Panzer Doctrine Reviews

This seems like quite a good game but the tutorial does not go into enough depth and the advanced features are difficult to understand. I havn't figured out how to utilise aircraft yet, other than to use bombers on enemy airfields which I assume supperesses them. Also I would like to be able to play without the time limit. There are no guides available as yet to assist with this.

It's an excellent hard core strategy game based on WW2 eastern front campagin between german and soviet union , I'll totally recommanded it for whoever obsessed with blizerkerig tatic in theater commander level (especially in the eastern theater) and want been through it by themselves ,it's definitly worth the price so don't hesitate even for a moment to buy it . Frankly I'm impressd after I check the credit list and find this game was mostly made by one single editor , thanks Kovats , you really made a good game . The reason I don't recommanded it for all is , well , the game itself is obviously too hard core for the common people who might be little intrested in WW2 and just want to play it for some fun and relax . Panzer Doctrine is a game focous on division level strategic manuver and most time you'll be doing is cutting the enemy supply line and surround/encircle the enemy with your tank divison , waiting them to breakthrough your pocket and hold your defense line with your motor/mechanized divisons or chasing them after they left their deeply built trench due to lack of supply , it needs highly concentration and clear mind to act the blitzkreig and it can often be very tiring , but once you getting in this mood , you'll spend a whole weekend on this game without rest for sure . The campagin though (which is the core part of this game ) , always ends historically without any alternative options but fatefully pity end in the ruin of berlin --- although it is in expected , it still upsets me the most . It's really a pity that the campagin is based on one single story line and nothing will be changed after you had put your efforts and had won in every scene . Honestly that's my personal reason to decided not to recommand it since the big GAME OVER words coming into my eyes after berlin "fall" (which didn't come even close , in my campagin the red army in berlin scene were been totally anihilated in less than 10 days --------yet , the reason I said I know berlin will fall for sure is because my army had already took Moscow in 1941 and in next year they were hundreds miles away from there , that's the moment I realized the battle result won't change anything ) ,it's just a bit too ironic for me after spending days and nights , after dozens hours of thinking and acting and completing every scene with 100% goal completion . The game has undoubtly potential to become great in people who can see the shining point and obssed in it e.g ME . I'm so eager to see what Kovats will bring us in next patch. Probably one day there'll be a western front DLC ? With the passion I had and hoping this game well , I'm looking forward for the following content might become ture someday since it's surely gonna be very thrilling updates : 1.In short term , a DYNAMIC CAMPAGIN in eastern front since 1940: Add total human resources pool , total available arsenal equipments counts and controlled factories zones for both german and soviet sides , so the number of casualties after every battle can have impact on whole frontline , it can even making some battle become critical in the whole war . The player only need to control one army group just like now and the rest army groups are controlled by AI so that the whole battle mechanic won't be too complicated and player won't need to take care every sector in war . Capture important cites can granted victory points , add railway transportation system for big cites in grand campagin map so player can transfer troops to assist AI's army group's advance or act as fireman . Extend the late war tecnologies and add units such as ME262 or IS-10 and so on , add an option for player to set an eventually end date of the grand campaign as 1945 , 1950 or ultimate destruction for one side . The war can end either be one side completed victory or a bitter peace treat for both side which depends on the victory points ----- the major cites that one side holds. 2. in long term , a real dynamic GRANDE EUROPA CAMPAGIN since 1939 : Based on the mechanic mentioned above , the player starts and controls one unimportant small army group , gaining warfunds and contribute points to request reinforcement and equipments by captives , captured equipments ,victories ,and objective completions . Add bouns objective from HQ which grants extra points . The player can decied to participate in the eastern front OR the WESTERN FRONT ! with the Railway system through major cites it can become very pratical . If adding Ferry transportaion system then probably AFRICA too ! Adding ORDER&REQUEST system in the theater where player is , such as "direct order from fuhrer to take oil field in Caucasus " ,"Rommel's army group urging assistance in Tunisia campagin" or " Center Army group is planning a massive breakthrough in 6 july " etc ,completion such will grants additional bouns points as rewards ,igored or failed attempt might result the change of the direction in whole war goes . Player can making such request&order and seeking for AI's help too . 3. ultimately , a CAREER MODE in GRANDE WWII CAMPAGIN : based on all the mechanics above ,let player begin as a wehrmacht officer or SS leader ,they can get different traits e.g: old wehrmacht officer might get extra favor of the army but less favor from political , SS leader got some dirty job to do for extra bonus and priorty to get some secrecy equipments , both will leads to the different end , adding medal systems and promoting system (at begining got command limit and can only control a little division , so player needs to join the campagin set by HQ , but when been promoting to general or highter , player can call a campagin on their own ! ) and all the other imagineable role-play factors since rouge like + hard core + RPG will give player infinity joy in limited repetitive contents . After war over , showing the whole career record and medals or the international war court judgement (if war lost and as a SS officer , yea ) ,comments ( a legend like Guderian or Rommel etc) . The game has it's potential to become great , I'll just wait that day to come . --------------------- I just got replied by the develper and after read his comment there's nothing gonna stop me from change my recommandation from negative to positive . Z9K : Thanks for the detailed feedback. You have many good ideas and I will use them. Unfortunately, the scope of Panzer Doctrine is much smaller, and it would be very hard to implement such a big changes like dynamic campaign system. The basic layer of the code is fairly restricted, due to my limited experience in developing strategy games. I have learnt many things in this project and my next game will much larger in scope. I am collecting the good ideas and will definitely use your ideas in my next game. Thanks again. ------------------------- AND NOW I JUST WANT TO PRE-PAY FOR HIS NEXT PROJECT .

