The Great War: Western Front™ Reviews

I rather like this GWWF...the strategic game mixes in with the tactical much like with Total War. You don't need to fight EVERY battle. Just the ones you might lose by a hair or those that could stalemate. If you're a fan of the period, then this is a must buy as it does cover all the main areas and subject matter found on the Western Front. Gas, rolling barrages, Belgians, etc, etc. It took me a few runs to figure out that corps don't really die (you just PAY heavily in gold for loses)...but once I got this through my thick head, I was off and running. A good game...get it if you're tempted.

This game has been out for over two years now, and it's still loaded with bugs. I appreciate the source material, the scope of the game, and even the gameplay. But the lag and bugs make it nearly unplayable. I really wish they could fix this game because it has a lot of potential. I wouldn't pay more than $15 for it in it's current state.

playtime = 3.6 hours. Fun game, but 2 CTD events in this amount of time is atrocious. Not a buy from me dawg.

Honestly, I got this game on sale and I still don't think it was worth the money I spent on it. It had such potential and is close to being something great, but with the devs abandoning it and the glitches in it and how the ai for your troops works... its just not good. I hope another game like this comes out eventually, and hopefully that one will be what this game wanted to be. Also to explain what I mean about the troop ai, often times I will time out a charge with my artillery, only for the troops I send to take their sweet time getting out of the trench (which is very inconsistent, sometimes they will get out immediately, other times it takes too long). Or they march a decent ways forward, only to randomly turn back for a few seconds before continueing the charge. These are just two examples of how fucking the ai can be, and both of them end in the troops getting mowed down before they can enter the enemy's trench.

A great game, really. It contains a couple of tiny bugs that hinder gameplay a bit, but nothing criminal. Over time it gets a bit repetitive. It's a shame it seemingly won't receive any new updates considering the silence on devs' behalf, but I find it greatly enjoyable anyway if you go little by little. Play 2, maybe 3 battles per game session and give it a rest.

Such a wasted game. Could have been so much more. The biggest problem is that it even today in August 2025 it is full of bugs and totally unoptimised. The game is clearly abandoned.

The Great War is a wonderful RTS with surprisingly deep involvement and mechanics you don't see at first. First off, this isn't your typical RTS. The game is grueling at times. you often fight through one trench line of a map just to find yourself at a stand still again. You throw your troops into certain death just to gain a bit of intel. You spend 5-10 minutes simply shelling the enemy with artillery before even moving a single unit. You dump time and effort into taking not a map, but one little section of the map from your opponent. And all at the end of every battle there is often not a victory or defeat, but rather a stalemate. A strange disconnect between what a video game is supposed to do for you, and what the great war actually was. It won't be for everyone, I say this with relatively certainty. But there are people out there, like me, that will thoroughly enjoy this game. That being said, the game is not without it's flaws. There are annoying mechanical quirks and systems here and there that can often cut into enjoyment of the game, as well as general RTS quality of life things that would have been really nice to see. Examples for improvement- - Splitting troops into selectable divisions (like total war) was sorely missed here. - Having hotkeys for artillery rather than having to click each one, then click the shoot ability (Which you do A LOT). - If a unit can't fit in a trench, they should just go to the nearest one automatically, instead of just standing there to die. - A simple total troop count window in the metamap would be nice, so I don't have to sit there and count each troop up on both sides each time I'm shuffling troops around the board. - There's a weird thing with click and drag to direction face going on, that basically negates your input if you end it over any troop, even your own. That's rather annoying. - The animation for firing range only shows on the side the trench is facing, even though I found out very quickly that troops can fire from both sides. Kinda odd. - The unit animations for running into trenches often feels weird and quirky, like the troops who are ahead have to back up into their squad, even if the squad is getting pelted with rounds. And a few other things I won't mention now. But even so, The Great War is one of the better (And more interestingly designed) RTS games on the market, despite it's quirks. And it's really got something going for it. I would love to see something in an elsewhere fictional trench warfare world in this design, not slightly held back by historical accuracy, with multiple factions in a domination type of game play. Especially if it were a "trench-punk futurism" type of game. With more polish, and maybe a few extra features, the game has the bones and muscles of something amazing, slightly held back by the tattered skin it wears. Even if not that, a modern Great War 2 with a deep narrative, individual axis and allies army composure (rather than combining them into one), longer map structures rather than square, city siege maps, 2 player Co-op campaign maybe(?), and a more defined metamap structure would definitely hit my steam cart in a heartbeat. It's been a long time since I've really enjoyed an RTS like this, and I'm ready to just back in and start a new campaign immediately.

