Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Sep 19, 2018

  Please don't be deceived by the graphics in this game. It models at least one parameter that GG's War in the East does not. My Steam list is the tip of the iceberg in terms of wargames, and I should be completely jaded by this title. But I can say that out of hundreds of wargames, there is something a little different about this one. Even on Easy maps, the AI is frustratingly adept at cutting your supply lines. Initially, the difficulty for me (a generally poor player) might have put me off. But there is an easy way to increase your spend points during the management phase. Yes, this is called "cheating" but it also allows one to experiment with a larger variety of units. If you are having trouble, just become my friend and contact me, and I will put you on to the cheat, if you haven't guessed it already. You may also want to play at 1/2 speed sometimes and be sure your supply HQ can "connect the dots" to your frontline units. I did not pay attention to this obvious fact at first, and got slaughtered. You can also pretty much ignore the nitty-gritty detail displays, but these are too much fun (imo) to not appreciate. For example, double-clicking on a regiment icon in the divisional display provides an impressive number of combat factors, including the unit's experience fighting on each terrain type. This is the small detail you will not see in WitE. You can play both standalone scenarios, or the scenarios that make up the campaigns. Before battle you can juggle your division make-ups down to the Bn level. Then there are the leaders, who excel or are weak in certain areas. There's no reason to really micro-manage all of this, but it pays to create units, that say, are skilled at attacking forts by using the proper leaders and Bn assets. Supply, speed, AT, Inf combat and other specialties are also available. Lastly, (or maybe firstly) there is a demo! No reason not to try it. I've got almost 10 hours in playing three scenarios so far. Of course, I lost those first few. But the potential playing time of the game FAR outstrips the cost. Not to mention, frequent patches and new features that have really improved the game. IMHO, this developer deserves the support of the strategy gaming community. There are so many more expensive games that simply don't compare. So don't be too quick to blow this one off, and feel free with any questions - not that I am an expert, except at losing!
• gamedeal user

  Jun 6, 2018

  It's a little hard to compare this to anything I've played before. Are you old enough to remember the Panzer General games? If so, you could say it's a sort of RTS version of that - a strategy game where you have certain scenarios and concrete objectives, with broad control over the development and equipment of your units. Panzer Doctrine accurately relies on the idea of encirclement and supply to win battles vs brute strength. It also includes all of the major weapons of the Eastern Front. It's immersive enough and developed by a guy who obviously knows the subject. For those of you who come from Land Doctrine, this may look similar but it's definitely more of a sequel than a reskin. Here, you have air units, weather affects play, and as I said before supply chains are now enforced, which totally changes the strategies that you use to win battles. I didn't encounter any bugs in my playtime, except for minor misspellings like 'aircrafts'. That said, it's still obviously in EA. The final will allow you to take part in all arenas of the Eastern Front whereas currently you can only participate in the actions of the center front. There also don't seem to be any one off scenarios and sandbox type play. Right now you're just limited to the campaign. This is a Unity product and EA and a lot of those types of games get abandoned. But I'm not envisioning that here. I've spoken a bit with the dev, and based on my experiences with him I am confident he is going to stick around and finish the title. I'm not going to say Panzer Doctrine is currently worth $15. There's not enough in the game for that yet. But in its current EA form, it's probably worth $10 and easily worth $5. Definitely worth picking up in a sale.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 26, 2018

  Game is fun during the early German campaign as long as missions are easy. Then, when You reach a Leningrad map You now have to sqeeze every trick out of the engine and at this point all the fun is lost. Because a winning tactic is to overrun all the infantry forcing them to retreat and then wait at the end of the "retreat path" to force them to surrender there and remove the division-counter from the game board. That's very much the same "node" mechanics as You have in "Hearts of Iron". The good part of the game is that there is an interesting division configuration screen and there You can change quite a lot of Your force structure and equipment. In my opinion - game is fun during first 3 - 4 hours and then You start to question Your decision to buy this game.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 5, 2018

  It okay i guess, i'm disappointed to, the only difficult part of the game even on the hardest difficulty is making the ridiculous low time requirement u have to finish a misson and i personally hate those kind of difficulty mechanics, it's very lazy. The AI is basically none existence. Not worth 10Euro tho.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 11, 2018

  Very Hard even on very easy
• gamedeal user

  Sep 15, 2018

  If you like strategy-ww2 games this is a good one.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 6, 2018

  8/28/2018 Revisiting the game its better then when it first released at $15 its ok but for those that lack strat games. Some bad things that where not fixed, no windows mode or higher then 1080p support. Dont waste your money, It feels like a rip off another game called land doctrine which was $5 imo dont buy it.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 16, 2018