Excellent game! I have played just about every WW2 game and this is one of the best. It is one of the more complex approaches (divisions, battalions etc) but it finds and excellent ballance between simplicity and complexity- something most other WW2 games don't achieve. Support is excellent. If you like WW2 games you need to play this one.

Abandoned game like so many slitherine backed projects, this time the dev didn't even bother to make a effort to fix bugs before dumping it Bare bones are there but so many game breaking bugs Although at first glance it looks novel and quite complex it's in fact the opposite Grab a few yellow nodes and the battle is over even if you're still massively outnumbered and would have no chance of wining the battle by other means Nothing you do matters, the battles are linear and almost identical, even if wipe out every single Russian units it changes nothing The graphics are terrible but it's a "hex"game so that doesn't really matter It does have a few things that I'd like to see in a better game, like being able to choose weapons even down to side arms for units The 5 main units backed by 5 support units is a good idea ala hearts of iron style Bottom line the game is a unfinished bugged filled rip off

Edit: I can no longer recommend this game. I found a bug, at first rare, but then it happened twice in one battle. The only way past is to restore from save game and hope it doesn't happen again. For me this has made this game unplayable, and after providing save game file and report to Matrix/Developers, no action was taken, nor has been taken in over 3 months. To me this makes this a dead game and again, unplayable. The bug is that when engaging in a battle, the enemy forces will lose units, until they have zero units defending the objective, but the battle never ends. It doesn't matter how many units you throw into the fight, the enemy remains at zero defenders, and the battle goes on. This bug has been documented on the boards, and like I said, I provided a save game file to in my support request to Matrix. If they ever get back to me with a fix I will update this review. All that being said, I really would like to get back and finish the game. Up until the point I was stopped cold by this bug, I was thoroughly enjoying my play through and even penned a 'how to' guide for the new players. **************************************************************************** For all you WWII, sim, strat, combat junkies out there.....This game is super fun. The replayability is amazing even on campaign mode...No two games ever turn out the same. The trick is to thrust deep into enemy territory and encircle pockets of stubborn enemy defenders, deprive them lines of supply, then crush them as they try to break out. Sound familiar? Rinse, wash, and repeat. The game is still in development. The devs are active on the forums which is promising. And there seems to be a steady stream of improvements very much in line with the forum suggestions. MultiPlayer is promised in future but for now it's single player only...The price was right and fun as heck. The AI is pretty aggressive, and I'm having to pull out all my old school tricks, even on medium difficulty. But WTH if you are like me, "Challenge accepted!"

