Panzer General 2

I played this one to death. Literally. Not mine. And not the CDs. I burned out my CD drive playing this one. I think it was the music constantly being loaded from the CD that killed it. Not sure. I purchased it in a pack along with Steel Panthers 3, Soldiers at War & Silent Hunter. All four games were excellent. I can recommend this one to all comers. Simple, but will keep you occupied for hours, days, months. There are multiple campaigns from several sides of the war. The scenario script does have some limited branching. It isn't extensive, but you will get a few different battles if you win or lose. You can upgrade your units. Each type has a best use. And believe me, if you use them wrongly, you will pay. I do recall I could not finish the German campaign as the final scenario has you invading the US homeland. Carolinas, I think. I could never upgrade my units enough so that when I reached the last scenario my tanks and planes weren't outmatched by the late war US units. I'm not sure if that one was imbalanced or I was doing something wrong. The scenarios themselves are excellent and quite varied in what it will take to finish them with success. If you haven't played this one and you like strategy or pure wargames, get it now!

If you buy only one war game ever - this should be the one. A classic and one of the best ever to this day. Easy to learn and easy to play - there are easily hundreds of hours of gameplay here. The whole Panzer General series is great - not a bad game in the bunch, but this is widely considered to be the "peak" game of the series. If you ever played any of the boardgames, you'll be right at home, if not, no problem. The thing that makes PG II so great is that it simplifies the mechanics, is fairly accurate historically, yet keeps the "authentic" feel throughout. You won't go crazy trying to manage everything and yet you *will* see that rational strategies do work and that things play out in a reasonably realistic way such that you do truly feel like your efforts make a difference on the field of battle. Grand strategy and tactics galore! Armored warfare excellence. Infantry, Sea, Air power, they're all here (but the emphasis is squarely on land forces). There's a lot of atmosphere, the graphics, sounds, music, etc. are serviceable, but it's the gameplay itself that is the star. The PG series is fun to play. If by chance you've somehow never done so, I highly recommend playing PG II. It's a treat. I have purchased this series many times over in various forms and it looks like I will be doing so again as the GOG versions shall rule forever more. ;) Thanks GOG for making this venerable series available!

The first PG game when it was released was kind of a surprise to gamers. No real advertising or marketing it took off based on game play and word of mouth. It made a huge impression on war gamers and on a young gamer who had never really enjoyed a war game before. However its hard to repeat greatness and its nearly impossible to make folks even happier with a sequel. Yet this is exactly what SSI did. The game is fuller, better looking and much more enjoyable than the original. When you boil it down this is as good as the PG series got. Other games in the series didnt try to make the game play better they just tried to make the graphics or interface better. If you only play one PG game it has to be this one

I would have rated this 2,5 stars for a mediocre remake of PG1. PG2 has nicer graphics and one or two improvements, offset by a lot of incomprehensible bad changes to stuff that was good in PG1. If you loved Panzer General 1 (the original DOS game) you will probably like this, but also be frustrated by some of the changes. CONCLUSION: If you like hex-based games, then PG2 is probably worth you time and money. If you are a PG1 fan, expect nicer graphics, worse game-play, and a mediocre gaming experience. Good points include the opportunity to begin in the Spanish Civil War and join in the Winter War in Finland. Also, the annoyingly efficiency of entrenchment from PG1 has also been reduced. FOR NEW PG-GAMERS: This is a classic hex-based strategy game. Objectives are to be reached within a certain number of turns, the faster the better. Early victories will ease your further advance by skipping scenarios, gaining more experience (= purchasing power = more units), and getting special scenarios (= changing the course of history). You need to preserve your experienced units as they punch far beyond their weight and can be made "overstrength" (beyond the normal max. of 10). But you also need to focus on reaching you objectives, rather than happily slaughtering your enemies. Speed is of the essence. As the PG1 manual had it, it's "Blitzkrieg, not Sitzkrieg". Break through and keep pushing. Be on your toes for well-entrenched enemies and ambushed, though. AND NOW FOR THE BAD STUFF (FOR PG1 FANS): PG2 has many of the same ideas as PG1, but in my opinion they are not as well carried out. - First of all, why can airplanes no longer run out of fuel but only ammo? Granted, it makes for less tedious flying back and forth, but really. There also seems to be extreme amounts of bad weather (= useless planes) even over France in June(!) - Secondly, while airplanes were perhaps overpowered in PG1, in PG2 it's artillery. The defensive fire now covers all units within range, with unlimited numbers of defensive fires pr. turn(!) - only limited by the artillery's ammo (and they all have LOTS). And while the max. range of artillery in PG1 was typically 3 hexes, in PG2 you (and your enemies) will have access to range 4 artillery as early as 1939, further enhancing the usefulness of artillery. - Thirdly, there is much less opportunity for specifying difficulty and realism (just the overall easy, medium, hard etc.). In contrast, you could turn off some features in PG1 while leaving others on. - Assault infantry. It is not clear what infantry are assault troops (ie. have the "close attack" ability which make them immune to the dreaded "rugged defence"). While in PG1 the "bridge engineers" were perhaps too good to be true (hard to kill, assault infantry, and available from 1939), in PG2 they suck far too much. And while the addition of new inexpensive "garrison" infantry would make sense in order to hold rear areas, these garrison units are simply too weak for this role as well as being useless in attack: Any regular enemy will cut them to pieces on either the attack or defence. - Scale. The maps are much smaller in PG2 almost giving you the feeling of a tactical, rather than a strategic game. - Recruiting. OK, it is perhaps more realistic in PG2 that recruitment can only take place at your scenario "starting points", but it also make in game recruitment for anything but aircraft completely useless and pretty annoying. Especially, as the enemy will (apparently?) keep up the ability of recruiting in by-passed areas. This is both unrealistic and annoying: How are these new units popping up fully armed and supplied when you have cut off their bases? - Experience. XP seems to be much harder to gain than in PG1, meaning that your (Axis) forces have a hard time keeping up with your (Allied) enemies. This is both annoying and unrealistic as another reviewer has already remarked. And particularly ridiculous in air combat when XP is all-important (fighter units seem to be even slower in XP gain). - Supply & replacement also seems to be much easier in PG2, making the possibility for bypassing enemies much less (they will simply bugger off you path, replace and attack again). This have the effect of making sieges of enemy strongpoints almost impossible, as they will continually resupply and replace. This effect is, however, somewhat offset by the changed entrenchment rules. Thankfully, opponents no longer entrench up to a predefined level depending on terrain at the beginning of each turn. This feature annoyed the hell out of me in PG1, as it made digging out entrenched units extremely hard, and almost impossible without assault infantry. In PG2 it seems that units only entrench +1 level pr. turn, meaning you can dig them out over a couple of turns, rather than having to rely on multiple artillery & air strikes in a single turn. PS. What's up with the reviews? Most are either 5 stars and blithely praising or 1 star bitching over tech & compatibility stuff. Where are all the 2,3 and 4 stars?