It is hard to say just yet, as I haven't quite figured out yet in exact detail how certain mechanics are to work. There does seem to be some issues that bother me. For example, I can not tell when or where or how much re-inforcements I may get in a scenario. This in fact cost me my first loss so far in the first campaign as I thought for sure I'd get some reinforcements (I had been getting them in the others). So I haulted and waited for them to come which never did. This problem actually was bothering me before the loss even.
In other areas, sometimes when I click on the check-mark, there is no loading bar, or anything else to let me know to wait, and it makes one feel as though they didn't correctly hit the input key.
• How does the game look?
It looks pretty decent for a small console game. I think there may be some contrast issues, sometimes it may be a bit hard to distinguish from infantry and the sand-like terrain. I remember the dunes puzzling me, because on my monitor they look almost invisible against the sand terrain.
• Did you understand what you were supposed to do?
Yes, lots of war-game experience with ASL & PG type games made most of it common sense. There are still other things like support roles, and (possibly) armour facing issues that I'm not sure how it interacts very well. Basically, a manual or something else would help here to get me up to speed.
• Did you enjoy the scenarios?
I haven't completed the first scenario yet, but so far they are looking like fun. Ask me again when I'm finished all the scenarios.
• Were there any bugs?
Yes, I spotted many in fact, but I am hesitant to get into them at this point since I'd like to know more on how things are to BEHAVE before I start rattling them all off. For example, I had problems with many units getting ambushed but never revealing their positions, I wasn't sure if THAT was a bug or part of a random roll. I believe now it's part of the mechanics, but perhaps more details could be sent to the player.
• Did you find the game too easy or too hard?
Hard to say since I'm still on the first real campaign. Also I don't know how all the mechanics work so I am probably playing very sloppy. I think it's pretty easy for now, but since I've played some very tuff games, and some that were very complex, I could be under-estimating the difficulty here. In other projects I've worked on, I've seen many others who supposedly had war-game experience, lose every time after 20 attempts on basic scenarios, which I had found a simple breeze to blitz through. So in other words, for the standard community, it may be just fine even if I think it's too simple.
• What is your overall impression of the game?
It is pretty decent so far, while there are a lot of issues to be fixed, it surely isn't as bad as certain Paradox releases that I can think of (hint hint). I just find it strange that my current scenario has so much of Monty's 8'th army and the Desert Fox's Afrika Corps, yet I see very little emphasis on the Italians. Where is my La Cosa Nostra?
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