I was delighted with how good Kingdom Come Deliverance was. Coming from a background of playing story driven games such as Planescape Torment, and exploration based games such as Morrowind and Daggerfall, I enjoy a great RPG. Kingdom Come is definitely the best I have played in the last few years. The character you play is relatable (if you imagine yourself as a young guy in medieval times who grew up in a farm with a blacksmith farmer!) You have never had any real world experience, probably can't even handle the weight of a real sword, and all of a sudden your village is overrun by strange forces. Note that many main characters in the game are real historical figures (it is set in the 1400s in the old Czech region). Also the location in the game is a meticulously crafted replica of the real terrain in that region. Once the game picks up a bit, you start to learn a few skills (if you want - you dont need to), and eventually might even become a little bit good at combat. Of course you are not going to be as good as a trained knight - that would be highly unrealistic. I notice a few negative reviews focus on the combat system, such as "Whenever you face multiple opponents you may as well give up". Well, yes. Why would a medieval blacksmith's son NOT give up against a group of multiple armed opponents? It's a great combat system, because just like the real life character would need to spend a lot of time training to have any sort of meaningful impact with his sword, the gamer needs to train too. The story is great, and keeps you hooked to find out what happens next. There are a small number of mechanics I don't enjoy, such as the lock picking mechanic (it's similar to the Elder Scrolls system but seems a bit more difficult), but then again, that's exactly as it should be. Why would some random kid be good at picking locks of chests? It takes practice. Guess I should just get better at it. Highly recommended!
It's a nice game if you enjoy Panzer General, however it suffers from the huge problem where supply doesn't play an important role in the game. You end up with the same arcade style of Panzer General gaming where one unit can just go rogue on the map and travel around by itself. Skip this title, save the 2 euro sale price, and get Order of Battle which is actually free from the same publisher (for the first mission of each campaign). A vastly superior game as you need to protect your supply lines.
The Free to Play version on Steam is the first scenario of every campaign, plus training. There are currently 12 campaigns meaning you get 12 scenarios for free. It's definitely worth paying for at least 1 complete campaign (cheapest way is in a bundle during a sale). I recommend the US Pacific to start with which is what this GOG version is bundled with. The game is similar to Panzer Corps but with a more prominant supply element, i.e. you can't just send one unit off behind enemy lines. You must always have a supply source traceable to your location. This is great as it means the AI are constantly trying to cut off your supply, either by surrounding units or attacking supply sources. Like most major "serious" strategic or operational level wargames (be it boardgame or computer), supply becomes perhaps the most critical thing in many scenarios. You will find yourself thinking about defending supply lines, something you probably haven't done much in other games of this nature. It plays like a tactical game but with an operational level of thinking. You can't just send every unit to spam attack like many games. They will quickly lose supply, lose efficiency and become useless. The game is definitely a "just one more turn" level of addicitveness. Scenarios can be challenging. "New Georgia" took me 4 or 5 attempts. The downsides: Constant crashes and slowdown. I don't think I have played this game even once without it crashing at some point. Looking at the error logs, they are very vague, and I believe the crashing is due to the memory usage of the game being extremely unoptimized. This also explains the slowdown. In almost every scenario, after maybe 15 turns or so, the AI movement becomes tediously slow, where occasionally the music will stop entirely, the game will freeze up, then the AI suddenly moves again 20 seconds later. AI turns which normally take up to 1 minute or so may halt to a 5 minute grind. Be prepared for a frustrating slow experience.
Ignore the advice by a clear shill below claiming "go for the Close Combat 3 Rusian front" (he probably meant "Russian"). It is well known that the original Close Combat 3 (including the version on GOG) has unfixable scroll speed problems on modern systems. This is where "Cross of Iron" comes in. We finally have a fully working, bug-free version of CC3 that can run on Windows 8 or 10.
Extremely well balanced. AI is intelligent. A lot of content rich DLC. Space systems are filled with events. Feels like Paradox are really on the ball radically improving the game regularly. I love starlanes, and since 2.0, it has really made Stellaris the best game of its kind.
Ignore the troll 1 star reviews below by people who have never played the game. War in the West (and it's sister game, War in the East) is probably the most detailed WW2 game in existence. With week-long turns in hexes measuring just 10 miles, every aerial and naval campaign of the western front is simulated. The biggest difference between this game and War in the East is probably the increased emphasis on air combat. In fact there is an entirely new "air execution" phase. The air combat is extremely detailed (just like everything else). Thankfully there is the Auto Air Direction Creation system that allows you to control the amount of AI help (that you will definitely need) you receive. The biggest downside is the naval combat - with so much emphasis on the air combat, the naval combat is quite abstracted. If you are into turn based grognard style games (imagine a more advanced version of Operational Art of War on PC, or tabletop board games such as Case Blue) then this is the greatest game in the genre. For $80 it is great value (a similar price to tabletop games of the same style) but the game is often on sale (30-50% off) so wait for a sale.
