I'm and old gamer and quckly loose interest in most games, but this one I played all the way till the end. With it's beautiful visuals and athmosphere it is a valid successor to Syndicate title. I just want to correct few reviews I found here: - game is NOT purely stealth. At first I was struggling trying to accomplish missions in stelth mode, then I discovered that with "mind control" I can recrute a dozen of enemy soldiers and shoot my way trough the missions. Don't have plasma minigun? Invest in your character skills and hijack and control enemy that has one! - missions do require some planning and thinking, but you can still enjoy good old Syndicate-style shooting - there is no pause option mid fight, but there is simple open mod that enables that function - in the end choose weather you want to break in enemy's compound unnoticed or you want to rush in with 10+ soldiers you control Only cons: - Though every sector is different, facilities more demanding and enemies balanced with progression of your characters, missions seem somewhat repetative (rob a bank, eliminate target, rescue hostage...) - game is great, but not original. didn't pay too much attention to the story, but I remember I was dissaponted how it ended. Either way, this is the title I'd recomend.
Pros: The game concept is not bad. I love combination of turn based battles, strategic planning, and upgrading existing units with researched technologies. Player is not limited to playing scenarios, but mostly free to move whole armies and pick fights. It allows to slightly change history. I like concept of supply lines, it's like a whole new minigame of sumarine warfare. But... Cons: -Price of almost $40 is ridiculous. This is not original game, it's Panzer General on steroids. -Infantry units come in different sizes and I didn't really see much difference between army and corps. Worst thing is, if you produce cheaper corps, you can't later upgrade it to a larger unit. -Game forces you to transfer units across the map. It took me 6-7 turns to transfer units from France to Yugoslavia. Six turns of doing nothing but clicking one by one unit. You can only move the unit within it's range, instead of selecting destination and making units automatically move next turn. - Air units occupy the whole hex, they can't share hex with land units. Since air range is very limited (specially early in the game) they are not able to act far behind enemy lines if you keep them behind frontline, and if you put them on the front line they're either vulnerable to land attacks or they occupy hexes for land units. Also air units cannot act in bad weather, so if they are caught on the frontline during winter period they'll practically waste space and obstruct way for land units. Air cover should be additional benefit for land units, instead you must choose wheather to use land attacks or air attacks in same turn. Also, unit leveling is poor, I have lvl3 advanced fighters doing 2:1 ratio against Brittish lvl1 Hurricanes. Stukas rarely do more than 0:1 damage against infantry and often get shot while attacking even simple infantry units. Considering the damage air units inflict it is best not to use air units while attacking, use land units that inflict more damage instead.
After going through all F1, F2, Fallout Tactics and Wasteland 2 a dozen times, I had to give up on this title after only few hours of gameplay. Lets put aside storyline and dialogues, it's been a long time since Fallout 1 and 2 were on my menu and I'm much odler and harder to impress with storyline. To be honest I didn't expect anything more than visual repack of Fallout franchise. What kept me away from this game is a huuuuuge imbalance in combat. In Fallout, when you got your hands on Desert Eagle pistol or .223 hunting rifle, you'd be a real badass for a while, being able to keep up with enemies you encountered for a while or at least barely survive most of the random encouteres until you level up or get your hands on better weapons. In this game there is no way to survive random contacts. NO WAY! From the start it's you alone against multiple enemies. It's you with a stick against enemies with shotuns. As soon as you leave first settlement you can count on being killed on first hostile encounter. So I entered cheat codes and got myself a decent pistol...and it didn't help. Then I entered cheat codes and got myself an AK74...and still did not manage to get through a single encouter alive or without loosing my companions. Then I started saving game before leaving settlement and avoiding any encounters...and the game soon got boring. There is just no way to survive inflicting 5-10 damage/turn against enemies who inflict 20-30 damage/turn.