Game is fun during the early German campaign as long as missions are easy. Then, when You reach a Leningrad map You now have to sqeeze every trick out of the engine and at this point all the fun is lost. Because a winning tactic is to overrun all the infantry forcing them to retreat and then wait at the end of the "retreat path" to force them to surrender there and remove the division-counter from the game board. That's very much the same "node" mechanics as You have in "Hearts of Iron". The good part of the game is that there is an interesting division configuration screen and there You can change quite a lot of Your force structure and equipment. In my opinion - game is fun during first 3 - 4 hours and then You start to question Your decision to buy this game.

Reviewing intial release version 0.99 Okay thought I would get an initial impression up for those that are curious. To start resolutions go up to 1920x1080, would like 1440 but hey it's not like this is HOI4 with super fancy sprites. Game is made with Unity engine for those interested. There's currently only one option to actually play, "Campaign" you click it and you're brought to "Operation Barborossa" where you select which Sector (Front/Army Group) to command (North, Center, South) currently ony center is an option. You're then taken to a campaign map and there's several pages of strategic overview and briefings. First scenairio is an attack around Minsk area lasting 25 days. You then go to unit deployment, at this point I can't edit the loadouts or force compositions. Also commanders seem to play no role or grant buffs (Dev indicated this will be implemented later). The UI is fairly inuitive and units can stack on tiles. The game is played Real time however there is tactical pause(and autopause) which most will make use of extensively. Encountered one very frustrating bug whereby at the end of the 2nd Scenairio I had 14/15 Objectives captured and it said I had 0/0 and failed, however I had been Alt-tabbing frequently and that may have had an effect. I've expirienced no crashes yet. Current notes: --No in game autosave that I've encountered yet, (SAVE SAVE SAVE)(Dev will be adding autosave) +Coordinated attacks from multiple directs +Several difficulty options which allow you to ease in -No real tutorial (Game manual is available in game) +Air force can be micro'd but will default to support roles if left alone, overall the way air force is handled in game is superb +After battle stats giving performance of units breakdown +/-High level of OOB and unit compositions control (in between scenairios), however UI here needs work and I'm not seeing an "Undo" button or anyway of disbanding units +Asymetrical approaches to accomplishing objectives encouraging multiple playthroughs -UI can be difficult to know which units have orders when multiples are stacked on tiles +Every individual Regiment, and Battalion within the division has seperate and complete stats -Unable to rename units, doesn't bother me, oddly english names used for ground units i.e. tank division but german abrev. for air units i.e. KG, StG would prefer historical localized naming (definitely not everyones cup of tea)(Dev indicated this is WIP) +Enemy units have different layouts and deployments when restarting missions +Tactics like armored spearheads, and encirclements work very well; rewarding force concentration +Weather has significant effects on air/land/supply operations (Spring/Fall Rain+General Winter) +Plethora of units to choose from Overal feel is very similiar to Army General but much nicer sprites. I've found missions following a pattern where I get to focused on encirclements and forget to drive for objectives, the last few days becomes a relatively unopposed scramble. This was working fine until the fall rains brought my Motorized divisions to a halt during the drive to Kiev. I was barely able to capture 88% of objectives and the casualty figures were very close to the historic numbers. Throughly enjoyed that.

