Sudden Strike II

The Good
Sudden Strike 2 has an appealing array of vehicles and cute little soldiers which smoke cigarettes, drink booze, run, shoot, crawl, lob grenades, get run over by tanks, die; what real soldiers also tend to do.

The damage mechanics also work really fine. All vehicles have hit-points, but not every weapon can penetrate the big guys like Stalin-tanks or King-tigers. So unlike most other games where even the weakest of weapons will eventually nibble away the last hit-point of a armoured Goliath, in Sudden Strike 2 these weapons will at best "knock-knock" on those steel plates without any effect. Another nice detail: tanks don't have the same armour strength all over, but are weaker on the flanks and especially in the rear. This adds a tactical element to the game.

But even the best-armoured tank is not safe against the menace of all tank-drivers: the anti-tank rifleman! These tiny pests crawl on their bellies preferably in densely grown forests or among the rubble of the town you just blew to shambles with your artillery and they can kill your crews inside leaving the vehicle intact and ripe for capture.

This adds a funny stone-paper-scissors element to the game. Every unit has its strengths and weaknesses, just like in real life 65 years ago. The game is beautiful to look at: forests, jungles, villages and towns, roads, railroads with real armoured trains, and so on. It is populated by dozens of tiny soldiers and many vehicles of all sorts. There are many thing to do: defuse mines, place mines, throw grenades at enemy tanks, watch your beautifully coordinated artillery barrages stall the enemy charge, occupy house, devise killing zones, heal the wounded, and so on.

It may be nice to look at and some game mechanics are really good, but....

The Bad
It also can be frustrating and infuriating for reasons beyond player skill and because it forces you to play in a certain way not everybody finds entertaining and satisfactory. There are, unfortunately, several reasons for this.

1) Line of sight: Line of sight is everything in this game. If you cannot see an enemy, you cannot shoot at him (unless you know/guess where he might be and put some rounds of indirect fire into that square). Almost every object on the map somehow influences line of sight, but you never know exactly how much. "Is this square safe?" BOOM! "Ok, it isn't safe then." LOADING LAST SAVEGAME. This also renders scouting absolutely pointless. Most units can shoot three or four times as far as they can see. And most units move very slowly, which means they have to traverse quite a distance in order to spot the shooter. This creates funny situations where a handful of riflemen can inflict extraordinary damage on advancing infantry. The fog-of-war is lifted when a unit has OCCUPIED a square on the map, not when it has ENTERED a square. This means a unit which doesn't move or already has line of sight to the square your unit is moving into will shoot first. This is extremely frustrating when considering...

2) Life expectancy: life expectancy is very realistic. Your're hit means you're dead. Take one or two hits from a 88 and that tank is dust. Infantrymen die like flies. Before you can react and pull them back, your platoon is no more. When that happens it is best to LOAD YOUR LAST SAVEGAME, because - unless you have already played that mission before - you never know if there will be any...

3) Reinforcements: they depend on your successful completion of various objectives (capture town center, destroy enemy units at position x, etc.) and whether they are part of a given mission. There so and so many reinforcements in this mission and so and so many in that. That's it. This means your troops are mostly indispensable. If you feel you have lost too many or you have lost an important unit, it is best to LOAD YOUR LAST SAVEGAME. There are no factories which spawn troops "Command and Conquer"-fashion like. There are no zones which generate money as in "Z" which can be spent to buy specific units. You will get what was programmed. Sometimes, when you're really lucky, your anti-tank riflemen might "liberate" a tank for you and you can add that to your army. But most of the time you're stuck with what has been programmed or scripted. The game consists of...

4) Scripts: there is almost no AI. Enemy units don't seek cover. A squad of enemy infantry will sit still until your sniper has picked them off one by one. "Oh, look, John's dropped dead! Ah, nevermind." Enemy crews NEVER leave their immobilized burning tanks. NEVER! Sometimes it is even advised to not take an objective or destroy the enemy group #X at position Y, because you never know what that event might trigger. For example...

5) Ridiculous situations: the objective is to occupy the central town square. The town is crawling with enemy infantry and anti-tank guns. First attempt: I start a well coordinated full scale attack from several directions. Result: Horrendous casualties. LOADING MY LAST SAVEGAME. Second attempt: I take my most experienced drivers (higher experience boosts speed and accuracy of vehicles) and stuff them behind the wheel and MG of an APC. Then I steer that APC through that town, carefully avoiding to get stuck or be forced to take 90 degree turns instead of the much quicker 45 degree turns. Result: all enemy infantry and anti-tank crews are dead, some minor damages on the APC. The rest of the army can make a parade to the town square. Is that how the game is meant to be played?

7) Save-Load-fest: I have never saved and loaded as much as during this game. The fact that you never know if casualties can be compensated will eventually turn every brave player into a chicken commander.

Because of the complex game mechanics and the extremely narrow space for errors the teaching of Mao Zedong becomes a dogma for this game: "Don't attack if you're 3 or 4 times stronger than your enemy. Attack when you are 9 or 10 times stronger."

The Bottom Line
Sudden Strike 2 can be very frustrating. But it also can be funny and entertaining if you have a lot of time to figure it all out (i.e. scout the map, lose all your units, load again, play it right). Then it will will give you the satisfaction of the sight of a successful mixed-arms assault, even if you take casualties, because you know it will still suffice for victory. If you like toying with World War 2 equipment, this is your sandbox. If you like micromanaging your army down to the smallest of units, then you will like this game. If you don't mind saving and loading a lot, of course.