Brilliant presentation, characters worthy of rooting for/against, good story, good premise for the game, good shooting and driving mechanics, but ultimately let down by mind numbing repetition. I think it could have actually been trimmed down to half its length and been a substantially better game for it. The game is at its best for the first hour or so, up until you actually take over your first section of town. At that point, its all the same from there and no amount of presentation or story can spruce that up. Some promising elements such as assigning your lieutenants and watching their loyalty grow or shrink end up not being fleshed out very well. Technical and artistic masterpiece but unfortunately not a very enjoyable game. In the beginning it was like a good movie, in the end I sort of didnt care anymore. I finished it just for the sake of completion.
Have been wanting a game like this for a long time. What is a near perfect game has some shortcomings that can be easily overlooked. As others have stated, there is little variation in the landscape. It is mostly fields with surrounding bushes, very little difference in elevation, and a river here or there. When there is a modest elevation change, line of sight becomes more of a problem than it should be - you get slaughtered if you cross the crest (including helicopters) but are rarely fired upon from someone higher than you. It also does not solve some of the limitations seen in similar games that prevent effectively micromanaging a large number of small units in a real time strategy setting. You will often have to step away from a focused assault to help out a rear unit under fire because it is incapable of making smart decisions to defeat the enemy on its own. The inclusion of logistics is nice but it gets annoying when you have to stack a bunch of empty trucks when you are out of Forward Operating Bases. Now what it has going for it is beautiful and efficient presentation, nice control scheme, excellent playability, nice range of missions and units (though lacking fixed win aircraft from some reason...), and a nice progression system that allows you to choose new or upgraded unit types with command points you earn. Have not tried the multiplayer yet but should offer a ton of replayability.
The game is just too simple. There is very little depth and you will get the urge to just shrug your shoulders from turn-to-turn. Cannot be compared to the Civilization series, which had depth and yet playability. I was very disappointed in it considering the positive reviews it garnered.
