Strategic Command WWII: World at War Image
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  • Summary: Strategic Command WWII: World At War is your chance to re-fight the 20th century’s greatest conflict, from Poland to China, Normandy to the Pacific, on a map encompassing the globe.
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  1. Positive: 1 out of 2
  2. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. 80
    Strategic Command WWII: World At War doesn't come across as overly accessible to any but the most hardcore strategy game fan, but that's just the surface of it. Underneath that is a genuinely good effort to capture the many diplomatic and strategic complexities of World War 2, and coupled with quality AI, this is a game that offers armchair generals a lot.
  2. Jan 25, 2019
    70
    Every fan of the genre and of World War 2 should be excited about this very solid turn-based strategy. For everyone else, it’s “just” a very complex and difficult game.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
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  1. Aug 9, 2021
    9
    An excellent turn by turn grand strategy game. A good follow-up to Strategic Command WWII: Europe at war. It extends the game to the war inAn excellent turn by turn grand strategy game. A good follow-up to Strategic Command WWII: Europe at war. It extends the game to the war in the Pacific with some interesting twists.

    One strength of the game is that the game mechanic naturally leads the player to understand and replicate the strategic decisions of the era. Like its predecessor game, the game follows a semi-determined historical script where Japan first handles a weak ally country (China) and then has to deal with UK and the USA later on. The fight with China, however, is anything but a Blitz and will likely linger as the mountainous terrain slows the conquest drastically.
    The strategic mechanic itself is great. It relies on ensuring supply lines and concentration of troops while accounting for geography, to achieve strategic gains, like controlling supply centers. The supply line dynamic is particularly interesting as it makes careful planning a requirement for successful offensives, and limits the extent of offensives (there needs time to regroup and reorganize).

    The quite varied unit troops all achieve different purpose and the player is left to make interesting and difficult decisions, prioritizing between new troops, research, upgrading troops or repairing troops.

    The complexity of the game ensures its life I have played the game hundreds of hours. Still, there quite a few frustrating aspects to the game:
    - The AI is slow and it gets worse as the game progresses. Toward the end, you spend more time waiting for the AI to execute its turn than playing.
    - On top of that, one's own turns can be long and tedious. There is a lot of repetitive tasks that take forever with very little automation possible, such as no multiple turns orders, automatic upgrades or even automating some secondary units. And forgetting one of these things, such as repairing a unit, may cost you dear.
    - The sea combat mechanic is not as great. For some reason, there are no supply lines at sea, so it remains quite "brute force" and there are way too many units, so again a bit tedious.
    - The careful balance of the game is perfect at the beginning but less so at the end. If you play against AI, the game will become increasingly less subtle and finish as pure brute force towards the end. Likewise, if you play against humans, the beginning will be interesting but the game will basically be determined by 1941 and it is unlikely that you will ever finish the party as one player will resign.
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