The Great War: Western Front™

Developers just abandoned it. Cash grab game with potential

乃木希典模拟器

Worth it on deep sale, but otherwise pass. The game has no replayability, is unbalanced and honestly needed more time in the oven or at least SOME post-launch support (which it never received).

WW1 is a hard game to make a RTS out of. Once you get past the mobile warfare of the opening phases of the war and enter the trench warfare parts, its hard to make it interesting to a player. Hours, Days, etc worth of shelling and men running across no mans land in desperate bids can only provide so much game content. I want to recommend this game, because in my opinion its what a better attempt at a WW1 RTS would look like. However that recommendation comes with a warning. Just like WW1, this game is grind. you will be fighting over the same spots of ground over and over again to get a specific victory condition to take ground. Unfortunately the AI is a pretty stupid and higher levels just give it more resources and the such. It has made some interesting plays in my campaign game, but the tactical battles are... meh. I enjoy them, but i have a weird thing for these kind of games and far to much time on my hands. Things will only get slower as you move deeper into the campaign as well, as both sides will unlock better trenches, artillery, and defenses. making assualts harder. Atleast until you get tanks. The AI struggles to stop tanks if it dosent place the right units by chance during battle prep. The persistent maps can be neat. Seeing more and more trenches build up on both sides is interesting at times and noting tech increases by the apperance of improved trenches, wire and etc can be neat to see. But it suffers from a lack of map diversity (which to be fair. you are fighting over the same few hexs ALOT. so i doubt the devs saw much reason to expand the offerings). I wish more things were persistent, such as large shelling areas, or areas where alot of men died in a assualt. Is it historically accurate. I am not a history teacher or anything, but in my humble opinion it gets as close as you can get in this style of game trying emulate WW1. Can the player rush tanks and be sending hordes of Wippets and the such in like late 1914? Ya. Is that accurate? No. But its probably the best you would get without forcing players to wait behind annoying date unlocks. Overall i want to say this game is good and it can be from time to time. but it needs a certain type of player that either REALLY wants to play out their own WW1 campaign or finds the games mechanics oddly satisfying. If you arent in either boat. I personally wouldnt get this game. Its more proof as to why WW1 is not a RTS war, and more of a grand strategy war.

The game is too buggy to be enjoyable and seems abandoned

The devs have abandoned this game, which is a shame because it has the foundation for something great. Still, I can't honestly say anyone should buy this, go find something else.

The Great War is a wonderful RTS with surprisingly deep involvement and mechanics you don't see at first. First off, this isn't your typical RTS. The game is grueling at times. you often fight through one trench line of a map just to find yourself at a stand still again. You throw your troops into certain death just to gain a bit of intel. You spend 5-10 minutes simply shelling the enemy with artillery before even moving a single unit. You dump time and effort into taking not a map, but one little section of the map from your opponent. And all at the end of every battle there is often not a victory or defeat, but rather a stalemate. A strange disconnect between what a video game is supposed to do for you, and what the great war actually was. It won't be for everyone, I say this with relatively certainty. But there are people out there, like me, that will thoroughly enjoy this game. That being said, the game is not without it's flaws. There are annoying mechanical quirks and systems here and there that can often cut into enjoyment of the game, as well as general RTS quality of life things that would have been really nice to see. Examples for improvement- - Splitting troops into selectable divisions (like total war) was sorely missed here. - Having hotkeys for artillery rather than having to click each one, then click the shoot ability (Which you do A LOT). - If a unit can't fit in a trench, they should just go to the nearest one automatically, instead of just standing there to die. - A simple total troop count window in the metamap would be nice, so I don't have to sit there and count each troop up on both sides each time I'm shuffling troops around the board. - There's a weird thing with click and drag to direction face going on, that basically negates your input if you end it over any troop, even your own. That's rather annoying. - The animation for firing range only shows on the side the trench is facing, even though I found out very quickly that troops can fire from both sides. Kinda odd. - The unit animations for running into trenches often feels weird and quirky, like the troops who are ahead have to back up into their squad, even if the squad is getting pelted with rounds. And a few other things I won't mention now. But even so, The Great War is one of the better (And more interestingly designed) RTS games on the market, despite it's quirks. And it's really got something going for it. I would love to see something in an elsewhere fictional trench warfare world in this design, not slightly held back by historical accuracy, with multiple factions in a domination type of game play. Especially if it were a "trench-punk futurism" type of game. With more polish, and maybe a few extra features, the game has the bones and muscles of something amazing, slightly held back by the tattered skin it wears. Even if not that, a modern Great War 2 with a deep narrative, individual axis and allies army composure (rather than combining them into one), longer map structures rather than square, city siege maps, 2 player Co-op campaign maybe(?), and a more defined metamap structure would definitely hit my steam cart in a heartbeat. It's been a long time since I've really enjoyed an RTS like this, and I'm ready to just back in and start a new campaign immediately.