It's not an awful game but it's not a very good one either. If i could i would have put it somewhere 5/10. Ever since this game was realesed i've come back to play it every now and then. Because it has something that i can't find anywhere else. The problem is that it gets boring after some hours, so i never managed to play an entire playthrough. The tactical battle can be kinda fun, but get repetetive after a while. The biggest problem for me i think is the "winning" conditions of capturing a region. Every region has a star value ( 1,2,3 etc) and to capture a region you must reduce it to 0. The way to reduce the value is by winning battles. This is all fine. But it's pretty much all or nothing victorys that count. So either capture every controlpoint on a map or kill enough troops so the enemy surrenders. And they only surrender once they are down to pretty much their last few squads. This would also be fine. But an attacker can also offer a ceasfire to the enemy. The enemy may then chose to either accept the ceasefire or make a counterattack. The problem is, even if an attacker captures all but one controlpoint, then offers a ceasfire and the enemy accepts, the attacker dont get to keep those controlpoints for the next battle. Making very little point in offering a ceasefire. Likewise, if a defender chose to counterattack, you then have to capture all the enemies controlpoints or make them surrender. Otherwise it will count as a loss for the defender. This also makes defending a region very easy. I've defended with just one company against 12. I don't have to care if I lose all but one point, becuse you just have to hold one, if the enemy don't take it you will just get the others back after the battle. I'd rather if the attacker (or the defender if counterattacking) would keep the points they've captured. Even if this would not reduce the starvalue, it would still give a little more tactical and strategical depth. The biggest letdown however and the reason for the negative review, the devs just abandoned the game a few months after realese. This is a niche game for a niche audience and would never reach the mainstream as i think the devs had hoped for. At the very least the could have sticked around abit longer for those that did like the game. Taking in their thoughts and opinions and built the game around that.

The game is just...bad. It functions at least I had no crashes or poor performance and it worked as intended but the gameplay wasn't enjoyable. I love WWI-II games and was excited to get to experience WWI in a different way but...It wasn't very fun. The gameplay loop was very simple but repetitive. I found one strategy and had no reason to deviate from it. I only did 2 playthroughs. The first one ended when my beginner mistakes caught up to me and the second one I straight up ignored every other game mechanic and simply rushed tank technology and it worked stupidly well. Just rush tank tech and spam tanks with some infantry and you win. No need to slog through trenches and organize well timed artillery barrages or scout your opponents defenses. You don't need to react to what your opponent is doing cause you have tanks. Just group all the tanks together and send them down the battlefield and win. But it isn't just the tech or strategy. Trying to play "correctly" is punished. Want to have realistic, interconnected lines of trenches and use a realistic design and strategy? You are actively punished for doing so and the better strategy is to treat trenches like 'islands' and have none of them connect to each other so you can exploit the mechanics and get an advantage. As well, I get it is WWI and it was not a very fast moving war but the speed of the game is glacial. Battles take a long time and then you need to win multiple battles to take a tile. If you spent maybe 2 hours a day playing you could get through probably 3-4~ battles depending on how fast and risky you play so a campaign could take actual irl weeks to complete and the mechanics in the gameplay loop are too repetitive for that to be enjoyable.

WW1: Total War with two factions. Great progression to reduce monotony through techs that add interesting new features to play with. HOWEVER, the AI is god-awful. You can very very very easily out-flank and outsmart the AI. My first campaign on normal difficulty I didn't lose a single battle. It's the end of 1915 and I'm questioning even continuing due to lack of challenge. Worried of the virtual certainty that harder difficulties will just give AI way more resources, which will just increase the GRIND, not the CHALLENGE. Without a Multiplayer Campaign, this game will get boring FAST. TLDR - amazing concept, exactly what I look for to scratch that Total War itch since Creative Assembly is bottom feeding scum-suckers. AI may as well be a lobotomized chicken at dev's servers running on a giant keyboard on the floor. EDIT: hold up, this is petroglyph? Haven't you guys been doing RTS for 3 decades? Shame. Still love the game, but shame for the AI!