Initial reactions

[Vaughn]

More first impressions: Mostly good.

I defeated Poland and France and chose Libya (my own personal favorite theatre of the war).

I'm unable to add Italian units to the core. I hope this is just a vanilla game thing. If I want minor axis units in my panzer core, it's my business.

I'm the player who if you had just added a naval core to the first game, I would have been good for the next 10 years. I'm still not a fan of the 3d.

I love the new transport rules. Your units can disembark from the transport if you dont use the full movement. Im finding towed arty and AT less frustrating.

Paratroopers and recon are more survivable, and although I dont fully understand encirclement rules yet, they seem to be more valuable than they were.

AA is switchable. All of it. That is useful and awesome.

Core slots is an additional layer of accounting that takes away fun. Perhaps even tedious.

Captured units seem very underwhelming. I dont actually get that unit. I capture a unit then I pay full price for a fraction of that unit.

Overstrengthing a unit is so brutal it is suddenly not worth the trouble.

Edit: There is a deployable unit list and then a completely separate list for units in reserve. Seems unnecessarily fiddly.

[Lakel]

Loving my time of it, also glad it plays on my win7 toaster with 4gb of ram. Just slightly long load times and i have to make sure i restart the game after a few missions.
Have to second the issue of the ground and air layer being hard to distinguish often enough. Tab helps, but still a major issue with accidentally moving planes instead of vehicles when I only get 3 undos per turn.

Love the heroes though as somone said in another thread, the ability to combine 3 heroes in one unit can get very, very dumb. Made it to the Suez Canal map with a 4star 2x rapid fire +bonus initiative for movement over enemy Tiger I, proceeded to mow through the initial line, all on its own, and sucker punch the vehicle behind the line. Felt like I had my own Tiger Ace for sure. 3rd hero was the provocateur one that proves amusing now and then when i set infantry or something vulnerable next to the death machine that it is.

Last thing I can think of to add, I love the changes to AA and Artillery from PCI, even got some good use pushing through Syria with my 88mm parked on a mountain. Talk about a no-fly zone.

[Rudankort]

Captured units seem very underwhelming. I dont actually get that unit. I capture a unit then I pay full price for a fraction of that unit.

Just a quick clarification here: when you capture a unit you get captured equipment and also full cost of this equipment in prestige as a bonus.

In the beginning the plan was simply to allow using captured equipment for free, but the current system produces the same result, plus gives your more flexibility - if you don't want to use this captured equipment now, then you are free to spend prestige on something else. In any event, capturing equipment is more beneficial than destroying it outright.

[centurial]

My biggest issue is with the visuals, and I feel it could be fixed relatively easy with a few options.

First of all in general, I think the game is way too bright and unsaturated - just being able to turn it down and enhance the colors would probably go a long way to both making it look better and hopefully making everything easier to distinguish. The gamma options slightly help this, but very little (and for some reason, I can only drag it to a minimum of 25).


Things also take far more effort to distinguish compared to the 2d version - turning off shadows helps a little bit. I feel like outlines would be worth testing out, in a more minor cel-shading sort of style; or, simply darkening the background terrain while leaving the units bright.





As for things I like, the encirclement mechanics stand out as the biggest tactical change, and add quite a bit; though the game does feel easier as a result, especially since it's a very complicated thing to get AI to properly understand and use to the same level a player would.

Planes being orbited around bases also is interesting, and ends the horror of losing fuel 1 hex away that was in PZC1. Planes are really hard to distinguish at times though without using the tab button (which does work well). Only issue, which might even be a bug, is that you can see exactly where enemy planes are flying back to, which makes it easy at times to go snipe their wounded planes assuming no AA is in the way. This might only be the case when you capture a base of theirs and they need to retreat, but I haven't paid attention specifically yet to see.

Final thing I wish would come back (unless there's an option somewhere I'm missing) is the option for moving units with right-click instead of two left clicks, in order to prevent accidental movement.

[Tanithiser]

Very enjoyable so far, as usual I am finding some of the time constraints a bit of a challenge ( as they are supposed to be), like others I am enjoying things like overrun and the very simple thing of aircraft returning to base after a mission instead of hanging around in seeming perpetuity. The game looks extremely pretty, the score is great and the variety of skins for your units is a great quality of life boost on previous games.

Minor gripes, I am not too impressed with the aerial gunfire sound of your fighters, your panzers sound like an electric scooter rather than a diesel powered behemoth, and as usual nowadays I am irritated by the politically, rather than historically correct national flags and insignia. Would it be too much to expect as grown adults and customers to be given a choice in this matter?

[MickMannock]

and as usual nowadays I am irritated by the politically, rather than historically correct national flags and insignia. Would it be too much to expect as grown adults and customers to be given a choice in this matter?

Some nations prohibit this, and this might be factor. They want to be able to sell their games so they can make some money.

Besides, someone will probably create a mod for it sooner rather than later.

[Vesa]

and as usual nowadays I am irritated by the politically, rather than historically correct national flags and insignia. Would it be too much to expect as grown adults and customers to be given a choice in this matter?

Some nations prohibit this, and this might be factor. They want to be able to sell their games so they can make some money.

Besides, someone will probably create a mod for it sooner rather than later.

I really do hope it will happen soon.

[MickMannock]

So I got to Moscow (1941) and lacked one major victory hex (had all bonus) when the scenario ended. I didn't really mind cause I thought it would be like PC1 where I would continue on the Russian front in 1942. But instead I was thrown out into the main menu. Game over.

Must I win in Moscow? Is it impossible to play a historical German campaign (which I always did in Panzer General and PC1)?

It's a little different now. You have to win to proceed. The branch for historical campaign will come later, don't worry you'll still have the chance to choose, and you will know for sure when it's presented.

Speaking of having to win completely.... I'd definitely like to bring back some degrees of victory. All or nothing is a bit much I think, especially in the harder battles on harder difficulty. We'll see what we can do about that.

Found a save file three turn from the end of Moscow41 and made a daring attack against the final victory hex and got it!

Finished Kharkov42 too and next up is Sevastopol. I must say the vanilla campaign is definetely better than the vanilla campaign in PC1.

[Retributarr]

My biggest issue is with the visuals, and I feel it could be fixed relatively easy with a few options.

First of all in general, I think the game is way too bright and unsaturated - just being able to turn it down and enhance the colors would probably go a long way to both making it look better and hopefully making everything easier to distinguish. The gamma options slightly help this, but very little (and for some reason, I can only drag it to a minimum of 25).

Things also take far more effort to distinguish compared to the 2d version - turning off shadows helps a little bit. I feel like outlines would be worth testing out, in a more minor cel-shading sort of style; or, simply darkening the background terrain while leaving the units bright.

centurial: "I think the game is way too bright".
You are totally... "spot on target" 'centurial.'

I have already brought this issue up on a previous occasion!.

The 'Back-Ground-Colors'... are "way-too-bright"... such that those bright colors obliterates easy visual identification of your units in the air and on the ground. Either this background color display needs to be turned down in the Game itself... or the Player should have the controls at hand to do the fine-tuning-color-adjustments themselves!.

The 'Units' in the Game... should visually be 'very-easy' (brightly enhanced)... to be able to immediately see/identify... not obscured/camouphlaged into the obscurity of the background... by the 'super-bright' flourescent dazzling grass.