I would most certainly hope you would buy this game during the sale, or even when it's not on sale(it's a quite small price).

Pros:

*GREAT learning experience, easy to get into, very user friendly.
*Easy moving system, nice controls.
*Easy economy system.
*Easy region control and production control.
*Not all full of reports and pop up's about battles and the economy like in Hearts of Iron III or similar games.
*Cheap and fun.
*Never really gets boring. Has different campaign starts incase you don't want to spend a lot of time playing.
- First campaign starts from 1936 and is mostly economic based up until 1939 when the war starts and then ends in 1945. It also involves a lot about the Spanish Civil War and lets you ask, or change/repeat history, whether Republican Spain would win or if Nationalist Spain wins and whether Nationalist Spain joins the Axis beyond political support or if Republican Spain joins the Allies, or vice versa.
- Second campaign starts shortly before the war, in 1938, showing the rise of Germany and their moves in Czechoslovakia and the Rhineland. Ends in 1945.
- Third campaign starts at the brink of the war, 1939, with the invasion of Poland and sorrounding countries. Ends in 1945.
- Fourth campaign starts in 1941 with the entry of America into the war after Pearl Harbor. Ends in 1945. Also involves the invasion of the Soviet Union(Eastern Front). Ends in 1945. Also has the battle in Africa.
- Last campaign starts in 1944 and involves the invasion of France by the hands America, Britian and Canada(Operation Overlord/D-Day). Also involves the final stages of the Pacific War and the end of the war. Ends in 1945.
*Has other historically correct events(unless you are the country that would've caused that event, in that case it is your choice if you follow history), such as the civil war in China with Communist China and Nationalist China, economic problems in America, Japan's crazy expansion, etc.
*Easy way to make your own scenarios.
*Lets you do what you always wondered and see what happens. Play as Germany and avoid a war with the Soviet's and see if you can conquer all of non-Soviet Europe. See what happens as Japan if you had not declared war on America. See what happens if, as the Soviet's, you make a move against Germany first. SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
*Area that was formally Allied is given back to the former country when conquered by an Allied army. Ie. Normandy is given back to France after America wins the battle in Normandy.
*Countries are never defeated until the whole alliance is destroyed.
*Turn based instead of real time(might be a con for some, but it makes it easier for planning purposes and reviewing mistakes quickly.)
*Almost no lag.
*Great mod support/custom scenario sharing support.

Cons:
*Area that is occupied is given to the country that fought first, not the country that contributed to the battle the most.
*Hard to recover from major losses in an area.
*No way to have production to reinforce in areas that you conquered back for a country you are Allied. Ie. America can't build stuff in a French factory in a region that they conquered for France.

A very fun game!

8/10 for strategy.
9/10 for fun.
10/10 for length.
7/10 for occupation system/conquering system.

Overall: 8.5/10
Category:
Five star+ game!
Great game
Decent game
Buy on a sale
Not that bad
Pretty bad
Horrible, do not buy!

When I first bought the game for 75 cents, I didn't think this was a strategy type of game. Traditionally with World War II games, I picked Germany as who I want to play as. Instead of being evil, I heightened my reputation with neighboring countries, gave aid to countries in need, and was just being plain friendly. Then I realized that in order to make best friends with other countries, I needed their same government. Since I was trying to be buddies with France, I decided to go for Democracy. The only way I could think of changing my government was to declare war on them and immediately ask for peace by changing government forum.

This was a DISASTER. France chose to decline in a millisecond. Instead of the Nazis blitzkrieging the French, the French blitzkrieged ME. After losing, I was liberated into a COMMUNIST country from the USSR who recently took Poland due to greed. I fell out of my chair laughing now since I had the support of the communists from the East, and the Italians from the South. France fell in 3 turns after I was liberated. Eventually I grew strong enough to fight back the Soviets all the way to Leningrad just like real World War 2, until they demolished me with aircraft.

The Americans were coming from the West while this happened. I had an amazing defense on the boarder of Germany and France, and when the Allies saw this, the United States of America declared war on the Allies. I was crying by this point. America has ruined the plan for all the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany, and I retook annexed France under my wing.

While Americans were fighting British men in Normandy (where the American men were suppose to fight the Nazis), I was marching into Moscow with my swastika flag. Eventually I took over Italy, and the rest of my European allies. I must say; America avoided the Cold war by reenacting the Revolutionary war of 1775-1783 in 1945.

10/10 will play as America next time to create World War III = The United States of America against The United Kingdom against The USSR.

I find that I usually only write reviews when I don't like a game, but I'm going to force myself to write one for this game, because I feel its one of the best games I've played in this genre.

