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Bungled interface and terrible, terrible controls
I am a fan of DS hex strategy games and was hoping to like Commander: Europe at War a lot more than the 2 stars I'm forced to give it. The reason? The terribly frustrating control scheme, clumsy interface, and the idiotic decision to turn OFF all the DS's buttons. Even SELECT and START are disabled, forcing you to use the stylus for everything except scrolling the map, which is accomplished by the direction pad, or touching the stylus to the edge of the screen (more on this problem later). In other games like the excellent Panzer Tactics, usually SELECT toggles between map view and unit view for the top screen. CEAW has no such quick and easy view toggle. To see the map, you have to tap on one of the dropdown tabs and select either Zoom Out or World Map. Both options are worthless. In Zoom Out mode, the hexes become so small that they become a confusing mess of glyphs. Unit graphics are replaced by symbols representing each unit type (X, O, V, Y, [X], etc). Any unit that hasn't moved yet blinks, making for a really distracting experience. In World Map, the entirety of Europe is shown, but each factory or unit is a small dot of 4 pixel. YES! 4. Blue dots are you and allies, red dots are enemies. This is more than useless for planning strategy.
Unlike most turn-based war games, CEAW is played on a continuous board, with no levels or intermissions. Personally, I like the mental break of levels, so I can feel the march of progress as I pass milestones. Here, it is one unrelenting assault. I'm playing the Germans and have conquered France, but now the Russians and Allies are coming at me from both fronts, with massive and overwhelming numbers. The Allies are storming Normandy, and I'm impeded by a Russian winter on the east. This may be historically accurate, but it's quite unfair and unbalanced for the player. You can declare war on countries, but you can't invite them to your alliance, so I can't get other countries to join my side. You also cannot declare war on Switzerland at all and take them over. They just camp there with troops, doing nothing, like in real life.
In normal view, units that have moved don't get greyed out, making them harder to distinguish. Their nation flag simply stops blinking. A whole screen of blinking icons is not pleasant to look at. You can't use the shoulder buttons to cycle through the units. You must first tap on one of your units to bring up the menu, then the <- or -> button on the top of the screen. Often, it's impossible to tell who's attacking your unit during the AI's turn. The screen doesn't center on the attacker or the defender or put some sort of highlight outline around them. I've even seen the hour glass icon obscure a unit (in the lower left corner) being attacked, or have the attacked unit be partially out of frame. There's no unit vs unit showdown animation screen of any kind, like in every other hex game I've played. All that happens is a red flash shape with a number in it if a unit takes damage. If no damage, you'll hear an attack sound (machine guns, or bomb), but see nothing. Another major annoyance is that sometimes you can accidentally lose your attack turn if you tap too fast. Every move requires a second tap to confirm the destination or target. Tapping too fast causes the computer to sometimes think you are trying to scroll and will nudge the map slightly! I've missed several attack turns this way. Instead of attacking, all I've done now is placed my unit right next to the enemy's. Also, you can't use B to cancel a unit move or command. You have to tap something.
Next is the slow AI. During the computer turn, the screen can show the hour glass icon for quite a while -- 3-4 minutes on average if there are a lot of computer-controlled units on the map like I do now with the Americans, British, and Russians attacking me. I've even had it think a turn for almost 7 minutes. This is quite unacceptable as its turn took longer than mine, not to mention being a big drain on the batteries waiting to play again. Enemy move perimeter and attack radius is not displayed by coloring the adjacent squares, making it hard to determine how far they can move (useful for planning retreats or attacks to stay out of the range of fire). Since moved units do not grey out, it's impossible to tell which enemies can still move during the AI phase, making planning strategy more cumbersome than needed.
Defeating an enemy unit can also be a frustrating experience because units are allowed to repair up to +5 on their turn, instead of the traditional +3. This is too much and it can take many turns to destroy an enemy, when you're doing -1 or -2 damage to it with each attacking unit. Another major complaint is that air and land units cannot occupy the same hex, limiting your attack potential. This is a big problem when the enemy is entrenched and healing each turn.
One thing I did like is the ability to research new units, but this too is confusingly handled and clumsily done. You can buy factories, but only up to 10 (this rises later.. I'm at 14 max now in 1944). There's 5 different tech trees with 3 subcategories each, which you can prioritize, but it costs "Focus Points" to switch back and forth. Exactly what the tech upgrades do is a bit of a mystery. There's no text accompanying the tech tree level diagram. Only a picture of the unit, an attribute icon, and a "+1". When upgrades are available, I have no idea what upgrading them enhances. There's no display that says, for example, Attack: 60 -> 65, or some other visual comparison of the unit's values before and after. Lastly, the game automatically ends in 1945 without warning, whether you're winning or losing, for no reason other being a sticker for historical accuracy! This is pretty stupid if you've invested many hours playing (and waiting for AI) and having no gratification other than a statistics screen at the end of it all.
