Möbius Front '83

'Advanced' Advance Wars OR 'simplified' Panzer General Very enjoyable and easy to get you rhead around TBT campaign story is interesting and levels are challenging Skirmish mode vs AI with 3 Factions is available but as title says lack of hotseat or multiplayer hurts the game, after you finish the campaign the game will sit on the shelf until you get an occasional itch to vs the computer in a skirmish.

I like the game and would love to give it a better rating. However, there are some drawbacks. 1. The tactic that almost works every time is to cluster your troops and wait for the enemy to come at you. Rushing often leads to failure. Nothing wrong with a passive approach, but the AI seems to know one tactic only. 2. The AI behaves ... interestingly. There is room for improvement. 3. The resource management of the underlying engine seems to be less than optimal, the special effects make my CPU sometimes jump to 100%. This game is so simple that any browser should be able to run it graphic wise. That said, if you enjoy passive-tactic and slow games, I would wait for a special offer. Last but not least I hope for improvements and maybe an extension. The game does not feel finished yet.

A likable game with cold war era vibes, and turn-based tactics that's fun. Unit roster and may layout often suggest an optimal approach but can often be solved with various approaches. The story is meh. It's in a nice, stranger things-y vein, not particularly deep. You get very little info in each cutscene, it builds much too slowly. Most cutscenes are a few sentences of soldiers making small talk and lameish one-liners. This would be a 4-star for me, but much of the difficulty comes from the fact that the AI cheats shamelessly. It's clever in the sense that it keeps ranges and unit capabilities in mind while manoeuvering, but as opposed to you, AI has no fog of war. You can test this easily with units that move a lot. If you start a round by leaving Anti Aircraft in the back, AI choppers advance boldly. Restart the same mission: if you now place them in a forward position, choppers will keep away, even though they should not be able to see your AA from their starting position, when they commit to movement. Some units, that need a 1-round setup suffer tremendously from this.

I quite like the game. It is a wargame but with simple and very comprehensive rules. The player is not required to put a dozen hours just to learn the rules and basic mechanics and that is a big plus for me. I know the quote about war in my review title is from Fallout, but after playing through 8 missions I was surprised how the tutorial level of Fallout Tactics helped me with Mobius Front. In that tutorial the player was told how to set up an ambush. You place two of soldiers in a covered position and then the third one acts like a bait and agros the enemy who then gives chase and walks into the firing range of the others. This is the tactic that I found to be the most useful in Mobius Front. The mission objectives I've seen so far are - capture a few specific tiles on the map and destroy enemy SAM sites. There is no time limit(turn limit) so the best way to complete the objective is dispatching the enemy forces by strategically positioning your units and ambushing them. Advancing your forces is quite risky due to two reasons. First: in some missions you start with a smaller force than the enemy and rushing forward is not a good idea. Second: units deal less damage when move and attack and some cannot move and attack at all. That is why positioning the units at the start of the game is important. If you need to advance you need to do so only to take a better position. After the enemy forces have been taken care of (or at least the ones that can damage your tanks) you can complete the objective. For some units damage is RNG based which provides some thrilling moments but also can cause a lot of frustration(as RNG usually does). Once again ambushes can mitigate that to some extent. There are also 2 minigames - a solitaire and a puzzle game called TIS 330 which are cool additional content. A lot of people will not like it because of the RNG or that it is favouring camping. These are valid points but I take the game for what it is and so far I am enjoying it.