I got the game today, and I've played for a couple of hours--I've completed the tutorial, four of the six training missions, and started the first mission of the easiest campaign. The tutorial and the training missions are necessary because this is a deep game--I'm not that far into it yet, but in terms of sheer depth of gameplay it might turn out to be the best strategy game on the DS, and I include Advance Wars: Dual Strike there. (AW: DS has a lot of things going for it, including near-infinite replayability, but I'm talking specifically about strategic depth here.)
The best way to talk about the way the game plays may be to compare it to AW's gameplay. That said, if you're a PC wargamer who buys games direct from Matrix Games or Battlefront, or if the name Gary Grigsby means anything to you, you should run out and pick this up immediately; it's not going to be some kind of super-hardcore grognard game, where turns have seven phases and take forty minutes to finish, but you'll be satisfied and pleasantly surprised at what's here, given that this is a portable game.
Now--if you've played Advance Wars, you know enough to deal with the basics of the gameplay--units start out with ten hit points, and lose them when they're fired on. But some things to note:
--Up to twenty units can transfer from one mission to the next over the campaign and level up, like in Fire Emblem. But, like in Fire Emblem, there's also permadeath. (You can save in the middle of a mission, though.) As units gain experience, there's a chance that they can acquire the use of a unique special attack that can be used once each mission.
--Units aren't generic tanks and bombers that perform identically for each army--their statistics are based on the capabilities of the actual models that each country would have access to during the year the scenario you're playing took place. These things matter--for example, level bombers (useful against tanks and so on) are distinguished from tactical bombers (useful against ground troops) and you need to know the difference to get anywhere.
--Speaking of bombing, before planning a bombing run you have to check the weather--you always have access to a two-day forecast. If it's raining, you can't drop bombs.
--Some of the rules governing movement will seem simplified compared to AW. For instance, you don't build transport planes and ships--units are assumed to have access to transport when they enter an airfield or approach a beach, and the transports appear when they're needed and disappear when you're done with them. It's possible for an infantry unit to embark on a boat by a beach, cross a river, and disembark, all in one day.
--On the other hand, some of the rules governing attack will seem tougher. For instance, if you're trying to take a city, and the city's hex is covered by an artillery unit outside the city, then the artillery gets a free shot at you before you roll to see how much damage you've done to the unit within the city. Taking a city without eliminating the artillery protecting it is impossible.
--There aren't COs that lend bonuses to entire armies and have CO Powers, etc., but there are officers, who can be assigned to single units to give them bonuses. (I haven't gotten that far into the game yet, though.) Officers can apparently be assassinated by commandos. I think officers level up as well.
--Maps are huge. The very first mission in the German campaign (the Battle of Warsaw) takes place on a grid of 20 by 18 hexes. This is probably going to prohibit a number of the strategies useful in AW--it'll be impractical to spam units, for example.
--Missions have time limits--if you don't finish in x days, you fail, and your ranking (one, two, or three stars) is dependent entirely on time. Moreover, missions have primary and secondary objectives--if you complete the secondary objectives, you get bonus currency, access to prototype units for use in the next campaign, and so on.
--The overall pace is slower than AW's. It takes longer to decide where to place your units (the game is generous with takebacks, and expects you to use them--it shows you the likely damage you'll take and receive before you commit to an action). And the AI also takes longer to move than AW's.
--There are three campaigns: German (easiest); Soviet (moderate); Allied (hardest). So all of the WWII European theater is covered.
--The graphics are unexpectedly beautiful, though the color palette is suited to the subject matter--greens and grays and browns. The sound, not so much--there are a few repeated tunes, but that's it. I miss AW's lavish production there, but this isn't a game you play for its music.
--I haven't touched the Wi-Fi multiplayer or the online high-score ladder yet (and won't want to until I finish the single-player campaign and I can make a decent showing). But note that this beat AW: Days of Ruin to the punch there.