Firstly, the graphics are attractive and detailed, which I find a plus for a war game. The unit organization is easy to get the hang of, dividing, combining, and renaming armies are quite intuitive. Supply levels are limited to one type, Arms, which helps you focus strategically instead of trying to micromanage many different kinds of supplies for your armies.

Trading is as complicated as you want it to be. You can just put in trade requests, or you can micromanage the trades as more resources come into the market. However, trades will be handed off to other parties automatically, which is a benefit if you don't want to pay particular attention to trading. Although if you don't watch it, you'll find yourself trading with a nation you didn't want to, because they took over some of your 'contracts' so to speak.

Improving your infrastructure is easy and involves upgrading your roads, agricultural improvements, and reducing or expanding your mine output. It keeps it out of your way, and you get easy updates on progress. This is the same as choosing production, it's easy, and there aren't so many options you can get lost.

All of this is a boon to you, because it makes it easier to focus on your strategy and tactics, which to be fair aren't incredibly in depth, but enough that you can benefits for cutting off enemy army supplies (combat penalties), and you can blitz behind combat to disrupt enemy production. Air units can be assigned to support a battle, or you can target reinforcements, producing cities, attack enemy fleets, provide air cover, they are a help but not overbalanced. Combat is a bit abstract with the computer AI sometimes splitting up a huge number of units into small groups, it can be hard to maintain a cohesive front, but generally they will try to overcome your largest troop concentration by refocusing their units, so it isn't uncontrollable.

Historically the game tries to be accurate, with some events coded into the game, but you can have an immense impact on outcomes, even if you play a smaller nation. I've had crazy match-ups where Japan allies with America to fight the German and Soviet menace. You can stall the Nazi menace, or you can join it and help out, you can preempt the entire war and launch an unprovoked attack on the Germans with America, or try flip the world on its head by trying to become an Argentinian Axis super power. The depth and fluidity of the diplomacy system is also simple, perhaps more simple than it should be, but it works well with the rest of the mechanics.

In short, the game is unbeatable at this price, and even if it cost more it's literally pennies per hour of play, and if you get bored of the included scenarios there are a vast amount of user created ones to choose from. Did I mention the game includes a map/scenario editor? It does, and if you wanted to create the Drakon world of S.M. Stirling, go ahead.

When I first got the game for $1.24 on sale, I was shocked at how good the game actually is.

For starters, the in game tutorial is relatively good. It teaches the core and advanced concepts of the game, without being too confusing or too long.

You can play as any nation in the world, and lead your nation towards world domination, without being forced to play the game historically. The AI also doesn't completely act historical either. In one game, the UK declared war on Russia, when Russia invaded Poland.

The game doesn't end at a specific time, while it does say that it has a set amount of max turns, you can continue on and play indefinitely.

The map is easy to navigate, the economy of the game is easy to understand, there are overview windows that display everything your cities and mines are producing so you don’t have to hunt them down individually, and there is an easy to understand tech tree that even my nephew could operate efficiently. In fact, I often play this game with my young nephew and he is able to fully comprehend and play the game (which is a true testament as to how easy to understand the basic concepts are and the controls of the game are.)

However, the game is not that easy to win. The AI will take full advantage of its navy, air force, and land armies to efficiently defend themselves, flank your armies, invade your homeland when you lest expect it, and even nuke you if you're not too careful.

Another plus, is that the multiplayer in this game doesn’t have lag or syncing issues.

The game also runs well on older computers as well, I got it to run rather well on an old 2003 XP laptop of mine.

The game also comes with an scenario editor which is easy to use and adds lots of replay value.

In essence, this game is somewhat similar to the Hearts of Iron games, except that it’s more simplistic and turn-based.

In all, I would highly recommend this game to anyone seeking a sandbox turn-based WW2 strategy game. The game's low price is also a nice plus. However, if you are looking for an extremely in depth realistic game of WW2, I would suggest looking elsewhere.

I was initially excited by this game, but cannot recommend it as it is seriously flawed.

The main issue is that the economy of the game is completely screwed. Your citizens demand "goods" and your armies demand "arms", but you'll find it impossible to meet your nation's needs in these areas and while you can earn cash from exporting food, coal, and oil, I've never actually see any country export either arms, or goods, which means that international trade is largely pointless.

Cash in this game is useless. While you are penalised for running a deficit, you gain no benefit from running a surplus and all that additional money is useless, because you can't use it to buy the things that you need, namely arms and goods. As the US, I had over 20 billion dollars in cash and literally nothing to spend it on, because nobody on the whole damned planet was selling what I needed. While you can research new technologies, you need to devote city production to this, which means that you are once more behind with your production of arms and goods. There also seems to be no way to share technology between countries, so each country is left having to reinvent the wheel.

