Command: Chains of War Reviews

Let me first just say that this is an excellent expansion to an already dominant wargame in the field of worldwide air and naval operations. Is that out of the way? Great! Let's talk sh*tiness! The pitch for the game promises a lot more than it delivers. The marketing gives you the idea that you're going to get targeted by EMPs, hacking, communications disruptions, even lasers and railguns as well as being able to play around with them. I'd hesitate to say that's even half-true. Yes, you get to play around with all these high-tech weapons, (except for lasers and railguns since they only show up in one scenario and their usefulness is incredibly limited given their position) but at no point in the campaign do you ever get targeted by them. I was fully expecting a simple ground support operation to turn into a complete clusterf*ck when an EMP knocks out my communication network as was shown in the trailer but that simply never happens. The scenarios are pretty well designed but as time went on, I started to see cracks showing in the intricate set-ups, which is actually quite understandable from a game design perspective since these guys don't really have the time to play-test their game and they really can't expect the fairly anemic community to do it for them. There were cases of somewhat to incredibly questionable unit spawns, bad time entries for event activations, an incredibly disturbing tendency for enemy submarines to turn their radars on, and some fairly questionable scoring decisions. I don't really blame the designers for not fixing these problems after all this time, after all, who's going to tell them that a mix-up between AM and PM causes an enemy SAG to spend over 12 hours instead of just 20 minutes on a strike mission with their radars turned off causing it to suicidally charge its target with the intent of hitting it with its deck guns? (Me! That's who!) The point is that this game is technically still in development but even with all that said, it's still a great play.

If you clock this game as China, or even sink a US Carrier, some sore losers will try to kill you. Tom Clancy did to Harpoon, and died the day the US Government got shut down, October 1st 2013.

See my enthusiast Command: Modern Air Naval Operations WOTY Edition review of February the 28th 2019, and add: - High Energy Lasers - Railguns - Aircraft Damage Model - Communication Disruption - Electro-Magnetic Pulse Weapons I should add something?

If you are after a fast paced RTS with resource collecting, this is not the 'game' for you. Command: Chains of War focuses on a conflict on between North and South Korea (With added single missions ranging from the British in Africa in the 70's to China invading Vietnam). Most of your time will be taken up setting up your mission profiles before hitting the start button. I spent many hours googling different chinese and soviet/weapon systems to ensure I was utilising the correct ordinance, for the correct airframe for the correct plane. Attempting to play this game without any tutorials or assistance is near impossible. The UI makes it feel like you are within a CIC on flag ship, directing air and sea missions against a dynamic and relentless enemy, however every mission is achievable (unless in the mission editor you make it impossible). A great introduction to the Command series, reasonably priced to get you hooked into the franchise. 7/10

it's jut not fun... Way too complex. Really hard to get units to do some simple things. This game is more frustrating than interesting, and more interesting than fun, and i just wish I'd never bought it.

This game is really nice in how it offers a different playstyle and type of genre. Very few games offer detailed sensor representation. I like the small and large scenarios. This is one of those games that can really challenge me to try again and again to have a perfect execution.

Command: Chains of War adds a brilliantly written, well thought out campaign that demonstrates the new features brought to C:MANO with Chains of War. The new features--aircraft damage, communications disruption, novel weapon systems and cargo--add complex, rich layers of depth to existing community and standalone scenarios, as well as a major increase in flexibility and potential for future C:MANO community scenarios. If you own and regularly play C:MANO, I cannot recommend this expansion enough. If you're on the fence and want to dip your toe before taking the dive and purchasing C:MANO, then there's really no better option than Chains of War.

Not sure that calling this a 'game' is apt, it positions itself between that and a serious military simulator. Very intensive, a remarkably steep learning curve but undoubtedly one of the most accurate simulations ever developed for commercial consumption. This game is basically an interactive version of Jane's Fighting Ships & All the World's Aircraft. It's a niche piece of software, but if you want anything more realistic it's classified.

I would say there needs to be a lot of fixing done. There are numerous issues that have been encountered by several people including me where you have planes that do not RTB, combat patrol AI in the 4th scenario do not respond at all when you approach those F-16s and my suggestion would be for the developers to re run and retest the scenarios fully...

I would highly recommend this title and it would be even better if the developers may improve the gaming balance and make the game more "playable". Pros: Excellent simulation of warfare. Detailed weapon database. Cons: Extremely CPU resources demanding. I was playing this title on a PC with i7-6700k / 16g / 256g SSD / 980ti and a laptop with i7-6600u / 16g / 512g nvme / HD520, the performance issue was always annoying. Tried to un-check some simulation options and it does work better now but I suppose that there should be space for further performance optimization. Except for the biased and stereotyped plot, the battlefield settings are not balanced at all. As an amateur, I was able to simply shoot 400+ Tomahawks and get a minor victory in some scenarios. However, while I was playing on PLA side, I fired 100+ ballistic missile and get literally nothing destroyed. Moreover, in some stages, outdated type-053 frigates and type-051 destroyers are added into Chinese CVBG, which is totally not reasonable. I understand this game is aimed at the English speaking market but I still strongly suggest that the developers should alleviate the serious imbalance problem in some stages or just remove the sides other than United States.