Recent reviews by Jean

Extremely disappointing. Every single issue that the main game had, multiplied by a hundred.
You could have spent longer on testing, or you could have reached out to people in the community to help you test it.

You could have asked the AOM team for help, I would have done it for free.

I hope the experiences with GT:TCW helps you in your next project, I still love your ambition and admire your hard-work. But sometimes you have to LIMIT yourself and work on what is already there, rather than add more into the pot. Feature creep is real.

Good luck in the future, GEC and Oliver. You are all amazing and really passionate people, but asking people to pay 22€ for this? Come on.

Not looking good so far.

I plan on revising this review in the coming year, my original was written while the game was still in EA.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I felt I had to write something about this, because I see people not really providing a full picture.

Lemme start off by saying that I love the idea, and for the work of just a few people it's amazing.
The handmade maps are breathtaking, honestly.

I think the problem people don't want to recognize is that, yeah, it is in early access. But have you seen how long they want to stay in Early Access for? This game feels like it needs at least a year but they plan on releasing this thing at the end of the year. You tell me if you think that is realistic after having played it yourself. Do you really think the AI will be better by that point?

That opens the question of skepticism, there are so many EA devs that abandon games after "completing" them. Taking the money and running. This is why people are on edge and skeptical, I think it's important to acknowledge this.

So how do we assure ourselves?

Well, go back and look at the dev's previous games and see if the same problems were true there.
Look, a dev is not obligated to continuously update a game to complete satisfaction. But If I was a dev and working on a game, I would at least want it to be something I'd be proud of or satisfied by, especially being such a small team.

So go back and look at their earlier games. And then tell me honestly if I should remain skeptical or not.

I think all I wanted to say in the review is; the game has great potential, just like any EA game. But there are so many red flags that you can not fault people for questioning the devs. No one is immune to criticism, no matter how small a dev team you are, you're still asking for money for a product.

Still, I'm curious to see where the game goes and if my skepticism was wrong, I'll come back to change the review.

2nd EDIT:
So, it appears the devs might be taking extra time to delay the release and to remain in EA a bit longer which is a great sign and decision. Seeing as they didn't release the game at the end of the year as they were planning on doing.

So who knows, I'll keep updating the review as only time will tell.

3rd EDIT:
Okay, so having had the time to test the new patches and updates, and..
Having played both sides for 1 year of in-game time I've decided to revise my review.

A lot of the bugs definitely have been squashed and finally the save-game feature has been added.

Not only that but, the combat AI has improved quite a bit. There are still definitely some pathfinding problems but I have to say I am impressed.

Now, the biggest issue of the whole game still?

The campaign AI. I've tried all the difficulties from Mediocre to Very Hard and they're both lackluster. Where to begin?

The AI never fields enough cavalry and I'm guessing it auto-upgrades to the best available equipment by default which.. is another problem entirely.

The AI is always way too aggressive and does not understand the new readiness mechanic. It keeps charging armies at me, wave after wave but just in the span of a month. They don't try and regain readiness or morale, they just keep trying and trying and.. yeah.

The readiness mechanic still needs to be balanced and made so that the AI grasps it.

Other than that?

I really wish the game kept the ability to raise militia units at a lower manpower requirement, so I could place small garrisons inside of forts.

Currently, the minimum is set at 1500 men but I feel like it could be reduced even more.
I wish certain generals like Maxcy Gregg wouldn't refuse brigade command, or what I mean is that he isn't eligible for anything except Division command and higher and this goes for many more generals, not just the one mentioned.

It's a small nit-pick but I still feel like it needs to be brought up.

The game is getting to a good point in the dev cycle, if there's something that needs to be addressed though, it is to make the campaign AI aware of time.

Avoid battling in the winter, understand to launch campaigns and not a continual attack, understand to recover losses and readiness, maybe an Historical AI that tries to push for historically plausible moves (where to attack and when, what generals to pick for each theatre etc), understand that as the Union you can focus on all fronts at the same time where as the Confederates that is more of the opposite.

When the game gets released, I will give it a final revision, but currently I can still not recommend a purchase.

I have to hand it to the developer though, they are definitely getting there!

Take Two Interactive and Rockstar are negotiating, OpenIV will be back.
Thank you Rockstar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thh9SyDE_QU

Anti-consumer ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[DISCLAIMER: The following review was last updated in 2015, the gameplay may have changed since then.]

Do I recommend this game? As it looks now, no. Unless you want to support the developers, which may or may not help them fix the issues I've encountered below. Don't count on it.

This is going to be my first serious review ever made, because it is needed.

First off, let me explain my experience with the Men of War franchise.
I was an ex-modder for Men of War, Men of War Vietnam and Men of War Assault Squad as well as the head of the Men of War Fanclub on moddb.com You may know me as craftan99. This is important to note so that you will know how much knowledge I have of how the game engine works and how it's assets is used. I have safely over 1000+ hours on Men of War offline back when It was a retail version. Now, on to the game.

The developers of this game, "The Great War Team", have claimed that the single player is finished. However, this is not the case. There are several localization issues where items and weapons miss names. The writing of the dialogues are awful and usually the voice acting and subtitles don't match to what they're saying and some dialogue is recorded with a very poor microphone. Also, little is explained as how to accomplish certain objectives without much direction as to what is required to do certain objectives. Some times you need certain items and it's a pain if you've somehow don't have that item because you dropped it somewhere. The game is also very lacking in Sound Assets, or maybe lacking isn't the word to use. I'd say that it has poor quality. Some guns sound very off when it comes to some kind of noise feedback that is in the background. Horses galopping is also a great example at terrible sound. This series is known to have bad voice acting as Men of War's developers had the same issue. However, I don't know if "The Great War Team" was even responsible for the voice acting or if they asked for support from the main developers of the franchise. In any case, it needs to be redone completely. There are tons of people who would volounteer without payment. Websites like behindthevoiceactors.com let's people try out for voice roles. Why they didn't do this, beats me.

The mission designs aren't the best either, they aren't very consistent and stealth is usually a hard task, but it is possible. However, stealth missions are rather tedious. Speaking of difficulty and missions, I always found the defense missions in the French and Russian campaigns to be extremely easy to complete. I think it's because the waves of enemies where so small that they were easily fended off.

When it comes to balancing, the artillery reload speed need to be longer and the infantry sprint endurance bar needs to be longer. Either that or faster recharges on the bar. Artillery HE rounds could also use some balancing to maybe lower the AoE just a bit, I always found the artillery redicioulously overpowered. Even with realism, balancing is needed to make the experience more fun and engaging. Artillery spam is hardly fun. Tanks are perfectly balanced in my opinion and I don't see much needed in the ways of improving that.

This wasn't much of a review as it is explaining what this game needs to fix. Even if this is in Early Access, these are things that have been overlooked and should be completely redone.

Basically:
* The Campaign is not finished, even if the developers claim it is.
* Awful writing.
* Awfully easy defense missions where the waves are too small.
* Poor sound assets with bad voiceacting.
* Some icons have bad artwork.
* Localization issues.
* Tedious Stealth Missions.
* Balancing Issues.

Suggestions:
* Add realistic color to the mustard gas, yellow.
* Add more types of gas and apply equally realistic color. (White Cross, Green Cross and Blue Cross.)
* Add more unit types to Multiplayer. (Bavarian Infantry, French Chasseurs, Canadian Royal Rifles, White Russian Guard)
* Add Cavalry and the ability to attack with horses.
* Add better and fresher animations for the infantry.



All in all, I've enjoyed the hell out of the game, but I would enjoy it even more if these issues were fixed. I would be so happy if it was.

Thank you for your time.

Time to review bomb, bois