Aggression: Europe Under Fire

There seems to be a lot of hate for this game, and even though I can understand how the game falls short of certain expectations, I still love it and I remember it dearly even from the days of my childhood when I didn't quite seem to understand the mechanics. Aggression: Europe Under Fire (or Reign Over Europe, as some may know it from before) puts you in control of one of 4 major European powers (Britain, France, Germany or Russia) and lets you manage the development of your cities (with their economy, buildings and population), your armies, diplomatic relations (on a primitive level when compared to modern games) and members of your government who appear as moveable characters on the map. The management of your characters, who have a sphere of influence based on their level, is probably a mechanic that impacts the course of the game the most. The types of characters are the following: the Leader - to rule the country, the General - to lead your armies, the Spy - for espionage and counter-espionage, the Minister - to manage the economy and boost the industry gain, the Humanitarian - as a propagandist and a political activist, and the Scientist - to boost the "science" gain and aid research. They all have their own active abilities and passive effects. There's also research tree featuring different eras and technological advancements with their respective bonuses. The game features important historical events, as well as random events. The random events tend to get repetitive at one point, and some of them are indeed annoying as some of the reviewers say, such as the rebellious armies which appear even if your population is perfectly content and politically aligned with the system in power. Another example is the random event in which a rebellious/anarchist army takes control of a neutral country, and if you don't make a military intervention and retake the country for the neutrals, thus restoring the status-quo, you're penalized (or rewarded if you restore order to the country). Speaking of neutrals, another frustrating mechanic occurs when you're fighting a war against a non-neutral faction and all of a sudden a "neutral" country (the United States presumably) intervenes because they've randomly decided that you've been diplomatically naughty so they just make naval invasion of one of your coastal cities. If you lose the province in battle, the province becomes "neutral", thus hurting your diplomatic status severely if you decide to take it back with force, and since the game is situated in Europe and Northern Africa, you can't really bring the fight back to the "neutrals". Regarding the combat itself, there are 2 choices: let the computer fight on its own (I don't really recommend this unless you've got the enemy greatly outnumbered), or take control of your army personally in an RTS battle. The battles can be frustrating because the audio can become broken once you accelerate the battle and because the pathfinding is horrendous - similarly to the Blitzkrieg franchise. The battles are still relatively easy to win once you figure out the mechanics - simply use armoured units and kite the enemy infantry that keeps rushing you while trying to get you with their grenades. When it comes to occupying enemy provinces, the game is primitive and doesn't really allow you to do anything aside from automatical annexation of the occupied lands (perhaps you could grant a province independance if the game decides to offer this as a random event), and in order to win the game, you essentially have to take control of the entire world map. Regarding the bugs outside of the battle, the zoom level on the map can get stuck for no reason. Crashes also happen, so make sure that you save or set the autosaves to occur more frequently. As you can see, the game definitely needs some polishing, but the main mechanics of the game still feel rewarding and can keep you playing. Overall, Aggression: Europe Under Fire excells in its simplicity - it can feel very rewarding which gives you just enough of a push for you to continue playing it, and it doesn't have a steep learning curve such as some games in the genre (Hearts of Iron for example). Then again, the lack of complexity and content also comes at a price once you've mastered the game and its mechanics, with the bugs making the game feel unfinished at times. Note: I've played the non-steam release, so my playtime is a lot longer.