homepage Forums Land & Armor Combat Tactical Simulations - General So you're saying this game ain't worth getting?

For someone who eats WW2 armoured combat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have all kinds of technical books and pictorial editions of nothing but WW2 AFV combat and operations. Historical rarities, hard to find documents, fieldguides for crews, compilations of tank stories told from the men themselves, name it I got it.

However, with all that said, I also want the infantry to be able to play just as much a significant role in AFV combat as they would have in specialized areas such as dense woods and tough terrain. If the infantry are just tank fodder then I wouldn't want to play it.

So what's your unbiased verdict?

The games pros:-

Editors for maps & missions
Exceptionally moddable
Outstanding Graphics
Good realistic ballistics
Fantastic developer support

The games cons:-

Needs lots of RAM & best on high spec system
Stock missions are very hard (Too hard for most IMO)
MP in current version is unusable
Can't enter buildings
No smoke/star shells
No static AA Guns (ie Flak 36)

The above said there are already a number of mods adding content & user made missions. Also there is a patch that will fix MP & LOS/LOF issues due out in the near future. Also on map mortars, smoke & uban combat are in the works.

IMHO this game will eventually become the IL2 of WW2 RTS games

I liked it, enjoyed the 'challenge' of the missions, although some are quite gamey to win and I like playing peoples mods. I think the game is realistic but some peoples level of realism in a game, imo, is unrealistic and they were therefore disappointed. Everything gnasher posted I agree with, the game will get better as the mods are added and it should become a benchmark for future ww2 games.

I would say try the demo but it is not a good reflection of the game, so maybe buy it now or wait for the next patch release and see what people say after that.

A better demo would of been to release the full game but only the Polish campaign playable imo.

The game is mediocre at best, graphics aren't bad, but game play isn't up to the Combat Mission series battlefront originally put out, which IMHO is still the best tactical wargame out.

Dont listen to Chaz T2. He hates this game, & has made it his mission to trash it on every forum that will let him do so.

Chaz, why don't you upgrade your rig & give it another go mate, you're wrong in that your verdict is without foundation old bean. Have you tried installing the patches & mods? They make a difference you know.

Comparing CM to ToW to quote someone else is like comparing Chess to Paintball! An excellent anology IMHO!

I have a AMD 64 3300+ rig with 2 gig of ram and a ATI radeon XL1600pro video card with 512 memory, more then a enough for this clunker to run on. I have done the upgrades and still find the game a mess, dysfunctional multiplayer, inane AI, etc. etc. etc.!

As far as comparisons go, it is more like CM is Chess, and TOW, is tic-tac-toe!

Well I went ahead and got the game after trying the demo. For someone so into WW2 AFV combat, this is a nice game. Certainly has its problems, but I've had some good fun with it. Probably the best experience is selecting a tank and then hitting Enter to go down into the 1st person view. Then slowly moving forward into the front line issuing commands just as a tank commander would do. So far that experience is tremendous.

It does need some patching just the things I've noticed already. The biggie in my book is the unit organization. Very hard to keep a track of all your units. Lots of annoying things that should have been in a final release game. It's a beta no doubt. But I wanna support Battlefront and if supported well, it will be a keeper.

Being on the fence after the demo I got the german retail version last week.
The more time I give it the better I like it.

You have to modify your style of gaming though as the infantry are not as thoroughly developed as they were for instance in the old Close Combat or CM games. Here I find myself having to attend to single characters sometimes instead of just issuing section commands. Missing an ambush and facing order like in CC5. You often have to come back and check units behaviour, too.

As TerribleTwo wrote you can hardly lead from a higher view but have to adapt first person view (lead from the front) or go sliding over the ground with the camera to check for a fold which might provide cover.

I also think that for bigger engagements the role play element for the troops is wasted. You are supposed to get your good men through alive but you hardly can for more than 2 missions. These, by the way of their experience gains make quite a difference if they survive.

I agree to what Gnasher wrote. The vehicle engine seems very sophisticated and with some other elements improved by the company and with mods this "could" become a much better and more widespread game.

What I dislike however are many of the default missions and I hope for more realism and less gamishness in the future.

well the missions on this game are too hard any way i am weaitng for the patch to continue playing it it looks promising

here is my verdict...it sucks.

The things that bug me about this game is (a) infantry cannot fend for themselves nearly as well as they can in games like CMSF or the old CC; (b) mission design is atrocious, requiring absolute victory as the only option, forcing you to repeat battles ad infinitum until you discover the magic combination, putting you on ridiculous tactical sitations (trying to assault a position when outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1), and trying to compensate for the AI by throwing hordes and hordes of units at you. The whole Close Combat idea of fighting multiple battles over a map, or withdrawing from a tactically untenable sitation to create a new defensive line are absent. You either hold the objectives the mission designer gives you for as long as he wants you to, or you lose (and have to repeat the mission).

CM had a very good format, unfortunately games have strayed from that table-top esque gamestyle, and it really bugs the hell out of me when the replay value on PBEM/Turn based style had more bearing for such a great theatre of war.

In TOW, the RTS feeling is great, but it lacks so much, the immersion is not there and the gameplay is limited, especially when the infantry is unresponsive/stupid. The tanks are bullet sponges and the artillery pieces are just plain frustrating.

The best thing about CM is it's suitability to play out an entire MP war. The random map generator is the genius that allows that.

Unfortunately there are no longer enough enthusiastic players left playing the game.

Concerning the immersion - some people like to play TOW in a different (compared to other games) manner: they constantly fly around the battlefield, looking at the fighting at point-blank range, pausing when needed. I think it's way more immersive than just looking at the fighting from 100-250 meters high. Were else you could see your tank fire from top of the turret and then see exact impact on enemy armor from close range? Btw, what do you mean by calling artillery frustrating?

Artillery pisses me off when my guys are pegged and do nothing about it, or keep running toward it..

So why aren't you giving hold position / go prone orders when hostile arty is incoming?

I've been playing 4-5 nights a week since release & haven't seen anything like this since I 1st started & learned how to play the game properly.

I guess because alot of us are used/expect tactical wargames along the lines of Close Combat, where troops more or less know enough to take cover from enemy fire without having to be told each time. Troops should have at the very least a self-preservation AI, which its seems the developers of ToW completely ignored. It is not realistic to have to micromanage each soldiers' or squads' exact movement and reaction to each threat, and it certainly is not fun.

This is why it's worth getting

And check this out MAP