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Zovs -> RE: Wargame Design Studio (7/30/2021 3:41:07 AM)
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Okay, its been a few months, I have been busy with work and playing a lot of JTS games, mainly from ACW, Napoleonic's and of course PzC series. I have purchased both The First Blitzkrieg (TFB) and War on the Southern Front (WotSF).
Pros
Both are typical JTS games so learning the UI/interface is a breeze.
Both have a Getting Started guide (TFB is 7 pages and WotSF is 11 pages).
Both have a User Manual.
Both games have the typical hot key commands (zoom in/out, display map text, etc.)
Both games you can combined and breakdown units.
Both games you can force march.
HQ units have a range.
Both games have a series of 6 buttons where you can see the Number of Units, Stack Points, Attack Points, Defend Points, Movement Points and Components. Clicking each one displays a number over the stack.
TFB longest scenario is 22 turns (its hypothetical).
WotSF longest scenario is 63 turns (the Italian Greek War).
WotSF has the most varied scenarios covering North Africa (14, with one being in Syria), Balkans (6 in Greece, 2 in Crete) and Sicily (one 20 turn scenario for Operation Huskey).
Cons:
TFB only has 18 scenarios. 9 of which are hypothetical.
WotSF only has 24 scenarios.
Both games have only 3 zoom levels (PzC and others generally have 5).
Both games do not seem quite as developed or updated as the Gold PzC series or even the Napoleonic or ACW series.
General
Combat is a little different in that instead of firing like how you do in the Napoleonic's, ACW, PzC or PzB, you select your stack of units and right click and then resolve battles. It may just be my machine, but I don't see any results like who you do in PzB/PzC or the other series (2 men, 13 men or 2 vehicles) the strength of the divisions just goes down by a percentage (starts at 100% and it could be 90% etc.)
My general impression is that both games are okay, they do remind you both of JTS PzC series and board war games, but they also show their age and what seems to be a lack of full development like the PzC series (and the rest) have going for them (especially the Gold series). Both are easy to play and get into, but are fun and you really want the game series to mature a bit. I don't know how easy it would be to mod these graphic wise, but it seems that they may need just a little more polish and they would be pretty fantastic.
Overall they are pretty good games. Worth $39.95, I don't know, I paid $29.95 and for that price they are okay.
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