Panzer Corps 2

While there are several things that Panzer Corps 2 does right, it overall falls short of its predecessor. The Good -The game has a large amount of player customization and difficulty settings, which allows the player to customize their experience to their liking. This leads to the campaign having replayability. -The game features an accessible level and campaign editor, which allows for the creation of not only custom levels, but entire campaigns if you are willing to learn the very basics of scripting and directory usage. -There is a great number of units, scenarios, alternate paths, etc. -The later DLC adds lots of content if you are already enjoying the game’s style and mechanics. -The ability to capture enemy equipment is a great feature and defines many of my campaigns. The Bad -The 3D graphics are generally ugly compared to the older pre-rendered / pixelated art in Panzer Corps 1. It does not feel like you are controlling a “Panzer Corps” on a real map, but rather playing with plastic toy soldiers and tanks, which lack any real weight. While the terrain generally looks acceptable, the way entire units are represented by 3D vehicles does not work the way it worked in Panzer Corps 1. There is a very basic alternative view, but it is also pretty ugly and hard to figure out what is going on. -When playing on Iron Man Mode (1 save, no restarting), you can’t redo unit moves. This is fine for attacks, but is extremely annoying for movement, because a single miss-click could lead to your most important unit being killed. In Panzer Corps 1, you were able to redo movement actions. -This game, despite being a hex and counter turn based strategy game, takes up a bunch of space and is very heavy on your PC for what is going on on-screen. Another reason it should have been a pre-rendered style. -Most of the gameplay changes from the original were for the worst. For example, they introduced an anti-tank support ability for anti-tank guns, which is great. However, they removed the ability for many artillery to target tanks in support at the same time. I really do not like this, and even changed the game data to allow artillery to always support against tank attacks. Another example is how equipment is not limited. There is an option to make all equipment limited, but it is not done so in a realistic manner. In the base game, there is no reason to keep some units un-upgraded, and when you change a unit to a new model, you don’t lose any money, you just spend the difference. Not at all realistic. -The controls feel very unnatural. They basically took the controls from Panzer Corps 1, but didn’t account for the changes in smoothness or that we have better control setups for these sorts of games anyways. Instead of selecting the hex you want to move to, for example, you just click on the map hex, which can lead to frequent miss-clicks. Overall, I did not like Panzer Corps 2, but it is not a terrible game by any means. You will probably enjoy it if you loved Panzer Corps 1, or love casual hex and counter war games.