Recent reviews by BlackOps

Twitter freaks hate this game so you know something must be good.

10/10, would follow my sister off the rails again.

Playing this game with my favorite streamers has been a blast. The Twitch integration works spectacularly and is a great way for Chat to participate/troll. The dialogue is hilarious and tongue-in-cheek, the events are engaging and can take surprising turns, and voting ranges from heartwarming moments of unity or darkly hilarious psychopathy. I've been addicted since release and the updates have only made the game better.

Highly recommend!

TL/DR 6/10 Competent and fun but under-utilizes its features and was clearly rushed by the final missions. Get on sale.

Features/Performance

A competent arcade WW2 tank sim but with anime girls. Controls like World of Tanks with a similar damage system, every tank gets 3 ammo types (AP, APCR, HE), smoke launchers, artillery call-ins, supply drops, and field repairs. The tanks I feel are modeled well and have a cell-shaded aesthetic I find pleasing. As an arcade sim there's nothing too elaborate to each tank's performance but the sliders for each characteristic don't lie either. The damage system... is functional at least. Penetration seems to work on a RNG basis where odds are determined by gun/shell characteristics vs effective armor thickness (angling armor is a factor). Since the AI often has more guns throwing shells at you, you're rate of getting BS pens through your heavy front armor is also higher. The AI is dumb as a box of rocks or government spending plans however, so expect to spend time finding that one enemy stuck on a fence or find yourself abandoned by your panzer platoon b/c a wreck has screwed their pathing.

The "currency" of Panzer Knights are medals. Completing objectives earns medals, which can then be used to unlock new panzers, new crew members, and crew upgrades. As long as some objectives are completed, even a failed mission earns you that percentage of total medals.

Crews are your main means of tweaking a panzer's performance, from extra armor on specific components to extra support powers and reinforcements. Every crew member has a bonus trait that gets unlocked by completing certain missions with another member, establishing a "friendship" between them and revealing extra background info about them. It's a sorely underused mechanic but it does add flavor to your crews.

Story

Story wise this is no Girls und Panzer but has charm telling the Panzerwaffe story as a struggle surviving a war where the goal posts keep shifting further and further out of reach. Exemplified by mission 5, taking the ports in France is a HARD mission using period appropriate panzers and your crew is shocked and appalled by the level of resistance. There is no alt-history route; the main story ends with the Battle of Prokhorovka, a chaotic mess of a battle that concludes with your exhausted crew wondering if the battle even counts as a victory and gloom setting in when the order to withdraw comes down.

Main Issue

Okay so why am I spoiling the ending; because the game was clearly rushed to completion after the 1941 missions and thus ending the game in 1943 is a big letdown. There is 1 mission in 1942 (Winter Storm) and another in 1943 (Battle of Kursk). The set-up for that last battle is also sloppy with dozens of friendly panzers spawning out of thin air at the start. The campaign is just begging for more missions in 1942 leading up to Stalingrad, the 3rd Battle of Kharkov in 1943 and the fighting retreat following Kursk, and the tanks battles of Operation Bragration in 1944, I could go on. The side missions are also sorely lacking, featuring a whole 4 missions. Though I give them some credit for being flavorful such as linking up with Rommel's 7th Panzer to encircle a French town or joining Otto Carrius' Tiger company in the first historical engagement of Tigers vs IS2s. However, by the time these have been completed once, the player will have only earned enough medals to pick from maybe 2 of the several "Big Cats" and with little reason to grind out the remainder.

All that said, I had fun in my short time with Panzer Knights and glad I picked it up while it was on sale.

Tl'dr: 8/10 Fun, challenging, and lots of content but marred by minor flaws.

I'm an avid fan of turn based strategies and Panzer Corps scratched that itch for me for years. The base game is alright where everything is a struggle to meet hard deadlines but PC truly shines in the DLC campaigns where the developers had time to create some truly unique missions with iconic historical battles and challenging alt-history branches.

Some will take umbrage with historical liberties taken for the sake of providing a challenge (e.g. Poland apparently somehow outnumbering the Germans) and the inconsistent scale of the battles (ranging from the tactical-level urban battles (Warsaw and Stalingrad) to the operational-level where one would expect multiple Corps (Kursk and early 1942) with the same units. Still, more XP for your Panzertruppen (believe me you're going to need it).

Gameplay-wise, PC is what you'd expect from a Panzer General successor. Units gain XP from combat and lose it from fresh replacements. Units have chance of gaining a stat-boosting hero from intense combat (up to 3 heroes per unit). New units and reinforcements are bought using Renown gained from completing objectives, taking territories, and forcing enemies to surrender. Spend it wisely or 1944 - 45 becomes impossible. Your AI opponent also starts and gains renown throughout each battle to spend on reinforcing weakened units, thus encouraging the player to destroy them first, or (infuriatingly) drop max experience defensive units or heavy tanks on an objective you've almost cleared out. The later is a balance issue that can be adjusted in the custom difficulty menu.

Highly recommend strategy fans pick up the full experience on sale. I'll be trying out Panzer Corps 2 soon!

A fast and fun shoot'em up, great fgr (re)killing an afternoon with superior firepower.