[h1] I really feel like i got honeypotted by the CIA with this game.
It's a love at first sight turned spitefull hatered over years of marriage, type story, and i invite you to listen. [/h1]
[h2] Honey [/h2]
Scrolling throught the steam winter sale i came upon this game. Instantly it reminded me of the panzer general style games, and i was pleasantly surprised to see the multiple complexities of the original games carried over to here.
As a Pancer Corps 2 player I always lacked a well thought out and working supply mechanics, customisation of the units, and greater storytelling with you playing as a real person rather than a made up general.
After reasearching this game a bit, i found it had those, and was really intrigued what it can offer, and so the money from my account went.
As i booted up the first mission and looked onto the scenery i thought of how good it looks, and how different it is from what i known.
Listenint to this games remix of Polyushko Polye and experimenting with my units to see how the unfamiliar systems worked, in a fresh Mongolian enviorement with pre-war tanks trully enamoured me.
Skip forward to the second battle of Kiev, and i am having a mental breakdown over the game, and get PTSD reaction even thinking about opening it.
[h2] Vinegar [/h2]
So how did this happen?
Here ill compile the list of my complaints and the little (and big) things that drove me insane:
[h3] Gameplay [/h3]
- AI is retarded beyond measure. its permanently on full berserk mode, where it tries attacking you at all times disregarding its own casualities. Also it tends to dogpile on a single unit, and this combined with the cancerous numbers of the enemies, which often are 5-1 against you, add up to serious losses, even if you play well.
Keep this in mind, as this combos with random presitge costs and restarts required per mission.
- Ability design was made by an actuall WW1 general. Yeah! i love having enemy infantry become unbreakable redouts of steel and fury, just because they automatically get level 3 and take the Terrain specialists, and Trench veterans, traits. Its so fun! going one/two tiles per turn during urban combat :)
But it also applies to many other abilities. some are so busted that putting them next to "+1 movement point per turn" is just mindnumbing.
"First strike" turns your tanks into unstoppable killing machines that can oneshot anything as long as they have ammo, but the enemy also has this, so imagine how fun it is to fight German ace with first strike :)
-Night phase is cool and all, it is somewhat interesting and the intent is to slow down the game and ensure that you have breathing room and are able to reorganise defence/prepare offensive.
But it does its job a little too well. You bascially feel as if you do no progress that turn, and considering how bloated the missions get later on, a turn that does nothing, but still takes an hour to micro, is so unfathomably stupid that i wonder how it got through playtests.
- Retreat is NOT an option here. In Pancercorps when your units were badly damaged during an attack they would retreat and if not possible, surrender. This made the battles fluid, frontline feel like an actuall frontline, and kept the casualities managable, as your exposed unit you forgot about would not die, but retreat to cover behind friendlies, at a cost of two turns worth of movement.
This is personally what angered me the most with how big the battles are, and how easy it is to forget one unit, that will just get gutted alive with no chance of survival.
And the thing is, retreat and surrender mechanics do exist here, but unlike in Pancercorps, they essentially dont matter and are here just for fluff.
If Strenght goes to 0, unit is basically dead unless it was attacked by artillery, and it wont retreat/surrender unless its already at 0. the situations where this happens are not that rare, but its so inconsecuential and random.
-There is no class collaboration. Your tanks do not support your anti-tanks. Your artillery does not support your infantry. Your planes and anti-air dont work together.
There is no cool combos or strategies you can do here, your units will either commit genocide on the entire family of their adversaries, or will get gutted alive, and no synergies between their classes exist. Also Anti-air and Artillery are insanely OP and infantry is nearly useless, especially once your tanks gain "First strike" and start oneshotting enemies inside cities.
-Turns take ungodly ammount of time.
[h3] Storytelling [/h3]
Aight, lets assume you had a look here before, and seen some comments about the "Anti-communism" of this game, and how its less than historical?
So in the simplest terms: The game is at the same time doing alt-history, and trying its best to convince you all of the Soviets were insanely callous and duplicious, arrogant people, not even sparing the protagonist- Zhukov.
This dual aproach is confusing- If i took over entirety of Finland, then what happened to the Continuation war? or the siege of leningrad? How would lack of both of them affect the war?
And malicious- By mixxing historical facts and your own alt-history, and you trying to feed a falsified picture of events to the audience.
Of course you can never be unbiased, its just simply called "having an opinion" but you can at least make the game distinctly alt-history, so people dont actually use your crap writing as historical sources.
As for the characters:
[olist]
[*]Stalin behaves like he has multipolar personality disorder, constnatly switching modes, from a mentally challanged cartoonishly evil person, to actuall gigachad, and then a very pragmatic and kinda evil person.
[*]Beria is kind of normal???????? Like bro what??????????? He was a literall child rapist IRL, and you chose to make him only SLIGHTLY evil???????
[*]Voroschilov has no character traits other than being incompetent, and yet Stalin does not kill him even thought he is portrayed to be this ultra-evil triggerhappy purge guy, and butting heads with him many times.
[*] Zhukov also has Stalin type schizofrenia
[*] Vasilevsky is kinda cool, i like him.
[*] Rokosovsky is portrayed as some kind of dissident who hates Stalin? and this is his only character trait btw.
[/olist]
Besides this, they are all voiced over with some type of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 2012 esque Ivona AI read-aloud.
The game misunderstands the Lend-Lease, and how it worked in the USSR. USA and UK sent USSR millions of pairs of shoes, warm clothes, hundreds of tousnads of trucks, food, and many civilian grade and logistics commodities they simply lacked.
Meanwhile those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ portray it as BILLIONS of planes, and tanks.
In 1941 and 42 btw. which accounted for only 16% of ALL allied shipments to the USSR throught the war.
And it makes sure you understand how much it was epic and wholsome, with everyone glaizng it with no second throught.
Even when the IRL lend-lease and the one in-game couldnt be more different (Economic and logiscics aid, vs billions of warmachines from the very get-go)
And finally, the game doesent even try to be subtle about its anti-soviet message.
And hey Im not against it, USSR wasn't paradise and im not a communist, but having the faction you are playing as be smeared OVER and OVER again, really discourages you to go forward, does it not? and NO this is not a story about tragedy, you literally take over London at the end because the writers took so much drugs they belive it could happen, so it HAS a happy ending and doesen't fit the "Are we the baddies?" trope.
[h1] In conclusion: [/h1]
I really wanted to love this game, but its just so miserable and shoddily made. it has some innovative features, but they are buried under a mound of ♥♥♥♥.
2/10 if you search for entertaining Pancer general style game or a great story
10/10 if you want to spend 40 minutes per turn to reset it because of one unit.
