Beautiful hand drawn maps, classic gameplay. Still the yard stick for world war two tactical games on which all others are two be measured by.
I enjoyed this Fallout iteration, its very large game world, has an improved combat system and an attempt for a varied story line with some options. To me it is still a must play that falls short of the high standard. My biggest issue is the move away from RPG and storytelling. Almost every encounter is a combat encounter, the more interesting level and narrative designs of earlier Fallout games is lost, a lot of radial quest and respawns make it feel like you accomplish nothing. Some of the3 endgame quests like the raiders quest contradict the core gameplay of the majority of the game. To me this is fallout amusement park and not fallout the RPG. Its a giant repetitive game for no reason filled with mundane game play an d a boring open world as a result. Its not horrible. You will not waste your money by purchasing this. It just does not live up to the previous games in the series.
If you have the horsepower to run this game, it is amazing. I have played all three origin stories and pretty much everything I can find and cant wait for DLC. the story is strong for an open world adventure / rpg, the romances are powerful and possibly the best ever for a video game, Now, there are technical issues, some people would prefer a bigger FOV, the game is less playable with mouse and keyboard and is really needing a controller, Probably the biggest issue is the mini-map does not zoom out when driving making it hard to see gps turns. and if your on a last gen console, you will have less than a good experience. There are also still some collision bugs, some missions are not completing and some objects are misplaced and floating,. here and there, though mostly this is fixed. But on next gen, (i played on series X and on PC and i loved both) what you get is a epic film noir setting Cyberpunk experience in the best tradition of Gibson and Philip K Dick, with a setting that wears its Blade Runner inspiration on its sleeve. The world is epic and beautiful and the level of AI is perfect to fit the setting. Just amazing, i love it and cant recommend it high enough to fans of Adult story based RPG's
The rosters have been updated to make the experience more realistic with some units deleted and most others getting new variations and improvements. Weapon and environmental audio has also been updated. Suppressive weapons Mortars are far more effective as suppressive weapons and kill with efficiency. They are now key weapons. To balance this however, 120mm mortars and the rocket artillery are gone. So less of the fun weapons but more effectiveness. Equally, machine guns can be devastating, (something they were not in CC3 in comparison. Armour The Vehicle AI is improved though still not perfect. The guns and armour has also been re balanced creating more historic encounters but also making the encounters less balanced. Infantry This is a mixed bag and keeps me from giving this a perfect score. on the one hand, infantry is more accurate, lethal and suppressive. When everything works, they seem perfect. But there is one big flaw. As soon as there is some suppressive fire of any kind, advancing infantry stops and runs back to the leader. this means that its very difficult to advance with infantry because every time they move forward a few feet, they end up moving back to position rather than go to cover and stand their ground. So you cant inch forward as they tend to move back and fourth over the same terrain. Couple that with the more effective Mortars and infantry only use is as spotters for your tanks. I would be okay with it if they would just go to ground and stay rather than always fall back. This deficiency is big enough to drop a full Star in my review. Otherwise, the game has improved in every category. For example, less unit homogeneity - balance than Close Combat 3 due to the above changes means you now need to use better strategies to overcome the imbalance. The sounds and the role of suppression is significant and not easily ignored, Its still a dated game from the late 1990's. If you can live with all that that implies, you will learn to love it
Close Combat was, in its time, a new type of RTS game. Moral plays a role, units dont always listen to orders as they may be too afraid to follow, units can run out of ammo, A great example I will never forget, I had set up a large antitank gun with a squad of soviet troops in support. The Germans attacked, there tanks destroyed one at a time, there infantry support stalled by my own causing a lul in the combat. I should have easily won. Except my men were all raw recruits, and the lul in combat just gave them an opportunity to panic. One at a time, the soldiers broke rank and ran away. I lost. It was magnificent. CC3, is the best game in the series. Its campaign allows you to evolve and bring your fire team to various hotspots of the eastern front, from Barbarossa to the fall of Berlin. you can watch your soldiers grow, evolve there kit, celebrate there medals earned and kills, and suffer there loss if and when they die in battle or become wounded. My only wish is for GOG to get the Iron Cross upgrade to this game, which was released about 6 years ago as it incorporates many minor improvements and adds a new campaign. i have loved my time in this game since the 1990's
Questions to ask your self before buying. Are you a strategy fan? Do you feel AI in most games is easy to beat? Do you want an intelligent and complex game? If you answered yes to even one of these, you need Alpha Centauri. The games depth is wonderful. Like all civilization games, there is a tremendous effort made to create a world for you to conquer, through military or economic or development, or alliance or militarily. The AI factions are varied in there priorities and will actively yet logically try to undermine you. Treat them good and agree with there priorities and they will loyaly follow you. The graphics, understated yet very descriptive. A lok at any game hex will be enough for you to understand every important. The UI is very simple to learn and very rewarding in depth. You can automate any number of functions you don't want to deal with or take complete control of every action and resource in game. If you like civilization games, or grand strategy games in general, this is the best one ever made. It will satisfy the hardcore as much as the noob.