--Finally: this is a serious wargame, and its designers expect you to have a scholarly detachment from the subject matter. If you're offended by the idea of a game that asks you to play as the Germans and bomb bunkers with American flags on them, then this is not for you.
I haven't seen a single review of this yet online, and I have no idea why--it's looking like the best turn-based strategy game to come out on a handheld this year.
UPDATE 11/24/07: I've now played through seven missions of the first campaign. This is the sleeper strategy game of the year, point blank.
--Each mission is taking me between one and two hours to complete. Much of that time is eaten by the actual thinking I have to do before executing each turn--examining terrain is crucially important, as is guessing what units the enemy is likely to utilize and where they'll be placed.
--Officers and commandos are awesome. Basically, when an officer rides with a unit it slightly increases its statistics, as well as those of units in adjacent hexes. They're useful, but not overpowered. They can also be assassinated by commandos, and because officers are super-expensive (it can take three missions to raise enough money for the elite officers), you want that not to happen. Difficult, because enemy commandos can't be seen, except by other commandos.
--The AI is ruthless. It will team up against your weak units; it'll retreat, repair its units, and regroup; it'll send paratroopers through areas you can't see and try to take your headquarters. Every once in a while it makes a boner move that's typical of most other TBS games (sending an outmatched unit against you, e.g.) but that's rare.
--Fog of war works against the computer as well as you. In most other TBS games the computer can see through fog of war, while you can't--in PT the computer is just as affected by fog of war as you are. You can actually set up ambushes because of this--keep a recon unit with 5-hex visibility on your front line, and when enemies come into the edge of your vision, sweep in with air units and finish them off before they can get organized. This is best against older artillery units that need to be dismounted from trucks before they can be fired.
--The combination of permadeath, officers, leveling up, and upgrading units based on technological advances, makes for some great, great gameplay. Eventually, the Germans get an artillery unit that can move and fire at the same time--I've got one of those with five out of five medals, and an artillery-expert officer mounted on it. It's not invulnerable (no unit in this game is), but it's close. It took me seven missions to get it there, though. And when an elite unit dies that you've been nurturing for five or six missions, it hurts.
--Money (or "fame points", the unit of currency) is really scarce. With perfect play during a mission you might earn enough money to upgrade some units, buy one or two more, and replace a unit you lost. Since the bonus for the highest ranking when completing a mission is more than twice the bonus for the second-highest ranking, there's a strong incentive to play well. In addition, failing to play well in earlier missions can influence your ability to play well in the later ones, since you just won't have the money to buy the units to get things done.
--The missions always keep you thinking of four or five things at once! There's one mission about halfway through the Axis campaign where you have to hold a city for fourteen days against the British army--during any one turn you're sending tanks up to the front line to take out howitzers and AA units, sending damaged tanks back behind the line so they can be repaired and resupplied, taking out paratroopers and bombers with your own AA units, dropping a couple of bombs here and there, sneaking your commando past enemy lines to assassinate an officer, lining up your artillery to provide a preliminary barrage before your stormtroopers take a city, and chasing down a damaged fighter with two of your own before it can reach the enemy airbase and get repaired. All of this can happen in one single turn, every turn.
--The balance of units is much different than in Advance Wars, and that's refreshing. In AW I probably use the Med. Tank the most--there's no real standout unit like that in this game, and except for the anti-tank unit (which I can't manage to do much with) they're all useful. Artillery units are probably the most powerful, and a lot of emphasis is placed on air superiority. If you don't establish air superiority within four or five turns, things will go hard for you. Especially in the German missions, which often begin with the British RAF ripping you apart on the very first turn.
--Because of the size of the maps and the relatively large number of movement points that units have, the game is focused more on maneuverability than simply spamming high-powered units. Detailed discussion of that is outside the scope of this post, though, which is already running long.
