Panzer General Remake
Beverly Friddle
Keeping with the beer and pretzels theme, a novice can learn how to play the game via a set of well designed tutorials or can read a very short manual. To fully understand the game the manual should be read. The learning curve is very easy. Maps with a limited number of hexes, very few units, few rules, and a good tutorial all make this an excellent introduction to computer, turn-based wargames. There are five levels of difficulty. Major game options are fog of war, supply effects, and weather effects. There are four campaign games and twenty-three scenarios. The campaigns start at different points in the war and eventually split into the Eastern and Western fronts.
If victory is achieved in campaign games, surviving core units transfer to subsequent scenarios. Bonus units may be awarded to commanders who win substantial victories. As technology progresses over time, units can be upgraded with better equipment. Crews manning a lowly Panzer I in Poland may eventually man Panthers in Russia. Experienced units can gain leaders and other special abilities. With success over time your core units will compile a detailed battle history with records of kills, heroes and awards. Players will become attached to their favorite units and will deeply morn their loss.
The player attempts to take key cities within a time limit. Experience points usable in repairing units, purchasing new units, and upgrading units are gained by capturing key cities, other victory point cities, and destroying enemy units. In a campaign game when a player quickly takes all key cities in a scenario, a decisive victory is won which grants a substantial point bonus. Winning a scenario less quickly earns a regular victory and fewer points. Winning a scenario with little time to spare earns a marginal victory and substantially fewer victory points.
There is good play balance and an effective AI. With five levels of difficulty almost any player can find a challenge. Playing the easiest setting with no supply, weather, or fog of war is very different game from the hardest setting with all options in use. Once again, these options can make PanzerCorps a very forgiving introduction for wargame newbies.
Multiplayer via PBEM is available. However, it seems that multiplayer games must employ the Slitherine servers. Although a player could limit the game to a specific opponent, forcing the game through one set of servers might limit multiplayer as the years pass by. Many wargame companies have gone out of business and Panzer Corps multiplayer may be impossible in future years without specific servers.
This game is heavily influenced and intentionally similar to the multi-game Panzer General series released by SSI in the 1990s. Panzer General is one of the best beer & pretzels PC wargames of all time and is still played by many. PanzerCorps follows the same formula established by Panzer General.
PanzerCorps makes one substantial improvement over the original Panzer General, it shipped with a highly adaptable map and scenario creation kit. Mods and scenarios are already appearing on the internet. This is important because a 23 scenario beer and pretzels game has limited replay ability. With the editing kit Panzer Corps has the potential to have a greater long-run impact than Panzer General.
The game is not perfect. It will be mastered pretty quickly by experienced gamers. The voice-overs in the scenario briefings are weak. There is no voice-over when you win a decisive victory! Forcing multiplayer through one set of servers may limit future playability.
Good review discussing all the out of the box points. I agree with the beer and pretzels aspect but think the game has more to offer. Panzer Corps was designed to be fairly easily modded. Without this function the game would fall short of excellent status. The engine runs cleanly and is without major glitches. The equipment file contains several unit stat errors. The individual scenarios are well designed, interesting and fun. The campaigns are short and rather limited. The designer concentrated his efforts on the game mechanics ensuring a stable platform. HIs experience with Panzer General and PGForever(which he designed) made him aware there were many modders ready,willing and able to create new equipment data, maps and extended campaigns. Have a look at the Slitherine and Matrix Panzer Corps forums and one will see in the 2 months since game release many modifications are available.
In my experience the most requested remake was of Panzer General in some form. Ubi consistently ignored pleas to re-issue the game or release the source code. Yes, it can be purchased through Good-Old-Games but that has had only limited success.
Got to be one of the worst games I have ever bought. If it says you will damage 2/2, you will get wiped out, destroyed. I understand the odds have to have some play, but this is terrible!! 90% or more of the time, you will ALWAYS get the worst end! 7% its about right and maybe 3% you get a break. And there is no rime or reason to it. I have had panzers one shot by infantry with a tank value of one, and that was after it was hit by 3 arty??
