The Great War: Western Front™

Unfortunately due to game being abandoned It's not worth buying at full price, wait for a massive discount. Get's rather boring after the first couple of months... same thing.

The game is developmentally abandoned, there's been no updates or communications from the devs since 2023. The game is cool but it still has a lot of bugs and since it was abandoned it's not worth it even on sale. I got a refund. -PTBR- O jogo está abandonado em termos de desenvolvimento, sem atualizações ou comunicações dos desenvolvedores desde 2023. O jogo é legal, mas ainda tem muitos bugs e, como foi abandonado, não vale a pena nem mesmo em promoção. Recebi um reembolso.

I've been waiting for a WW1/Trench Warfare game at the tactical level for a long time. I was really intrigued by the idea of their turn-based strategic mode combined with a focus on tactical battles. Most WW1 games tend to either be strategic or a shooter. So I was instantly sold on this game once I saw it advertised before release. I think they hit the mark, but not as well as they could have. I also think they abandoned the game too soon, but they at least did add mod-support and the workshop, but despite a few decent mods the game never really garnered enough support to have a community driven continuation of the game through mods. One of my biggest cons/disappointments is the strategic layer of the game. It is pretty bare and it mostly consists of shifting troops around to different hexes to defend/assault positions. There is no real persistence in your actions. You have no real options on hurting the enemy's economy nor can they hurt yours through taking territory. There are no supply lines or positions that give you an advantage for holding them. Enemy units that you can almost entirely destroy in one battle will immediately be replenished and only take a slight morale debuff for your next attack. Your own units are the same, you do lose money to replenish them but it's done instantly. The enemy can attack your hex and you have no tactical reason to hold reserves back for follow-up attacks as you'll take the morale debuff no matter how many troops you lose or if you win/lose/draw the battle. This lack of persistence hurts the strategic layer significantly. It also harms the tactical level as it removes some difficult choices you may have to make while attacking to preserve forces for a possible defense later on. You just never really see your actions provide any results. The tactical level of the game is the core and meat of the gameplay. It is fun for a while, but it has its own problems. Namely economic balance. You have access to many unique tools in order to defend/assault but often they are so overpriced compared to the base options that you hardly ever use them. You'll overwhelmingly use the basic light/heavy artillery barrages rather than creeping barrages, airbursts, gas, etc. While those other options can be devastating and cool, they are priced so far above the base choices compared to the damage they actually do or utility they provide. Defense like Machine Guns and Mortars are very quickly neutered by enemy artillery despite being extremely expensive. I only found consistent success with those when I unlocked the concrete bunkers at the highest tech tier where they actually would survive multiple barrages and couldn't be stopped with a light suppression barrage. These options are good and unique, but the economy balance is so poor that the player often has no reason to utilize them compared to the base options. Last biggest con is the battlefield persistence. They advertised on this pretty hard before the game released, and while it was technically there on release it felt like the misled people on it. Some updates came out and helped, like with corpse persistence and such, but essentially how it works is: A map is decided by which hex you attack out of into which hex you attack into. Every time a tactical combat is started/played in that hex, the battlefield will develop a preset level of additional "destruction" when you fight the next battle. Continue fighting battles out of that same hex into the same enemy hex, eventually the battlefield will be a mess of craters and ruins. Corpses and craters you specifically cause from your own artillery and combat are NOT persistent. If you attack from a different hex into the same enemy hex, the destruction of the map is entirely different and on a different counter. So unless you are attacking from the same hex into the same hex every turn and never capturing that hex, you'll likely never see any large change in the map's destruction. So is it persistent? Yeah, technically. But not in any way you'll likely notice significantly and once again, you own actions like shooting down planes or destroying tanks in No Man's Land wont persist into your next fight. This now removes the visual layer of your actions in the game. We can see a consistent theme here. The good thing is: MODS HELP THIS SIGNIFICANTLY. There are a few good ones that help with adding tactical battle persistence and re-balancing the economy. Unfortunately none of these really change the strategic layer, but this at least makes the core game play feel better and less repetitive. So, I've sat here and ranted about cons for a while haven't I? I also recommended the game. I did this specifically because the game could have been so much more. It is fun, even in vanilla, but the half-baked strategic layer and the player actions not being visually represented or having any real changes on the strategic layer really drop any long term replayability of this game. Once the tactical battles lose their fun, the game stops being fun. When you play the campaign you will play a lot of tactical battles and after a while, even in your first playthrough, it will start to get repetitive and the strategic layer doesn't have enough to keep you involved. So what is good about it? The tactical battles (especially with mods like OverTheTop) feel good. Defending from a massive attack or trying to plan a coordinated assault will keep you occupied for decent while. They really give you a great view at how destructive WW1 could be, and watching thousands upon thousands of troops get scythed down when your artillery ends sooner than you wanted or grinding through tens of trench melees is very epic. You will drop A LOT of artillery down, and watching the enemy line erupt in fire and smoke as your drop that artillery is just awesome. When you do finally put it all together and watch as your flamethrowers and grenadiers just wreck enemy trenchlines under the cover of a perfectly planned and coordinated artillery assault brings a massive feeling of reward. It's one of the only WW1 games that does the tactical level like this and it honestly works very well for the first 10-25 hours. The strategic layer is not difficult to learn and it has enough to keep you going for a playthrough. The tech tree feels reasonable and done well. It's not like trying to learn a Paradox game, so if you are new to strategy games I think it's approachable and isn't extremely punishing. I think the game is good for 1-2 playthroughs, 20-40 hours. If you mod it, potentially a bit more. The price isn't terrible at $35 USD, but it should likely be $20-$25 at this point. If you are looking to scratch that trench warfare itch and want a tactical WW1 game, it's a decent option and I still find myself going back to it occasionally. However I absolutely recommend picking up a few of the mods to extend some of the enjoyment and fix some of the economy balance to prevent the gameplay from getting too stale too soon and add a bit of persistence to the tactical battles so you can bask in the corpse littered fields of your failed assaults or successful defenses. The game really nails the feel and some of the historical battle scenarios are fun and show where the game tends to shine with its tactical battles. It just needed some extra attention to flesh out the strategic layer and add some weight to the players actions and this game likely would have been far more successful than it was. I give it a 7/10. It's good enough to get the job done and it doesn't feel like a waste of money, but I think there were some large missed opportunities and balance issues that really hamper the game after the spectacle wears off in the first dozen or so hours.

