Commander The Great War preview
We’ve been having a lot of fun with yet another exceptional title from The Lordz Game Studio, the long awaited Commander – The Great War, the turn-based strategy that takes us back to the period of the First World War. This is merely a preview, but fret not, the full game will be out within few days, and we will immerse ourselves in a full-fledged review then.
Now, the historian in me, however presumptuous and uncredentialed, is dieing to explain you, dear reader, how this war was originally called The Great War (the noobs had no idea that an even bigger one was just around the corner) and what lead to this massive conflict that, for the first time, virtually engulfed the entire planet, but I shall give my best to restrain that rambling madman. Instead, let us hear from the gamer madman and his thoughts on the game depicting the world in this era.
World divided
The game is set in the time span from 1914-1918 and offers players five campaigns, focusing on the most important points of the war. You can control either the Entente Allies or Central Powers, but only the 1914 campaign was available in our preview, which was more than enough to give us the feel of the gameplay. One of the pretty neat details is the fact that you, as a player, basically choose sides in conflict, not countries, and as you progress through the game, the countries that join your side become available as part of your forces. That means that you can, as a certain country becomes your ally, start controlling its production facilities, its armies and recruitment, diplomacy and research. Mirroring the reality, there are some states that are predestined to join Entente Allies or Central Power, but there will be a fair number of countries that you will be able to possibly persuade via diplomacy to swing your way.
As a country joins your side in war, they become fully controllable asset in your Great War.
There are far more turn-based strategies taking place in the World War 2 than in the Great War, probably because of the more familiar setting and greater technological advancement, most notably in areas of armored warfare and aerial warfare, which makes CtGW even more attractive. The essence of the game are infantry troops, with tanks and airplanes still in baby shoes at this period of time, and the entrenchment seems to be, similar to the real historical events, a key to successful defense of your countries. You can also conduct research and explore better artillery, more deadly machine guns and numerous other enhancements that will help you win the war. You should pay good attention what improvement will have actual effect on your war effort and have generally the best return-on-investment value.
The Great War saw the transition from the infantry and cavalry to mechanized warfare, relying more on artillery, tanks and aircraft.
The UI is simple, downright ascetic, presenting you with production, research, diplomacy and management tabs. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist what they are used for, pardon my candour. The game breaths the concept of simplicity, which is a welcome notion, especially after dealing with some strategy games recently that, although being great by themselves, require you to wade through a manual of the size Enc Britannica. Decide on your research and your production, and place the newly acquired units in the appropriate distance to the production center; production centers aka cities have a certain production value that defines their overall value in your economical strive to outlive your opponents. If you research technologies in the same tech line, you will get upgrades and bonuses for the same units, improving their statistics. Seeing airships in the tech tree is both fun and a bit surreal, I must admit.
The “players” of the WW1, some destined to be your enemies, some to be your enemies, and a bunch of them sitting on a fence…
KISS – Keep it simply great, silly
Simplicity is never a bad thing by itself, on the contrary, keeping it simply is usually a recipe for success, and Commander The Great War does exactly that. The full game will be released on the 12th November, when we will immerse ourselves into exploration of the full game. The preview version we had was very close to the final thing, without any noticeable or noteworthy bugs or anything worth complaining about. The Lordz are an impressive development studio with increasingly better games coming out of their forge, and Commander The Great War promises to be The Next Big Thing as far as the turn-based, hexagonal strategies are concerned.
Stay tuned for the review; you can check out more technical details about the game and buy the get the game on 12.11.2012. from Matrix Games.
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