Order of Battle: Pacific has now an official release date

[jomni]

People down at Slitherine forums are saying that the Japanese defensive perks, though historical, are of no use.  Because to win the campaign, you take a non-historical branch and is always on the offensive.

[Gusington]

I'm noticing that now...a lot of suicide charges needed to get a victory in the Bataan scenario of the Japanese campaign. I hope they produce more specific scenarios/campaigns.

[BanzaiCat]

I played through the Bataan scenario as the Japanese and didn't have a problem. I don't think suicide charges have even been offered as an option yet. Have you played through to the end of the war?

[Gusington]

No - I played to the end of Bataan and got beat with one city left to take as the Japanese - that hurt. Haven't gone back yet.

[Swatter]

I went ahead and bought the game and unfortunately I am not pleased.

It has many components to be a good game, but I really think scenario design is poor and overly scripted. I started the Japan campaign and played through the ground invasion of Java scenario, let me just list some sour points in my mind:

- I started over every scenario  multiple times. This is mostly because the scenarios are highly scripted and are meant to hit you artificially where you will likely be weak. When scenario designers do their job well, it just feels right. It feels fair. Not so in this game. The scenarios are far too contrived and instead of fighting an AI, you are fighting pre-determined scripts where the designer knows way more than you. You should feel like your playing a game, not fighting the scenario designer.

- During the ground battle of Java, when you cross a certain point of the HUGE map with your relatively small force, you are way over extended by design of the map. So what does the scenario designer do, he unleashes a massive armored counter attack that darts right through your supply lines with a force that just poofs in from thin air. I am 32 turns into the game (and the primary victory condition where you kill trucks is sort of dumb) and my force is spread out over this huge map- and the scenario designers scripts an event like that! These are long, long games. You don't script stuff like that at the end and make you replay the entire scenario over again just to take into account a scripted trigger at the end.

The scenario designs are just too cute by half. I have rarely played a game where I dislike the scenarios, but like the system overall. I think the naval part of the game is rather blah with no real differences between the navies. What really made the forces (USN and IJN) different in real life just isn't modeled into the game. Japanese torpedoes are just as good as the American. There is no night-time gunnery advantage for the Japanese modeled into the game. In the end, the forces are the same. Its not a game breaker, though.

What I can't live with is sub par scenario design. I simply will not play a game where the designer is so damned unpredictable. I am not investing an evening into a scenario to have scripted events ruin it at the very end. You should use scripted events to enhance the experience, not be the experience. If you hit scripting too hard, the scenarios have zero replay value.

I know I am being very hard, but I am very disappointed.

<Self edited to tone down the late night rantishness>

[Gusington]

^Good review. I do agree that the scenarios are too scripted, and I don't like that the loss of one mission stops players cold.

Still - I will come back to the game, and hopefully by then some changes will be made.

[jomni]

Custom battles.  The list looks impressive.
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=374&t=64991url

[Gusington]

New expansion coming January 28 - Order of Battle: Morning Sun, covers the war in China and starts in 1937:

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/594/details/Order.of.Battle.-.Morning.Sun?utm_source=Matrix+Games+Master&utm_campaign=72feeb5a88-Matrix+Games+End+of+Sale_01_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2dfdfd653-72feeb5a88-87961029

[Apocalypse 31]

No thanks.

Just uninstalled this one. Failed promises from the developer, lack of content, and scenarios that are scripted to the tee.

[W8taminute]

Scripted and unfair to the human player scenarios?  Promptly removed this game from my Steam wishlist. 

[BanzaiCat]

A shame. It had great promise.

[Shelldrake]

I was one of the beta testers for the game but my experiences did not cause me to buy the finished game. Too bad since the game could have been a nice beer and pretzels pacific war romp.

[Swatter]

I was in beta too and I was very concerned. I think the developers wanted to try something just a little different than "Panzer Korps in the Pacific", but that's exactly what I wanted (and many others). I remember the amphibious scenarios in PC and wanted more of that! I believe they tried to pivot a bit during development to more accommodate players like me and core forces played a larger role in the released product. In the end, I think the major failings were the scenario design and lack of real difference between the combatants. The scenarios didn't feel historical and were scripted heavily. They shouldn't have been trying to portray individual battles (which resulted in heavy scripting) and focused on campaigns.

I would like to see a sequel with better, more flexible scenario design.

[Gusington]

Scripting is definitely one of the major issues here.

[panzerde]

I thought it was a mildly fun game for a few hours of amusement, but it has absolutely nothing to do with WWII or the Pacific Theater other than having the right chrome. It didn't hold my interest enough to get to the end of the tutorials. It did sell me on buying JTS Midway though, as well as the PTO Squad Battles games.


Probably not what the developers and Matrix intended...