Alliances are useless, as you can't actually co-ordinate your attacks between nations. Forget D-Day landings, where the US, Canada, UK and other countries invade. You'll invade, while the other countries will sit around watching your forces either win, or die.

The tactical aspects of this game are bland. As the US, I simply pooled all of my ships into one fleet and sailed right into Japanese waters. After destroying the Japanese fleet that were deployed in a piecemeal fashion, I simply landed my armies on the Japanese mainland, thereby bypassing the "island hopping" campaign of the US historically used to gradually claw their way within range of the Japanese home islands.

Also, given that aircraft carriers can see into adjacent squares and detect all ships there, forget the idea of the Japanese launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour.

Finally, the manual is awful, the in game tips are pointless and there are almost no online guides, which is both disappointing and surprising, given how old this game is. By way of example, it took me ages to figure out how to repair damaged ships. This is done by putting them into port and changing the city production to repairing ships, but the in game tooltip just says that the ships need to be put into port.

While this game pretends to mimic aspects of WWII, it fails on far too many levels to be an enjoyable experience.

This game could help give people a better understanding of just how fragile the eco system of war is, giving them a sense of realism that is not found in most other strategy games. Unfortunately it's that same level of realism that might make this game unplayable for other gamers.

ENG:

The game is currently the best in my opinion, but also realistic version of turn-based strategy game, with involvement of the egologia, as well as the state economy. The game also will be able to play in their own State, and the impact on the game completely all potential economic and course of the war. Most similar games such as Civilization game or beyon Earth game, so this also includes similar elements such as industry or army updating with the difference that they have been implemented in this game better. How so?

Above all, I personally very much appreciate the simplicity but, versatility, and it is in this well executed, as opposed to a series of civilization, and that's why I like the game, even better than more of the same game. That's why I like this game!

Includes also quite functional map editor. I highly recommend, especially if you like to play with friends. Forced purchase startegia games lovers, referral! 3

(See also the newer version of the game)


FIN:

Kyseinen peli on mielestäni tällä hetkellä paras mutta, myös realistinen versio vuoropohjaisesta strategia pelistä, jossa on mukana myös egologia sekä valtiotalouden kehittämisestä. Pelissä pystyy pelaamaan myös omalla valtiolla ja vaikuttaa pelissä täysin kaikkeen mahdolliseen talous ja sodan kulkuun. Useimmat vastaavat pelit kuten Sivilisaatio peli tai Beyon Earth peli niin, tämä sisältää myös vastaavia elementtejä kuten teollisuuden tai armejan päivittämistä sillä erotuksella että, ne on toteutettu tässä pelissä paremmin. Kuinka niin?

Ennen kaikkea minä itse arvostan hyvinpaljon yksinkertaisuutta mutta, monipuolisuutta ja se on tässä toteutettu hyvin, toisinkuin siviilisaatio sarjassa ja siksi pidän peliä, jopa parempana kuin useampi vastaava peli. Siksi pidän tästä pelistä!

Sisältää myös varsin toimivan karttaeditorin. Suosittelen eritoten jos tykkää pelata kaverien kanssa. Pakko hankinta startegia pelien ystäville, suositteluni! :3

(Katso myös uudempi versio pelistä)

After i managed to get Croatia it's independence i decided to randomly start war against it, because i got bored after i gave entire Russia and Europe to it.(Yes, Croatia had control over Russia and Europe, Croatia stronk)

So, Croatia firstly made an alliance with Brazil, because there is no more random country when it comes to war against Croatia and Germany. The allied with Poland, i was amused.

Then Croatia formed the "Fascist state of Albania". I died laughing.

This game has nothing to do with WWII. Here you do whatever the hell you want.

Croatia stronk, hail Fascist Albania 10/10

I bought the game. I played it for 2 hours. I tried to play it another day and they told me I don't have a valid key. Told me to reinstall the game. I did. Still no valid key. No key settings like games that do require keys.

This is quite literally unplayable.

Edit: Turns out this is a bug =D this game has a bug that makes you think the game was stolen from you. And the fix is to delete a key in your windows registry. Wtf? This game is 14 years old and instead of fixing such a glaring bug they chose to make a GOLD edition that costs more (and probably fixes the bug too). Shame on these developers.

Awesome game if you like fighting in the WW2 era. Its not overly complicated, yet its very competitive for you and your friends. Definately my current favorite strategy game of all time. If you like Risk and/or Axis and Allies you would like this. Always looking for more people who enjoy the game to play with.