Was abandoned by the devs, great skeleton, no meat.

2/5 stars, an honest attempt was made to simulate trench warfare but there are just so many issues here that I just can not recomend this game at all First the campaign progresses incredibly slow, territories need multiple assaults that have to end in total vicory to be taken, which leads to you conquering the same map over and over again. Infantry squads are predeployed on the map and can not be purchased exept with a few techs and events, the only things you can actualy purchase are tanks, planes and off-map siege artillery Manpower is, for some reason, endless and units on the campaign map can never be compleatly destroyed, therefore removing any strategical layer that could have been added by making menpower an actualy recource. The only resources are money, which is the currency on the strategical map, and supplies, which is the currency on the tactical map, both are used for replenishing units at the end of a battle but that is just cosmetic, they will always be full strenght at the end. Supplies can be bought with money on the campaign map and used in battles limited by your regions supply capacity, which is dependant on the number of troops you have and its supply building level. That limits your ability to bring troops on the field, limits artillery fire and limits how many trenches and entrenchments you can build until you upgraded your supply hub which slows the campaign down even more. Btw, your enemy doesn't need to worry about global supply, he has endless amounts and while his regional supplies are limited, it will always have more than you even on normal difficulty. Most of your arsenal is also gated by tech, which unlocks very slowly and again, the AI cheats and will always outtech you. The result is a campaign that progresses incredibly slow, limits you greatly in what you can actualy do and where your victories don't actualy matter. Both factions have a national will level that gets depleated by losses or high casualties, if your rivals will reaches zero, you win. Since the national will level is incredible arbitrary(it doesn't even took account of me taking Versailles due encircling it because there was no battle) and resources are technicaly endless, the most effective way to progress is attacking weak enemy regions but never taking them, battling the same map over and over again while you bait your enemy into high supply territories with small garrisons where you can just spam motars and MGs to decimate them and deprive him of will even if he gains ground. Historicaly accurate? maybe is that fun? no and since I've already talked way to much about the strategical portion, I makle it quick with the tactical portion. Its a poor mans total war, troops barley differentiate themselves from each other appart from having small stat bonuses incertain situations. Tanks are akward to use, controls in general are akward, infantry often change formation on their own, they get stuck on trenches, leave trenches when tasked to move into another section of the same trench even if the path is clear, sometimes when you and the enemy both decide to attack each other they both get stuck in the midway saction and do nothing. The isn't even a way to to queue commands for units, a basic functions for RTS games since about 20 years. Its a mess Also the AI is realy poor and will constantly send reinforcements in direction of trenches you have already taken to be killed. But at least they can conduct an rudementary effective offensive and uses artillery smartly to supress your trenches and hinder your movements I realy wanted to like this game, there is generaly a good foundation underlying everything but like the real first world war, this game is a slow, painful slog to play. only buy this on a steep discount

Devs dropped the game. No more patches

Missed opportunity This game is initially is great if you are looking for a fun WW1 game. Side note - finding a WW1 strategy is rare, any WW1 is hard to find. The problems start when you've played a few hours in you see the issue's with the AI struggling to attack or defend especially if you hit them on a flank, they get completely confused. The lack of different maps on the single play is very noticeable, which is baffling as the skirmish has a load of maps. Multiplayer well don't expect to be fighting each other on the campaign mode. Which in my point of view is a huge missed opportunity. You'll only be able to fight in skirmish mode which gets old very quickly. Final note - This game is fun for a play through of both sides but for £30 it isn't worth it. If you are interested grab it on a key site or wait for a sale, it'll be about £3

Game had alot of potential but the devs abandoned it, It has alot of cool systems but they lose replay ability after your 5th turn. Maps reset after every battle making it kind of dumb when it promises that they will persist. 3/10 I would not recommend this game unless it goes on sale for less then 10 dollars you will get bored before the campaign ends.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don't look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☑ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10