20 years ago, in a time before Windows had a Start Menu and when USB connectors were still a twinkle in some hardware designer's eye, PC gamers were introduced to a strategy title that would soon be regarded as one of the finest in its field and which would only grow in stature with the passage of time. Oft imitated, rarely equalled, its quality was further emphasised by the often sub-par attempts by others to copy its mechanics and its concepts, even ape its presentation outright.
If it weren't for the name splashed across the top of this page, you might think I was referring to the original X-COM, a game that inspired several remakes and reinterpretations of varying quality before Firaxis finally released a de-hyphenated and critically acclaimed remake in 2012. Several development teams had tried to capture the magic of the original, but the more they tried, the more impressive they made MicroProse's work look.
Instead, I'm talking about Panzer General, widely considered to be the classic wargame of tanks, tactics and tessellated hexes. After its warm reception, creators SSI spent several years producing a lengthy series of sequels and spin-offs that ranged from the logical (Allied General, Panzer General 2) to the unusual (the sci-fi Star General, or the dragon-commanding Fantasy General). Then came the games that were clearly profoundly inspired by it, such as Slitherine's Panzer Corps, as well as attempts to modernise the ageing original, including Open Panzer, PG Forever and LGeneral. Panzer Tactics DS, released in 2007, was an example of the former, clearly taking much from Panzer General but presenting it to a new audience: Nintendo DS owners.
So Panzer Tactics HD is actually a remake of a reinterpretation. It's a PC and iPad version of a DS game inspired by a DOS game. From the first days of the Clinton era. It is, I'm afraid, also a little stuck in the past and it does, I concede, only make Panzer General look even classier in its venerable old age.
It has that same 20-year-old premise: all military units have a strength between one and 10 and each of them is particularly effective on a certain sort of terrain or against another type of unit. Infantry are comfortable in the cover of towns or forests, while tanks are dangerous in open ground. Fighter squadrons slice through bombers as if they were airborne dairy, but those bombers devastate the static artillery pieces that are giving your infantry hell. And so on. It's a very well devised and well defined series of relationships, so everyone knows where they stand. (Or where they fall.)
It also has many of the same additional considerations, such as limits on ammunition and fuel for each unit, as well as the opportunity for units pulled away from the front lines to reinforce themselves back to full strength. Line of sight is particularly important and recon units that can peek many hexes ahead are vital tools that help you plan your avenues of advance.
And there's a lot of advancing to do. Panzer Tactics HD has you following similar campaigns to many of Panzer General's peers, Blitzkrieging your way across Europe with Nazi party-poopers determined to invade everything in sight, pushing your way into Berlin to paint the town red with the Soviets, or chasing the Axis forces out of their conquests with the rest of the Allied forces. The campaigns are mostly offensive efforts and you're always facing a time limit as you move to capture or hold key objectives. Here, war is all about grasping at things.
For a while this is quite good fun, as perfecting your Blitzkrieg involves carefully co-ordinating all the different forces at your command. You make sure you've weakened anti-aircraft defences before your bombers soften up enemy troops, then send your own forward while seeing if there's some way to sneak around the flanks. The best generals are the most efficient, only resting and resupplying units when they can afford to put them aside, and they behave with militaristic midwifery, always urging their troops to push, push, push onward toward the next objective. Nevertheless, over-extension means death, and it's important to maintain a cohesive, coherent front.
There are a few extra tactical tricks at your disposal. Paratroopers can be dropped straight into the fray while many units can be loaded into trucks or planes to rapidly shift them from one part of the map to another, making them fast but very vulnerable. Officers can be recruited to provide stat bonuses and warships, when available, are worth their weight in steel, providing powerful and punishing offshore bombardments.
Administering such punishment is all well and good, but it can start to feel like bullying, because Panzer Tactics HD isn't always the brightest opponent and, even on the later and increasingly challenging campaigns, it isn't as aggressive as it should be. It doesn't chase down units it could finish off and, partly because it's so often the defender, it doesn't show much initiative in sallying forth. In one scenario, halfway through the German campaign, I had to capture and hold a town against British counterattacks. None ever came and my opponent simply sipped on his tea in the town nearby until my tanks came through the front door.
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