Joram
Posts: 3198
Joined: 7/15/2005 Status: offline
|
Tried the demo. I had HOI but skipped HOI2 as well. Overall I had mixed feelings about it. First, I don't really like the sprites, it's hard to describe why but just seemed 'thin'. I played at native resolution (1680x1050) so maybe that had something to do with it. The counters were plain but functional. I never figured out what the numbers meant on them though lol. I'm guessing one's movement. I like the design your own division feature. Very cool. I like the myriad of options with technology, espionage and political goals, both internal and external. Production is very straightforward once you get used to designing your own divisions. I also like the very open ended nature of the game so far. As Germany, I attacked Poland and at first individually ordered every division. While doable it got quite frantic at times especially when the AI decided to counterattack. I imagine this would be unmanageable with larger armies at which time I discovered the very beautiful mechanic of setting objectives by headquarters. Very slick, you can set it by corps, army, and higher echelons too and it will automatically move to the objective. This alleviated my concerns with this aspect. It's not clear quite how smart it is yet (i.e. will it use air assets too). Not sure how good overall AI is either. I was able to conquer Poland by early October but that's not a complaint, just something you can measure against. It was my first time, very late at night and it didn't seem too hard though the AI did put in a few good counterattacks, it even won a battle lol! I didn't like the tutorial. It was actually kind of funny in the way it was written but was otherwise next to useless. It didn't tell me howto do anything. Only, this is the diplo screen, this is the technology screen, etc. Well, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but even I can figure that out by pressing the shiny buttons. I thought there was a way to coordinate attacks like in old HOI but I couldn't figure it out (admittedly haven't spent a whole lot of time yet). The airwar seemed very hectic to me. Guess this is the RTS-hating side of me coming out. If you are good at RTS games, you probably won't mind it at all. At least pausing is easily done. I had no lag at all though my settings were only at the default.
|