--As for the difficulty, I'm finding it comfortably challenging, but I'm only on the easiest of the three campaigns. The difficulty feels about like the difficulty of the later missions in the AWDS normal campaign--if you S-ranked those, this game won't bother you much, though you won't call it easy. You'll get used to it, though.
--In short, if you have prior experience with turn-based strategy gaming (say, you've beaten an Advance Wars or a Fire Emblem game), this is a must-own on the DS. But if you are a newbie to this kind of game it'll be a serious trial by fire. (And ignore the 6.0 review from IGN--it's worthless and it has a few things incorrect, like the way that multiplayer matches work over Wi-Fi.)
Screens:
(note that the top screen is the entire map, and the bottom screen is represented by the red rectangle at the top)
The best way to talk about the way the game plays may be to compare it to AW's gameplay. That said, if you're a PC wargamer who buys games direct from Matrix Games or Battlefront, or if the name Gary Grigsby means anything to you, you should run out and pick this up immediately; it's not going to be some kind of super-hardcore grognard game, where turns have seven phases and take forty minutes to finish, but you'll be satisfied and pleasantly surprised at what's here, given that this is a portable game.
Now--if you've played Advance Wars, you know enough to deal with the basics of the gameplay--units start out with ten hit points, and lose them when they're fired on. But some things to note:
--Up to twenty units can transfer from one mission to the next over the campaign and level up, like in Fire Emblem. But, like in Fire Emblem, there's also permadeath. (You can save in the middle of a mission, though.) As units gain experience, there's a chance that they can acquire the use of a unique special attack that can be used once each mission.
--Units aren't generic tanks and bombers that perform identically for each army--their statistics are based on the capabilities of the actual models that each country would have access to during the year the scenario you're playing took place. These things matter--for example, level bombers (useful against tanks and so on) are distinguished from tactical bombers (useful against ground troops) and you need to know the difference to get anywhere.
--Speaking of bombing, before planning a bombing run you have to check the weather--you always have access to a two-day forecast. If it's raining, you can't drop bombs.
--Some of the rules governing movement will seem simplified compared to AW. For instance, you don't build transport planes and ships--units are assumed to have access to transport when they enter an airfield or approach a beach, and the transports appear when they're needed and disappear when you're done with them. It's possible for an infantry unit to embark on a boat by a beach, cross a river, and disembark, all in one day.
--On the other hand, some of the rules governing attack will seem tougher. For instance, if you're trying to take a city, and the city's hex is covered by an artillery unit outside the city, then the artillery gets a free shot at you before you roll to see how much damage you've done to the unit within the city. Taking a city without eliminating the artillery protecting it is impossible.
--There aren't COs that lend bonuses to entire armies and have CO Powers, etc., but there are officers, who can be assigned to single units to give them bonuses. (I haven't gotten that far into the game yet, though.) Officers can apparently be assassinated by commandos. I think officers level up as well.
--Maps are huge. The very first mission in the German campaign (the Battle of Warsaw) takes place on a grid of 20 by 18 hexes. This is probably going to prohibit a number of the strategies useful in AW--it'll be impractical to spam units, for example.
--Missions have time limits--if you don't finish in x days, you fail, and your ranking (one, two, or three stars) is dependent entirely on time. Moreover, missions have primary and secondary objectives--if you complete the secondary objectives, you get bonus currency, access to prototype units for use in the next campaign, and so on.
--The overall pace is slower than AW's. It takes longer to decide where to place your units (the game is generous with takebacks, and expects you to use them--it shows you the likely damage you'll take and receive before you commit to an action). And the AI also takes longer to move than AW's.
--There are three campaigns: German (easiest); Soviet (moderate); Allied (hardest). So all of the WWII European theater is covered.
--The graphics are unexpectedly beautiful, though the color palette is suited to the subject matter--greens and grays and browns. The sound, not so much--there are a few repeated tunes, but that's it. I miss AW's lavish production there, but this isn't a game you play for its music.
