Easily best wargame i played in years

[fvianello]

The subject tells all.
It's immersive, manageable, with a lot of depth under the hood. I've been playing it for 3 days almost non-stop and I feel like I'm sitting inside a kubelwagen near Minsk.

Keep up the good work!

[Ascension]

My first impression is very good, too.

It's remarkable really how the game manages to strike a balance between easy to grasp concepts and in-depth strategy that is also necessary to succeed. I'm very much looking forward to playing again this evening.

[bennythejet]

Absolutely. Had this game for 2 days and am totally immersed with it. I'm a regular boardgamer with 75% of my gaming on the eastern front--I played them all. Very rarely do I play computer games but this one has me hooked.

[Queeg]

Seconded. A war game that's actually fun. It's been a very long time.

[rominet]

Yes but what about replayability?
If i understood well, the game ends at the beginning of 1942.
So that gives rather short games.
Does it worth it? The game is rather expensive.

[bennythejet]

At 4 days per turn that's a lot of turns. With plenty of decisions to make it takes a while and don't forget once you think your unbeatable as the German switch to the Russian and your good to go again[:)]

[ChuckBerger]

There's about 50 turns to a game (unless auto-victory conditions are reached), and running a turn I'd say takes 30-60 minutes, depending on how much info you want to gather before making your moves and how much planning you like to do... so a full game against AI might take 25-50 hours. Against a good human opponent, maybe double that!

In terms of replayability, my sense is that you could easily play 5-10 games against AI on each side before getting tired of it. Sure the opening few turns will play out similarly, but after that the campaign can branch out very significantly depending on your objectives etc.

Can't wait to start PBEM, as I suspect this is where the game will really shine. The AI, like any game AI on something this complex, is good but suffers from a lack of long-term planning and strategic oversight.