The Great War

I have bought and played all the Jolly Pixel games at the time of their release, starting with Waterloo. My favorite up until now has been Waterloo, but Great War is neck-and-neck with it and may exceed it.

I like a lot of the gameplay additions:
– Digging trenches, great!
– Howitzers, great!
– Day and night turns, great!
– Limiting the range of non-artillery (and non-tank) units to 2, great!

I played through before the latest update so I haven't played with the new assault infantry unit yet, nor do I know all the “tweaks and improvements” made to the campaigns.

I'm not really sure how to structure this review so I'll go mission-by-mission:

– Mons: Great. Well-balanced between the two powers.
– Tannenberg: Great, same as above.
– Gallipoli: Oh Lord, I hate this mission. See below.
– Verdun: This mission is a too large and too long for my tastes but overall it's decent.
– Transylvania: Great. Well-balanced and interesting.
– Somme: Personally, I think it's too easy for the Entente powers, but I like the overall concept.
– Villers: I've only played this as the Entente side, but I liked it.

Gallipoli is my least favorite part of the game, which is due to its scale. There are so many units and so much map and so many turns that it feels like work instead of play. I shudder to remember the thousands and thousands of taps it took to maneuver all the hundreds of units around this map, and all the dragging and scrolling necessary to navigate around it. And then, after I've spent several minutes on a single turn checking and double-checking that I haven't overlooked some stray unit (enemy or friendly) getting everything just so, I have to sit back and watch the AI process move its hundreds of units for several minutes. I did the math and figured that each playthrough of the map took me about four hours. Others may think, “That's a good value!” but to me it's just pure drudgery. I really want to play through this game again on General difficulty but Gallipoli stops me in my tracks.

Much of this also applied to Verdun, but it doesn't cause nearly the visceral reaction that Gallipoli does. I would have liked Verdun better as a capstone mission that's the last step before victory, during which its grandness would be fitting, but sitting in the middle of the campaign as it does it simply acts as a very large hump that you have to get over to reach the downhill side. That said, I did appreciate the fact that there appears to be some mercy rule logic within the game. As the Central Powers, I had the map cleared of the Entente forces with about eight turns remaining. I appreciated that the game seemed to recognize this and didn't make me play through the final eight rounds and whatever reinforcements that were scheduled to arrive.

Some of this reaction is due to what I want out of games like this. I prefer a greater number short missions rather than fewer long missions. I don't really want to spend more than an hour on a mission, and certainly not more than 20 turns at the most. Looking back on Waterloo, I have fond memories of Sambre/Carleroi and Quatre-Bras because of their succinct nature and the fact that I could play through them comfortably in one sitting.

So, if I had a request for the future, it would be smaller maps with fewer units, but more missions overall within a single campaign. This is my personal opinion and may not be shared by others, but as a long-time fan that would be my preference.