Order of Battle: World War II

Hits the sweet spot for a low complexity abstract wargame. The supply system, AI routines and AI scripting, combined with the attractive graphics, put this above the likes of Panzer Corps 1 and 2 and Panzer Strategy. After seeing the lacklustre screenshots I was surprised how playing the demo hooked me. Somehow it all looks better when you're actually playing it. The challenging scenarios with their multiple primary and secondary objectives. along with unexpected events along the way make sessions gripping right up to the end. The only negative is that the UI and text is a little small and fiddly. Good to play on a big screen. Try the demo and you might be pleasantly surprised as I was.

I would give it 4 stars if it included a random mission generator.

Great for fans of the original Panzer General series, I have played 100s of hours now and find the game very addictive. There is plenty of different units and varied strategy options, yest very simple to learn and play, even players new to hez strategy games will find this easy to learn Beautiful graphics, nicely balanced maps with a challenging AI.

Wage war by moving squads on a hexagonal map, playing campaigns based on WWII -so far, so good. At first I loved it, but after a while I found too many usability issues that almost ruined the game for me: * No undo, not even in the simplest circumstances * Something incredibly stupid: on some battles, you must play the first turns without airplanes, so the game automatically and silently hides any you have in your reserve; when you are finally allowed to use planes, it doesn't show them back again, even if you buy them during battle. You might say it's your responsibility to remember to unhide units -yes, but only if it was you who hid them in the first place * Dismal objectives text: your pre-battle briefing names 5 cities to defend. Once in battle, the objectives list says to defend 5 cities, no names and no way of finding out * Information about the game and units is dispersed everywhere -in the manual, the tutorial campaign and hint pop-ups. It's easy to miss/forget something * Selecting a unit on-screen gives you useless stats but nothing about its current status or type * Awful color coding -copper and gold towns look almost identical, and the color is shown at the base of a flagpole in the map, usually obscured by something else * Meeting all required objectives ends the battle at once, without giving you the option of attempting optional objectives * Tiny, hard to read labelling and text * When losing a battle, you are immediately asked if you want to restart. Say no and the whole campaign is saved as a defeat, no undo (you can reload from autosave) * And lots more At first I loved this game. While the first scenarios are brief, later scenarios easily last 5+ hours, meaning you get lots of playtime, but these usability failures almost ruin the experience. I ended up lowering the difficulty to make it easier to put up with it. Campaigns (GOG includes one) are DLC, get them on sale. Recommended, but you'll have to fight the UI as much as the enemy.

OoB is a wargame that offers a mid-level complexity experience, and is similar in design to the Panzer series. However, it gives a wider amount of tactical possibilities. Some examples are: standard terrain effects, "efficiency" levels of units (three levels of efficiency, affected by multiple circumstances on the battlefield), a substantial supply system, unit experience, commanders you assign to units, a tech tree to invest in between campaign missions, and more. Repair/reinforcing works similarly to the Panzer games. Yet with all these options, they're implemented in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming. It's advised to read the manual for the game though, as the tutorial, while sufficient, doesn't touch on some of the finer details (like the whole of the supply system, for instance). One issue for me--there is a graphical bug when set to the highest graphical setting: there is an amorphous, semi-transparent "image" that covers the play area. Hardly noticeable, but annoying. As someone in the official forums pointed out, you can fix this by setting the graphics to "good" or lower, then reloading the save and set to "highest" again. But you have to do this every time you load up, or remember to load up on "good" every time--or resign to keep it set to good permanently. Really annoying bug, and apparently it has existed for years without a fix. Unfortunate. Wishlist: -A fully fleshed out random mission generator. They promised this in the Steam forums for the game about 5 years ago, but it never materialized. Not sure if it'll ever happen, which is a huge shame. It would immortalize the game. -"Dynamic" weather effects -Integrated controller options for PC. They've ported this to consoles, so it would make nice to give the option to use controllers on PC without the use of 3rd party apps. -Faster zoom in/out. Fastest setting currently is still too slow.