The hardcore World War II RTS takes a step backwards.
We often joke about how much this industry relies on the Second World War. Without it, most developers and publishers would be at a complete loss as to what settings to use in their games. But it's not that we're tired of World War II; what we're really sick of are the played out concepts that often accompany it. That's definitely the case with Nival's newest stand-alone expansion pack Blitzkrieg II: Fall of the Reich. Though the game still has some high points, it offers less variety than we saw in the original game and ramps up the difficulty so high that not even its mother can love it.
The game includes two new campaigns set during the latter days of the War, one for the Germans and one for the Russians. Over the course of sixteen missions, you'll fight back and forth across the cities and countryside of Eastern Europe. While the seasonal variations here are nice, the maps and units quickly get monotonous, which is a real shame given the loads of variety we saw in the original Blitzkrieg II. As before, the campaign allows players some flexibility in terms of the order of missions but you'll wind up playing them all anyway just to maximize your promotions and reinforcements for the main battle the ends each campaign.
With few exceptions, the missions here are designed to play out the same way. Your initial force takes on stronger and stronger positions before finally making the all-out attack on the main enemy force. You'll occasionally find yourself playing the defender in this scenario and there are a handful of stealth or escort elements in some of the missions but, for the most part, you're tasked with capturing heavily defended locations. Go in, get killed, call for reinforcements, repeat as needed. There are some optional secret objectives in some of the missions, but the rest of the mission is usually so difficult that it's not worth exploring them. In most cases you stand to lose more than you gain trying to achieve them.
The back of the box promises that Blitzkrieg fans will enjoy the "thorough challenge" of the expansion. "Thorough challenge" is clearly a euphemism for "insurmountable difficulty." While the fanboys on the Blitzkrieg forums will likely infer from that we suck at "serious" wargames, the missions in Fall of the Reich are completely unforgiving. In the open country, you'll have to contend with numerous fixed guns protected by row after row of infantry trenches. In the city, you'll find no shortage of AT guns and tanks lying in ambush.
The binoculars that permitted your units to spot well ahead of your artillery and long-range guns are gone now. Now you'll actually have to expose your infantry units to direct fire from your opponents in order to actually see your targets. This works for your enemy as well. As long as they have one infantry unit in sight of your forces, they can lob AT shells at you with complete impunity. At the very least you should get a sound contact or a direction of fire indicator to let you know where the danger is coming from.
While World War 2 artillery relied on forward observers, this shared line of sight for all of your units seems unrealistic at best and completely frustrating at its worst. The Blitzkrieg series has always claimed to be the paragon of historical accuracy among WW2 RTS games, but it also suffers from some other notable concessions. There's no morale model, for instance, and you can use repair trucks to get your damaged tanks up and running in a matter of minutes. On the plus side, the firing ranges have been realistically lengthened in the expansion, but this only causes more aggravation with the line of sight model.
Enemies are located everywhere so there's very little chance for any kind of fancy maneuvering. Instead, the real challenge of the game is in fine-tuning your frontal assaults. You start by bringing your guns up within range of the next enemy emplacement and sending your infantry ahead to spot for them. The infantry are going to pay a heavy price for this kind of recon work. Tanks can come in once the big guns are taken out but even then, they're in danger from assets located even further behind enemy lines. Any victory you can claim here is going to be decidedly Pyrrhic. Micromanaging these types of advances are a bit of fun the first time around but it hardly allows for intelligent maneuvering.
Blitzkrieg II is still a good-looking game but its definitely starting to show its age. Fall of the Reich unfortunately doesn't offer any noticeable improvements over the original. The basic maps and units are detailed enough to make the game believable, but it simply can't stand up to the current crop of RTS games in terms of visuals. Likewise, the novelty of the game's destructible environments is starting to wear off a bit as more and more RTS games incorporate this feature themselves. Perhaps the worst aspect of the game's visual presentation is the way that the Eastern European setting becomes so repetitive.
The game's sounds get the job done but the military music sometimes easily overpowers the rather thin weapon effects. It's effective but doesn't stand out on its own.
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