The Troop Reviews

Very frustrating that the enemy has moves denied the player. For example enemy tanks are able to move and then fire in the same move. Friendly troops take so long to move to action that surprise is impossible. Disappointing.

The Troop tries hard to be the next Close Combat, but ends up feeling more like a high school project gone wrong. Armaments without details, very poor troop choice, too static setting...in short, great idea of wanting to modernize Close Combat, but the implementation is bad and there is still a long way to go. If you expect a game with historical reality, better to dust off Close Combat and wait for the developers of The Troop to improve (by a lot) the game.

This is perhaps the best tactical turn based PC wargame ever made. I say that with 40 years of PC Wargaming experience going back to Mech Brigade on C64 in 1985. The excellent AI is very challenging, frustratingly fun, balance, time, replayability are off the charts. It will wait to reveal hidden armor, it never "tank rushes" you, uses AI recce and infantry in ways that will have you reloading multiple times to try "just one more" round, testing new tactics and your battlegroup makeup. This will stay in your favorites for YEARS! I wish I could be you playing The Troop for the first time. BRAVO Canada! - Doc Watson (fmr. USAF Intelligence Officer)

Fun game R and G can be a bit extreme at times

Interesting story lines that mirror British and German forces in Normandy. The AI is good, rarely doing silly things. The graphics are quite good, making this more pleasing to the eye than Combat Mission (which is certainly good, but we hope will get a face lift with their new version coming out). I am halfway through the story series and I look forward to linking missions together - but the manual suggests doing story line first, so I figured I'd do that. But all in, a quality game, well worth the time, effort and modest cost. Thanks devs!

Love it. Simple and fast turn based game. Scenarios are awesome, from the map simplicity to the game mechanics.

I really like The Troop and plan to keep playing it. It's refreshingly easy to pick up and play, and the scale is just right for me -- you're only ever commanding a couple of handfuls of units at a time, so there's none of that overwhelming choice paralysis that comes with games where you're commanding huge numbers of troops. Generally the level of polish in the game is really good (I've experienced zero bugs) and there's a lot of content included with the base game. It's an easy recommend for anyone who's into breezier wargames and doesn't want to spend hours reading the manual before it all makes sense. That said I do think there are a good few things that hold it short of being an absolute classic. I'll outline the main issue I had so you can judge for yourself how big of a deal those are to you: There are quite a few QoL things that need improving: [list] [*] We need an undo option for basic moves. It's really easy to misclick, or misjudge LoS thus wasting a unit's move. You can work around this by quitting to main menu and reloading the start-of-turn autosave, but that's hardly ideal. [*]Manual saves would also be much appreciated. [*] Working out LoS is quite a fiddly process. When moving a unit there's no preview of LoS at the destination hex -- you have to check it manually and then remember exactly which hex you checked. It just means you're going to spend a hell of a lot of time manually clicking and checking different hexes. [*] The icons for terrain types aren't very clear, and the UI is a bit tough to read. Makes it quite difficult to tell e.g. which vehicles can pass different hexes. [*] Can be quite hard to tell where your tank turrets are pointing. There's no icon or indicator, you just have to look at the model which is difficult if e.g. your tank is in trees. Just makes it more difficult positioning them exactly and making sure you don't run out of action points. [*] When making a shot, you get a breakdown of what contributes to the shot percentages, which is great. However, when receiving fire you don't get that -- the combat log just tells you the total percentage. That can make it really hard to tell why that enemy tank was so good at hitting you and it makes it hard to learn how to do better. This is likely contributing to the feeling amongst negative reviewers that the AI has a baked-in stat advantage. [/list] Those are all fairly minor gripes though, and nothing there really had me pulling my hair out. The other set of issues are more around the rules: [list] [*] There is a manual but honestly it's not particularly comprehensive. E.g. things like exactly how suppression and damage are calculated aren't explained. Given how random those things already feel, that lack of transparency can be quite frustrating. [*] Something about the way cover and LoS works just feels a bit off. Sometimes an enemy unit will seem to be right in front of you, in the open, but still all your hit chances are 'minimal'. Other times your squad seem to have a clear view of a hex but just can't see it at all. Conversely, sometimes units seem to be able to see each other fine through thick trees and get surprisingly high hit percentages. [*] Detection is a bit of a nightmare. Recon units are few and far between, and hidden infantry can only be detected by adjacent infantry. It can make the early stages of a battle quite tedious as you have to comb nearby houses and fields one hex at a time to make sure there's not a squad with a panzerfaust waiting to knock out one of your precious tanks. [*] The really random way suppression seems to be calculated can make it very difficult to plan tactically, and can make the outcomes of fights feel incredibly random. When taking a shot you only get a percentage to hit, and no indication of the probability of inflicting suppression. So you might open up on an AT gun with four squads of infantry, only for it to be totally un-bothered and then it knocks out your tank on the next turn. Again, without transparency on how that's being calculated it can make things feel quite unfair, and like you're just at the mercy of RNG. [/list] Anyway, buy this game. With time I do think this developer will put out a true classic, and in the meantime The Troop will do just fine.