Panzer Tactics war game

Panzer Tactics (2007)

Categories: strategy games

Classic Panzer General have set the standards for future turn-based strategy games, especially about World War II, because of the simple and universal rules that originated in old board games. Since then most of the turn-based strategy games took inspiration from Panzer General some of them, like Panzer Tactics DS, are in practice copies of the classic. In Panzer Tactics DS we take command of German, Soviet or Allied forces in series of battles of World War II, but to gain access to them we have to finish the campaigns first. Taking under consideration that the game has no difficulty level settings, strict time limits and non-realistic resources available the campaigns are very challenging.

But while the game has improved graphics all other aspects are simplified since game was designed primarily for Nintendo DS consoles and when you get into details the nice outlook falls into pieces. The game have similar to Panzer General system of resupply and reinforcement of the unit, but one option is not linked to the other, so f.e. you reinforce tank unit with new tanks, but it doesn’t resupply the fuel or ammo, which means you need to spend 2 turns on reinforcement and resupply (f.e. for gold award the Crete campaign is only 5 turns long). Similar story with movement and shooting - while you can move and then shoot, you can’t shoot and then move. Those rules are especially annoying when it comes to air units - f.e. they can return to airfield, but they can’t resupplied in the same turn, they can reach some position, detect enemy, but they can’t attack in the same turn. The time limits set for the campaigns are ridiculously tight (like mentioned 5 turns to execute invasion on Crete or similar amount of time to take over Norway). This puts more emphasis on speed of the units than any reasonable plan of the battle.

The maps are quite small, so it would be possible to reach those limits, but there is another problem - at the beginning of the battle you are given set of units that are far from being sufficient for the task (f.e. while attacking Crete you get 3 bomber units, 2 paratroopers units, but only one fighter unit, which in a face of British domination in the air makes the operation almost impossible to finish). But again, this is not the biggest problem - the time limits and forces available give you absolutely no choice in preparing any plan for the battle. There is only one tactics - artillery barrage and pushing forward, artillery barrage and moving forward. Artillery is so over-powered that there is no sense in using other units in the combat, 2-3 units of artillery can defend whole town or destroy any enemy forces if they are close enough, so you need tanks or infantry only to take over the towns and defend them.

The units themselves are really out of whack, not only artillery has magical power, also the AA guns. Not only they can destroy practically any air unit from quite a distance (which is ridiculous in WW2), in return most air units will struggle to destroy those AA guns, but there is another interesting bit - AA guns are quite effective as offensive weapons. Literally you can order AA battery to attack tank unit and most likely the tanks will lose. Tanks in general are strangely depicted in Panzer Tactics - they can struggle to win against infantry, but at the same time some of them are almost immune to artillery. There are also factual errors, f.e. during offensive on Dunkerque you may stumble upon Belgian tanks (that they did not have) and to make it even more surprising they are French heavy tanks B1 Char that were never exported.

In general Panzer Tactics is copy of Panzer General, but lacks the precision, flair and fun of the original. While they look the same in Panzer Tactics all the attack outcome predictions are always 100% accurate and even tanks units surrounded in the city can be magically reinforced by the enemy between the turns... Those are tiny details, but the tiny details makes all the difference.