I will start to say that this was to me the most pleasant surprise in the gaming world this year. I buy a lot of games every year specially when they are cheap and seem interesting, this game is a bargain and when i saw the store page the first time some images caught my eye, but the reviews were mixed and its from a small developer so i bought it wil low expectation. I was in for a surprise... The game feels like a mix of Panzer General Style with Hearts of Iron and Gary Grisby War in the East. The visuals are not impressive for 2018 but are adequate for this type of game, the gameplay is were the game shines, you have several Divsions at your disposal every one of them with detailed order of battle and table of equipments you can add new battalions and regiments replace their firearms, their support weapons, tank, mortars, infantry guns, AT guns and much more a great number of real WW2 equipment is present in the game. After managing your force you face a challenging A.I has you try to do pincer maneuvers and encircle the enemy to cut their supplies so they go down easily, the game reward position and mobile warfare oposed to front assault just like it happened historically, you can still do mass frontal atacks and sometimes you have to do it to open a corridor but since you trying to conserve you manpower and equipment you should avoid the enemy strong points and encircle them. The AI is good and will position mobile units to counter your advance, if you dont plan well they will cut your line of supplies and encircle you, plus there are also scenarios when you need to defend or do both at the same time. Also the developer is very commited and listen to the community, new patches are released weekly sometimes more than 1, new features are also being added with the patches. To conclude it is a very addicting experience to me i recommed it to all wargamers - Graphics - 6.0 - Sounds and music - 5.0 - Gameplay - 9.5 - Immersion - 8.0 - A.I. - 7.5 - Support - 8.5 Overal Score - 8.5/10

It's a little hard to compare this to anything I've played before. Are you old enough to remember the Panzer General games? If so, you could say it's a sort of RTS version of that - a strategy game where you have certain scenarios and concrete objectives, with broad control over the development and equipment of your units. Panzer Doctrine accurately relies on the idea of encirclement and supply to win battles vs brute strength. It also includes all of the major weapons of the Eastern Front. It's immersive enough and developed by a guy who obviously knows the subject. For those of you who come from Land Doctrine, this may look similar but it's definitely more of a sequel than a reskin. Here, you have air units, weather affects play, and as I said before supply chains are now enforced, which totally changes the strategies that you use to win battles. I didn't encounter any bugs in my playtime, except for minor misspellings like 'aircrafts'. That said, it's still obviously in EA. The final will allow you to take part in all arenas of the Eastern Front whereas currently you can only participate in the actions of the center front. There also don't seem to be any one off scenarios and sandbox type play. Right now you're just limited to the campaign. This is a Unity product and EA and a lot of those types of games get abandoned. But I'm not envisioning that here. I've spoken a bit with the dev, and based on my experiences with him I am confident he is going to stick around and finish the title. I'm not going to say Panzer Doctrine is currently worth $15. There's not enough in the game for that yet. But in its current EA form, it's probably worth $10 and easily worth $5. Definitely worth picking up in a sale.

Please don't be deceived by the graphics in this game. It models at least one parameter that GG's War in the East does not. My Steam list is the tip of the iceberg in terms of wargames, and I should be completely jaded by this title. But I can say that out of hundreds of wargames, there is something a little different about this one. Even on Easy maps, the AI is frustratingly adept at cutting your supply lines. Initially, the difficulty for me (a generally poor player) might have put me off. But there is an easy way to increase your spend points during the management phase. Yes, this is called "cheating" but it also allows one to experiment with a larger variety of units. If you are having trouble, just become my friend and contact me, and I will put you on to the cheat, if you haven't guessed it already. You may also want to play at 1/2 speed sometimes and be sure your supply HQ can "connect the dots" to your frontline units. I did not pay attention to this obvious fact at first, and got slaughtered. You can also pretty much ignore the nitty-gritty detail displays, but these are too much fun (imo) to not appreciate. For example, double-clicking on a regiment icon in the divisional display provides an impressive number of combat factors, including the unit's experience fighting on each terrain type. This is the small detail you will not see in WitE. You can play both standalone scenarios, or the scenarios that make up the campaigns. Before battle you can juggle your division make-ups down to the Bn level. Then there are the leaders, who excel or are weak in certain areas. There's no reason to really micro-manage all of this, but it pays to create units, that say, are skilled at attacking forts by using the proper leaders and Bn assets. Supply, speed, AT, Inf combat and other specialties are also available. Lastly, (or maybe firstly) there is a demo! No reason not to try it. I've got almost 10 hours in playing three scenarios so far. Of course, I lost those first few. But the potential playing time of the game FAR outstrips the cost. Not to mention, frequent patches and new features that have really improved the game. IMHO, this developer deserves the support of the strategy gaming community. There are so many more expensive games that simply don't compare. So don't be too quick to blow this one off, and feel free with any questions - not that I am an expert, except at losing!