Comments now I've (almost) finished a campaign.

[FOARP]

I'm on the last mission of the Japanese campaign, and now I've been playing through the game for a while I have the following impressions:

• I still really love this game - it's basically reignited my interest in the Pacific war, I've been re-reading the histories, and re-playing Battlestations Midway and Pacific when I'm in the mood for a quick blast. I really think it's got a lot of potential and am looking forward to the DLCs
• Mission design needs improvement in expansions - this game is strongest when you're trying to do your best against a challenging enemy (e.g., the first bit of the New Caledonia mission when you're stretched with only a small army facing a much larger Allied attack) and weakest when you're grinding forwards on a narrow front with a large army that seems to be tripping over itself, at which point you can no longer lose so the sense of risk is gone and the game feels like a chore.
• Mission design has some failings. In some cases in-game events make no sense (e.g., the Allies suicidally landing on a sand-bar in the Christchurch mission), in others it basically serves to render game-elements pointless (the lack of airfields in the Japanese campaign renders land-based airpower useless, meaning you get punished for buying strat-bombers earlier in the game and opting for advanced aircraft).
• The game makes you make lots of choices where, in retrospect, there was a clear advantage in making the choice one way: the lack of airfields makes the advanced aircraft option pointless, you never have enough naval points to be able to spare the deployment of a submarine so buying subs is a waste, you're on the offensive so Kamikaze is not useful etc. etc.
• I would have liked to have seen more island-hoping in-game. It's great to be able to make landings and out-flank enemies, but the integrated ambibious element of the game could have been emphasized a bit more.
• AI could do with some work in some areas. One thing that was very obvious was that the AI was only triggered for groups of units when you crossed a certain line or came within a certain range of them, or a switch was triggered. If you avoided doing this, you could even slash across their supply-lines without them moving a muscle to stop you - I managed to completely cut off the US army defending the Banks peninsula from their base in Akaroa with an amphibious landing in the Christchurch mission without them moving. The AI should do more to proactively defend its supply lines.