Well then, what do I think of Panzer Corps?

I bought the game when before the Gold bundle dropped so the DLC etc was a little too expensive for my liking but certainly worth getting for the content it provides. The retro Panzer General theme is a favourite of mine and all the classic features that made PG so brilliant are in there too. Fans of the Panzer and Allied General games should love this one and its well worth a crack says I.

Pros
-Retro magic
-Strategic gaming at its best with a massive range of units and scenarios
-Fog of war ;-)
-Music and sound effects are great

Cons (At time of purchase)

-Cost of DLC (Kind of irrelevant now I guess).
-Difficulty levels don't always scale in a logical fashion and sometimes the jump can be a bit much. (Not a deal breaker really though)

I'd give it 8/10 Badger Points :-)

Excellent computer wargame.

very addictive

Modern-day overhaul and expansion of a classic wargame

This review is of the base game only, without any of the dlc/expansion packs

I still remember as if it were yesterday the feeling of excitement when first playing the classic wargame Panzer General over 20 years ago on my first ever Windows desktop. The idea of a war game on a pc was quite new back then – previously, war games were played at a table, on a cardboard map, using countless units (or counters) to be placed and moved over the map's hexagons according to a set of rules which was often so complex that one needed a couple of days to read, study and memorize them before you could actually start playing.

Panzer General, released in 1994 by Strategic Simulations, changed all that for me, and for several years the turn-based wargame became my favorite genre on the pc: the games didn't need the graphical horse power of the earliest 3D-games and their expensive dedicated cards, since the focus rested almost exclusively on the strategic, operational or tactical gameplay. While the genre stayed quite popular (although in its own niche) throughout the 90's, I lost interest after a couple of years, with so many graphically more pleasant titles grabbing my attention. And truth to be told: the iconic Panzer General series didn't seem to have got a proper continuation after 2000, so I let it go.

That is untill I stumbled upon a copy of this game in a sale, only a month or so ago. Panzer Corps: Wehrmacht was first released in 2011 by Slitherine (who do a mighty good job to keep the turn-based wargame alive and kicking), having been developed by The Lordz Games Studio. I didn't expect that this kind of game, essentially representing an historical armed conflict in a highly abstract way, would still be able to grab my attention as thoroughly and as intensely as it did. Don't make any mistake: Panzer Corps is a classical turn-based wargame in every possible sense. It doesn't try to be up-to-date by having fancy graphics, nor does it intend to appeal to the masses by making the genre less intricate (some would call it difficult to grasp). On the contrary: this game takes the original Panzer General as its starting point and pays openly hommage to it by using identical game mechanics and even progression as the main campaign unfolds.

And it is exactly in that progression where one of these games main strengths lies. Panzer Corps: Wehrmacht, in its base form as released in 2011, contains 26 scenario's or combat maps, most of them (but not all!) based upon an historical campaign during the Second World War. Most of these are well-known, such as the German invasions of Poland, the Low Countries & France or the Soviet-Union or the desperate efforts by the German Wehrmacht to withstand the tide of ever growing enemy operations towards the Reich. These scenario's can be played on their own (either as the Germans or from an allied perspective), but in truth the game begs to be played in the campaign-mode, where every single scenario leads to a next one in a quite widely branching campaign. This campaign has always to be played from a German perspective, and the progress you make though the campaign (which route you can take), depends on your results in any given scenario. Do particularily well in the Low Countries and France, and you might even get an early opportunity to invade England – yes, there are several "what if" scenario's as well!

But the fun goes much further – and deeper – than that. You start the first scenario with a rather small group of "core units": several basic infantry & artillery units, some poorly equipped early Panzers and a couple of Messerschmitt fighter-squadrons. As you take enemy victory points and win scenario's as convincingly as possible, you earn "prestige" – the in-game currency – which you can use to either call for reinforcements during a scenario (which come pretty expensive), for upgrading existing units with better equipment in-between scenario's, or to order new units for your core force. This game-embracing mechanic adds a very rewarding strategic element to the game: how do you build, maintain and upgrade your core force? Do you pour lots of prestige points into an air force, hoping that one day you'll have to batte it out against the Royal Air Force, or do you play it more safely and postpone investments until better tanks become available for those Panzer divisions? But even then, some sort of air defence is badly needed, so why not ordering a couple of 88-mm AA guns which can double as very powerful aint-tank guns as well?

And there's even more: as units fight, deal and take damage, they are rewarded with combat experience – a unit can gain up to five stars, and in doing so becomes ever more powerful. It can even be made "overstrength" for each star of experience it has in-between scenario's, making it very useful as the spearhead in an armored attack, for example. As units fight and stay in play through the campaign, they also get "leaders", who offer an ever greater bonus to the unit they command. An elite, 5-star unit with a couple of leaders attached to it, becomes something to cherish – which makes one hesitate: should I use it in the first line of attack/defense, and risk losing it? It is choices like this which make the campaign so extremely addicting: I have replayed it over and over again, trying to get as powerful and well-balanced an army as possible, ready for the ultimate (and hard to reach!!) series of scenario's which put the German Wehrmacht before the almost impossible task to invade and effectively conquer the U.S.

Sadly, all of these wonderful ideas would immediately become irrelevant if the actual combat mechanics were badly executed. After all, this is an hexagonal wargame, where one has to position and move dozens of units on a map. Panzer Corps happily delivers in this department as well: the combat mechanics are very easy to grasp, more dificult to master (but there are a ton of difficulty options, so everyone can tailor the game to suit his or her needs) and quite complex underneath (as they should be, since all sort of parameters including weather and terrain are included into the mix). There are some points of criticism here: some maps are a tad too small for the forces being deployed, which makes large-scale operational decisions almost irrelevant as the outcome will be determined mostly by the correct (and rather traditional) use of infantry, artillery, armored units and airforce. Truly daring and original tactis are not always feasible – but then, neither were they during the war itself, so, what's the complaining all about?

I want to state very clearly that I only played the base game for this review, and none of the huge amount of extra content which was released since. This additional content multiplies the amount of available scenario's by more than ten, adds a gigantic Grand Campaign as well as campaigns for the Afrika Korps, the U.S and Soviet armies. I will certainly try them out in the future, but they are not necessary to enjoy the base game, which is perfectly complete by itself. Three of the "dlc's" sold on Steam are actually stand-alone expansion packs (or rather new games using the same engine), so if you'd come upon a good sale for the entire package you'd be certain to make a great bargain.

Very highly recommended, but you need at least minimal interest in turn-based wargames and/or in the Second World War.

Great game, but freezes. So frustrating. I would wait until steam or slitherine figure this out.