of oblong spaces with one unit per space. Personally, I prefer hexagonal or even octagonal layouts as a four-direction system seems limited to me, especially when units
can be forced to retreat after a battle. It just seems limited and less realistic, but then again, it is just a game.
Moving on to the graphics, I can gladly say they’re well done. So at least you have something interesting to watch while you’re seeing your army decimated. The environments are interesting and detailed as well. However, the music on the other hand is so repetitive that I had to turn it off after about five minutes. There is a 5 second battle song loop, a 10 second main music loop, etc. Sometimes, they will end up overlapping each other as well making just a jumbled mess of sound.
For some reason, while I know the mechanics are almost exactly the same as they were in Panzer General Allied Assault, I just can’t get into this game as much as I did the previous one. Maybe it’s due to the power imbalance that is thrown at you in some levels or the decided lack of an in-depth tutorial.
A major drawback in the game is the fact that it’s fairly short, and there’s absolutely no multiplayer available. What kind of turn-based strategy game, doesn’t have a multiplayer option? To put this much time and effort into a game and then not include a multiplayer option just seems like poor planning and design. On top of that, there are only four skirmishes and six scenarios in the campaign. At $10 or Euro, that’s $1 per level. Sure it will be some amount of gameplay time, but like I said, a lot of that will be watching and waiting.
Overall, this is game takes a lot of time to get into and a lot of time to play. At times, this game made me want to pound my keyboard to pieces in frustration. Still, with patience and persistence comes success. There’s one particular level that was quite the problem, but after adapting my battle plan, I found success well enough. Now, some of you are going to hate this game because of the time requirement and the methodical, plodding nature of it as well as the difficulty level. On the other hand, some of you will probably love it and flame me in comments for this review. I say, have at thee!
It states in the Gamersgate information page for the game that they’re considering add-on packs for the game at a future date. I’m guessing it depends on the level of interest in the main game. However, I don’t know that it will be all that successful of a strategy with a total lack of multiplayer and such a short initial set of levels.