Overall, I would not recommend this game, unless you are a die-hard World War II military sim/hex gamer and willing to put up with major frustrations. It could've been a lot of fun, but it's ruined by a terrible design. The controls are maddeningly frustrating and unforgivably cumbersome, coupled with a slow AI and confusing unit feedback/info design. I recommend the much better Panzer Tactics, but chances are, you probably already own it if you're reading this review. The graphics in CEAW are better, but the interface is downright horrible and ruins the entire experience.
Despite some bugs and obvious problems, a good WW II game
I've been a fan of WW II strategy games for ages - my original introduction to the genre was through the old boardgames put out by Avalon Hill and SPI in the 1980s. Thus I'm fairly forgiving with computer simulations that allow me to dispense with the bother of unit counters on table top maps. MHC: Europe at War is not meant to be an extensive, detailed summary of the European theatre of WW II, but for what it is, does do a credible job of simulating the feel of the overall campaign.
The control scheme is a bit cumbersome. It's annoying to have to run campaigns on opposite ends of the map, using the keypad arrows to slowly move from one corner to the other. Certainly the DS buttons could have been used more creatively (say, as an alternative for confirming an attack outside of a double-click on the touch screen). The Zoom Out isn't all that bad, however, if one knows how to read standard combat map glyphs (X for infantry units, O for armor, and so on - reminiscent of similar symbols used for decades both on wargaming unit counters and actual military maps). I had no problem using these strategic maps for getting an overall operational picture of the game situation, or for planning my own strategy.
I particularly like the overall flow of the strategic situation simulated by the game, especially when playing the Nazis. One very clearly is on an unseen clock, and if continuous progress is not made, if timetables for knocking out each successive threat are not met, the Wehrmacht player steadily finds himself overwhelmed. Correspondingly, the massive advantage the Axis have in the beginning is offset over time by the successively increasing advantages in resources and numbers amongst the Allies, especially when the Bolsheviks and Americans enter the fray. An effective Allied player then is trying to delay collapse of his front and buy time for the rest of his allies to enter the war.
The mechanism of combat can be tricky, and requires both care with the interface and some operational planning. It is a valid criticism that moving units too quickly can lose one the ability to attack - if the player moves adjacent to an enemy unit, then clicks on something other than a valid target, he loses the option of attacking for that unit on that turn. Likewise, one cannot simply bash a way through enemy forces (unless the attacking units involved are armored or motorized and/or have a substantial technological edge or strength rating advantage). The units targetted are much easier to dislodge or destroy once they are out of supply, making grand envelopments and pincer movements (or Anzio-style landings by sea) critical for speedy conquests (especially in the Eastern theatre). Likewise, units that have been repeatedly pounded from the air are much easier either to send into a retreat or destroy than untouched units at full strength. An enemy that isn't put out of supply, or that isn't harrassed by heavy air and/or sea support, can potentially hold out indefinitely - especially if the unit is dug in and is well supported by reinforcements - but hopefully the player has already learned that lesson from studying the campaigns of WW I.
The AI is very slow, and that really is a problem, especially during a large, nail-biting multi-front campaign with high unit densities. I've never had the AI take more than a few minutes to make a move, but they are long minutes. It's probably the worst part of the game, along with the lack of a multiplayer option (which really is unforgivable, given how easy it should have been to implement, and why I'm forced to dock this game one star). That said, given the complexity of the game, the AI is not nearly as idiotic as I expected it to be - it runs a very good Atlantic War, for example, and as the Germans I have had a very difficult time keeping my submarines alive when going after Allied shipping.
The default settings end the game in 1945, but these can be changed at the beginning, in the Options screen, when setting up a new game. Other options allow the player to set up a "fog of war", or to impose fuel requirements on air, sea and mechanized ground units (something that really hurts the Axis player, just as it did historically). The research system is particularly clever, but I was annoyed by the lack of a "nuclear bomb" research option for the Allies. One problem is that units can either participate in movement/combat, or reinforce, or upgrade to a new technology level. This tends to mean that your most active frontline units tend to be the most technologically backward in your army, but that isn't entirely unreasonable give the scale of the combat being modelled - this simply encouraqes the player to cycle his forces for rest and refitting from time to time.
Lastly, I would have preferred something more elaborate than a statistics screen at the end of a game. There is a film clip in the beginning, so the designers could have put a bit more chrome in at the end of a battle - maybe a ratings system, or a series of different film clips, to give the player some idea of how well they fared.
Overall, however, I am quite satisfied with what the designers were able to accomplish. This is a fairly good, historical simulation of the European theatre of WW II from 1939 to 1945+ (outside of the wacky simulation of a Nazi invasion of North America, of course). I would recommend this game to any old World War II grognard gamer (you know who you are) who wants a quick "old school" wargaming fix on the run. This is a bit like having games like Clash of Steel or Strategic Command in your pocket, which frankly I've been waiting for since playing the better designed but annoyingly cartoonish Advance Wars series. Likewise, if you were disappointed by the operational nature of the battles in Panzer Tactics, and wanted something more by way of a grand strategy simulation, this is definitely your game. I've been playing it myself for a week now, and haven't become bored with it yet.
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