Codename Panzers: Phase One

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4.4/5

( 15 Reviews )

4.4

15 Reviews

English & 8 more

Overall most helpful review

Posted on: February 19, 2016

Zazaluzan

Verified owner

Games: 611 Reviews: 8

Amazing game!

THE best WW II RTS game out there. Great graphics that hold up to today´s standards. No base building, but you can buy new and upgrade existing core units between missions. Units gain experience over the course of the campaign, so you have to take care of them and be careful not to loose your core units. I love how the armor of tanks works like armor - your tanks can take more hits from the front that from the sides or (god beware) from the back. So maneuvering your tanks and outmaneuvering the enemy is crucial. You get a limited amount of tactical support like air strikes - using them at the right time is important, as well as managing your units and sending the right units to the right place, using your artillery units etc. The only gripes are the short campaigns - would have been nicer to have longer campaigns, and to have more time using the advanced tanks and weaponry. Story is somewhat simple and cliched too. Tank AI sometimes tends to get stuck. All in all, a must have for RTS fans, specially with the lack of good new RTS titles out there.

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Posted on: December 13, 2016

feamatar

Verified owner

Games: 1010 Reviews: 13

More than your average RTS.

I wish I could give more stars, but in an age of awesome wargames it is so hard. Back in 2004, when the game was originally released this had fascinating campaign and very detailed graphics, and these qualities are still true today. I It is an arcade strategy game, even more arcade than Company of Heroes, in many ways it is very similar to the developers previous game Swine. It tries to add some realism through ammo management and through a call towing mechanism, but it is still "tanks shooting each other at point blank range" type of traditional RTS. + Detailed graphics + Destructible environments + Good campaign + Good vehicle selection + Ammo management + Towing: people can be assigned to artillery, and the whole peace can be towed by trucks, It is implemented nicely - Unrealistic gameplay leads to lack of depth - Tanks are bullet sponges - Most fights are at point blank range, - Subpar AI - Navigation issues - Camera is zoomed in too much

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Posted on: February 18, 2017

The-Business

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 4

Good graphics arcade real-time strategy

This is an enjoyable game if one likes playing an arcade RTS game. There isn't much strategy like breaking the lines and causing havoc - you put your tanks in the first line and the artillery behind it. Then you will do some reconnaissance, e.g. with crouching snipers (so they don't get heard or seen) and the artillery will land its first hits and you can estimate if you can send your tanks against the discovered units. If you take too much damage, you will retreat the most damaged units and repair them (your repair truck will replenish between missions; that's different from its predecessor S.W.I.N.E). The offensive actions of the AI are scripted and the units will shoot at the first of your unit which they can damage, so often one unit will take the most damage. Fortunately, they enemy rarely tries to follow when you retreat it. The available but limited actions like calling in heavy artillery fire, air strikes or scouting planes are the main tactical element. While fighter-bomber strikes happens only a few seconds after you ordered them, a bombing raid requires the plan to arrive from the edge of the map. Infantry (absent in Swine) gets obsolete fast and almost always one unit type will be the obviously strongest one (e.g. tank with strong armor and two machine guns). Only infantry can get upgrades like mine-searching equipment (different from Swine). After each mission, the performance gets shown as a score (and not also this annoying time-based rating like in the successor Rush for Berlin). Most missions can be done without any losses. On this Windows 8.1 machine with a dedicated Nvidia graphics card (at least the successor Rush for Berlin crashes after some time if it uses an internal Intel graphics unit), there were two crashes while playing the German and Soviet campaigns and a few more while quitting the game and some error popups after loading in one Soviet mission (not game-breaking). It supports windows mode (requires an edit in a documented .ini file).

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Posted on: July 6, 2023

Pegultagol

Verified owner

Games: 493 Reviews: 3

Game Mechanics Can't Sustain Its Content

Like most already said, this game is a competent RTS if the mission designs are thoughtful to emphasize its strengths. The first two acts in the campaign mode illustrate that. The soldiers have different stances, gain experiences and stay with your army group throughout the campaign. The vehicles are lovingly rendered and feel unique in their own right. There are options for support such as off-screen artillery bombardment, dive bombing, paratroopers, etc. There are streamlining and automation when needed and complexity where one might appreciate its thoughtful integration. A lot of options are there to make this a fully featured RTS based on WW2. Where it falters is when the missions do get complex, requiring precise timing and controls and the game design or engine isn't equipped to handle such cases. For example, the enemy doesn't seem affected by fog of war and sees all your units on the map real time, while you are left to wonder where the shot that just destroyed your tank came from. Your units never react to being hit. The move command places grouped units randomly scattered around the entire screen sometimes. The vehicles have force fields around them into which other vehicles cannot pass, leading to a logjam of units making directing them while in combat next to impossible. The mission designs, especially in the last act of campaign, lay bare these shortcomings and amplfies frustration factor tenfold, to the point of it being almost unplayable. The missions lazily dump enemy units after enemy units and punish the player for trying to use the game's features. The reactivity is sorely missing, except when script springs to trap you into another round of save and reload. All the positive aspects of the game are ultimately let down by these missions that try to pad content but which is out of depth of the game's core mechanics. Enjoy it for what it is but be prepared for hours of frustration and futility. One can do a lot better than Codename: Panzers.

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Posted on: April 25, 2022

BeniMartinez

Verified owner

Games: 70 Reviews: 3

Great RTS game of the WWII

Very good real-time strategy game about World War II. The game has no construction, try to manage the units and control the map, we have infantry, armored, cannons and trucks, we also have air support which we can deploy selecting it and indicating the area where we want it, we have up to seven items to equip our infantry (depending on the type of infantry can be equipped with all objects or only a couple of them). Personally the campaign is very good and gives you many hours of play, The multiplayer is very good and is very entertaining, unfortunately with the fall of GameSpy we ran out of servers and now the new ones that made THQ are already closed, they have not been open a year... One very important thing; in these versions there are things that do not work. Very bad on the part of THQ, they have damaged things that previously went perfectly, one of those things is the cooperative campaign. Otherwise, a great strategy game of the year 2004. Would you like to play multiplayer? A few players have created the group "Codename: Panzers Node", with the intention of gathering players of the saga to play this good game again (via local network, through VPN programs, or other alternatives). Discord server: xpwj6nP93z

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