  I will start to say that this was to me the most pleasant surprise in the gaming world this year. I buy a lot of games every year specially when they are cheap and seem interesting, this game is a bargain and when i saw the store page the first time some images caught my eye, but the reviews were mixed and its from a small developer so i bought it wil low expectation. I was in for a surprise... The game feels like a mix of Panzer General Style with Hearts of Iron and Gary Grisby War in the East. The visuals are not impressive for 2018 but are adequate for this type of game, the gameplay is were the game shines, you have several Divsions at your disposal every one of them with detailed order of battle and table of equipments you can add new battalions and regiments replace their firearms, their support weapons, tank, mortars, infantry guns, AT guns and much more a great number of real WW2 equipment is present in the game. After managing your force you face a challenging A.I has you try to do pincer maneuvers and encircle the enemy to cut their supplies so they go down easily, the game reward position and mobile warfare oposed to front assault just like it happened historically, you can still do mass frontal atacks and sometimes you have to do it to open a corridor but since you trying to conserve you manpower and equipment you should avoid the enemy strong points and encircle them. The AI is good and will position mobile units to counter your advance, if you dont plan well they will cut your line of supplies and encircle you, plus there are also scenarios when you need to defend or do both at the same time. Also the developer is very commited and listen to the community, new patches are released weekly sometimes more than 1, new features are also being added with the patches. To conclude it is a very addicting experience to me i recommed it to all wargamers - Graphics - 6.0 - Sounds and music - 5.0 - Gameplay - 9.5 - Immersion - 8.0 - A.I. - 7.5 - Support - 8.5 Overal Score - 8.5/10
• gamedeal user

  Apr 6, 2018

  Reviewing intial release version 0.99 Okay thought I would get an initial impression up for those that are curious. To start resolutions go up to 1920x1080, would like 1440 but hey it's not like this is HOI4 with super fancy sprites. Game is made with Unity engine for those interested. There's currently only one option to actually play, "Campaign" you click it and you're brought to "Operation Barborossa" where you select which Sector (Front/Army Group) to command (North, Center, South) currently ony center is an option. You're then taken to a campaign map and there's several pages of strategic overview and briefings. First scenairio is an attack around Minsk area lasting 25 days. You then go to unit deployment, at this point I can't edit the loadouts or force compositions. Also commanders seem to play no role or grant buffs (Dev indicated this will be implemented later). The UI is fairly inuitive and units can stack on tiles. The game is played Real time however there is tactical pause(and autopause) which most will make use of extensively. Encountered one very frustrating bug whereby at the end of the 2nd Scenairio I had 14/15 Objectives captured and it said I had 0/0 and failed, however I had been Alt-tabbing frequently and that may have had an effect. I've expirienced no crashes yet. Current notes: --No in game autosave that I've encountered yet, (SAVE SAVE SAVE)(Dev will be adding autosave) +Coordinated attacks from multiple directs +Several difficulty options which allow you to ease in -No real tutorial (Game manual is available in game) +Air force can be micro'd but will default to support roles if left alone, overall the way air force is handled in game is superb +After battle stats giving performance of units breakdown +/-High level of OOB and unit compositions control (in between scenairios), however UI here needs work and I'm not seeing an "Undo" button or anyway of disbanding units +Asymetrical approaches to accomplishing objectives encouraging multiple playthroughs -UI can be difficult to know which units have orders when multiples are stacked on tiles +Every individual Regiment, and Battalion within the division has seperate and complete stats -Unable to rename units, doesn't bother me, oddly english names used for ground units i.e. tank division but german abrev. for air units i.e. KG, StG would prefer historical localized naming (definitely not everyones cup of tea)(Dev indicated this is WIP) +Enemy units have different layouts and deployments when restarting missions +Tactics like armored spearheads, and encirclements work very well; rewarding force concentration +Weather has significant effects on air/land/supply operations (Spring/Fall Rain+General Winter) +Plethora of units to choose from Overal feel is very similiar to Army General but much nicer sprites. I've found missions following a pattern where I get to focused on encirclements and forget to drive for objectives, the last few days becomes a relatively unopposed scramble. This was working fine until the fall rains brought my Motorized divisions to a halt during the drive to Kiev. I was barely able to capture 88% of objectives and the casualty figures were very close to the historic numbers. Throughly enjoyed that.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 17, 2018

  Edit: I can no longer recommend this game. I found a bug, at first rare, but then it happened twice in one battle. The only way past is to restore from save game and hope it doesn't happen again. For me this has made this game unplayable, and after providing save game file and report to Matrix/Developers, no action was taken, nor has been taken in over 3 months. To me this makes this a dead game and again, unplayable. The bug is that when engaging in a battle, the enemy forces will lose units, until they have zero units defending the objective, but the battle never ends. It doesn't matter how many units you throw into the fight, the enemy remains at zero defenders, and the battle goes on. This bug has been documented on the boards, and like I said, I provided a save game file to in my support request to Matrix. If they ever get back to me with a fix I will update this review. All that being said, I really would like to get back and finish the game. Up until the point I was stopped cold by this bug, I was thoroughly enjoying my play through and even penned a 'how to' guide for the new players. **************************************************************************** For all you WWII, sim, strat, combat junkies out there.....This game is super fun. The replayability is amazing even on campaign mode...No two games ever turn out the same. The trick is to thrust deep into enemy territory and encircle pockets of stubborn enemy defenders, deprive them lines of supply, then crush them as they try to break out. Sound familiar? Rinse, wash, and repeat. The game is still in development. The devs are active on the forums which is promising. And there seems to be a steady stream of improvements very much in line with the forum suggestions. MultiPlayer is promised in future but for now it's single player only...The price was right and fun as heck. The AI is pretty aggressive, and I'm having to pull out all my old school tricks, even on medium difficulty. But WTH if you are like me, "Challenge accepted!"