A bit disappointed in what was a 'no brainer' purchase for me based on hype

[Steevodeevo]

It is no longer a must buy for me, sad to say. It may be a bit of a janky early version demo, but I sadly can;t see what they can do with it. My issues -

- The graphics are poor. As others have said, the units are blurry, some to the extent that it's hard to make out what static units you are looking at without selecting the hex.
- Charging Infantry looks a mess of pixels and sprites not like infantry. It looks like a zerg swarm from my old Amiga 500 days.
- Armoured unit models are very poor, there are free or low cost 3-d models of ww1 and ww2 tanks that can be purchased on the net by Indie Devs that look better than these.

Graphics don't make a game, but that said ...

- The map scale & gaming model:

I believe what we see is the entire map given it is a western front game* and the map extends from Calais to Colmar. The hexes / regions and game-play style strongly indicate this is going to be a fairly repetitive 'plate spinning' game with little variety.
The game-play seems pretty static requiring the player to jump around the front line defending friendly 1 star hexes and attacking the enemies' 1 stars. I do appreciate this is a WW1 game and Petroglyph are brave to take this war on as an RTS game, but the lack of a dynamic and flexible front-line and play options doesn't add a lot to variety and so limits the fun factor.

The game seems also poorly optimised. I have a new pretty good PC and loading times, for this moderate graphics and scale game seem very lengthy. Animations are also pretty non fluid. I'm sure this can be fixed prior to release, lets hope so.

WW1 is tricky to model as a game. It seems to work best at an Operational level or even a 4x game where you can manage politics, research, resources, finances etc as well as the combat. As an RTS this seems a decent effort, but for me, with what I have seen so far it doesn't really work. The grainy graphics don't help as the game does not look aesthetically pleasing.

* I do wonder, given its title, whether this is a tentative launch to see if there is a market for a WW1 RTS, as it must have been considered risky in terms of potential market. If it is a success I wonder if there will be expansions to the east front, Anatolia, the Atlantic that allow for enhanced R&D, Policies and Economy management. If that were the case then it starts to make a bit of sense, but to my knowledge the future of the franchise hasn't mentioned this, and what we have is what we get.

[Turtler]

My response is not quite as strong as yours but I largely agree. In particular I feel that the game relies too much on the "Star System" and particularly the need to have Great Victories in order to reduce them. I'd prefer a more dynamic system, likely where you can knock off fractions of a star for victories that are less phenomenal but still there.

And maybe transfer a defensive battle into an offensive one by crushing the attackers, counterattacking, and conquering the enemy's position and headquarters trench.

[proteus124]

I have to agree, I see nothing apart from swarm infantry again and again. I would have thought the player could of zoomed out to see the entire battle field seeing as they are relatively small.
Big thank you for releasing a demo, even though it has convinced me not to purchase.

[Pestilence]

I agree with this.

I think the core mechanics work wonderfully, but the aesthetics and graphics leave a lot to be desired.

Too bad, and that from former greats of the C&C Universe...


For max 25€ it wouldve been a "no brainer", but 35€???

[Barlok]

I agree with everything mentioned so far. The game has potential but for now it feels a bit disappointing and not quite there yet. I will hold off with buying for now and see how things develop after launch.

Regarding the long loading times, I do wonder if it could be related to Denuvo. In my experience games that use it have long loading times (but this could also be pure coincidence). Has anyone else made these experiences?

[VonScheer]

Aesthetically game is on the nice level. Graphics - yeah, a blurry mess, can't understand why however.

Would not judge a campaign based on demo, because it depicts certain mechanics and it's late stage of the war. "Lack of dynamic and flexible frontlines" is a minus for game about Great War? Really? I like mechanic of stars, but would definitely change stars for shields or something more representative.

[Stromko]

All this (I've been thinking the graphics look horrendous since I was first seeing screenshots in a gaming magazine, but I can overlook this if the game is good), but also I was disappointed that I couldn't queue movement orders. By default my units seem to take some dumb routes a lot of the time.

I'd like to be able to guide them so they go through an area -without- barbed wire and then attack the trench I want them to, for instance, but instead I have to watch and micromanage them if I want them to do that since queuing isn't a thing.

Positioning and approach matters a lot but not being able to set waypoints restricts your reasonable ability to do this while also managing anywhere else on the battlefield.

[Chubzdoomer]

I feel exactly the same way. Terrible graphics, poor performance, and painfully clunky/mediocre RTS gameplay have killed every ounce of excitement I once had for this game. It'll be a safe pass for me. I will say, though, that I'm at least thankful they gave us a chance to play the demo and save some money.

[Grizz_FMJ]

Yeah my hype went down quite a bit. Performance is awful. Visuals are blurry. The Great Victory star thing. Though I get the reasoning, is going to get repetitive. If they optimize it and fix performance I'll probably go for it. Otherwise. . Juice ain't worth the squeeze!

[Noblesse Oblige [KG] ⳩]

I suspect the tank graphics are done with the soldier animation (seems to be 2d sprites?) tools and thus they don't look like 3D models.

[choglit]

Think i agree aswell .... something fills off with this game.