--I haven't touched the Wi-Fi multiplayer or the online high-score ladder yet (and won't want to until I finish the single-player campaign and I can make a decent showing). But note that this beat AW: Days of Ruin to the punch there.
--Finally: this is a serious wargame, and its designers expect you to have a scholarly detachment from the subject matter. If you're offended by the idea of a game that asks you to play as the Germans and bomb bunkers with American flags on them, then this is not for you.
I haven't seen a single review of this yet online, and I have no idea why--it's looking like the best turn-based strategy game to come out on a handheld this year.
UPDATE 11/24/07: I've now played through seven missions of the first campaign. This is the sleeper strategy game of the year, point blank.
--Each mission is taking me between one and two hours to complete. Much of that time is eaten by the actual thinking I have to do before executing each turn--examining terrain is crucially important, as is guessing what units the enemy is likely to utilize and where they'll be placed.
--Officers and commandos are awesome. Basically, when an officer rides with a unit it slightly increases its statistics, as well as those of units in adjacent hexes. They're useful, but not overpowered. They can also be assassinated by commandos, and because officers are super-expensive (it can take three missions to raise enough money for the elite officers), you want that not to happen. Difficult, because enemy commandos can't be seen, except by other commandos.
--The AI is ruthless. It will team up against your weak units; it'll retreat, repair its units, and regroup; it'll send paratroopers through areas you can't see and try to take your headquarters. Every once in a while it makes a boner move that's typical of most other TBS games (sending an outmatched unit against you, e.g.) but that's rare.
--Fog of war works against the computer as well as you. In most other TBS games the computer can see through fog of war, while you can't--in PT the computer is just as affected by fog of war as you are. You can actually set up ambushes because of this--keep a recon unit with 5-hex visibility on your front line, and when enemies come into the edge of your vision, sweep in with air units and finish them off before they can get organized. This is best against older artillery units that need to be dismounted from trucks before they can be fired.
--The combination of permadeath, officers, leveling up, and upgrading units based on technological advances, makes for some great, great gameplay. Eventually, the Germans get an artillery unit that can move and fire at the same time--I've got one of those with five out of five medals, and an artillery-expert officer mounted on it. It's not invulnerable (no unit in this game is), but it's close. It took me seven missions to get it there, though. And when an elite unit dies that you've been nurturing for five or six missions, it hurts.
--Money (or "fame points", the unit of currency) is really scarce. With perfect play during a mission you might earn enough money to upgrade some units, buy one or two more, and replace a unit you lost. Since the bonus for the highest ranking when completing a mission is more than twice the bonus for the second-highest ranking, there's a strong incentive to play well. In addition, failing to play well in earlier missions can influence your ability to play well in the later ones, since you just won't have the money to buy the units to get things done.
--The missions always keep you thinking of four or five things at once! There's one mission about halfway through the Axis campaign where you have to hold a city for fourteen days against the British army--during any one turn you're sending tanks up to the front line to take out howitzers and AA units, sending damaged tanks back behind the line so they can be repaired and resupplied, taking out paratroopers and bombers with your own AA units, dropping a couple of bombs here and there, sneaking your commando past enemy lines to assassinate an officer, lining up your artillery to provide a preliminary barrage before your stormtroopers take a city, and chasing down a damaged fighter with two of your own before it can reach the enemy airbase and get repaired. All of this can happen in one single turn, every turn.
--The balance of units is much different than in Advance Wars, and that's refreshing. In AW I probably use the Med. Tank the most--there's no real standout unit like that in this game, and except for the anti-tank unit (which I can't manage to do much with) they're all useful. Artillery units are probably the most powerful, and a lot of emphasis is placed on air superiority. If you don't establish air superiority within four or five turns, things will go hard for you. Especially in the German missions, which often begin with the British RAF ripping you apart on the very first turn.
--Because of the size of the maps and the relatively large number of movement points that units have, the game is focused more on maneuverability than simply spamming high-powered units. Detailed discussion of that is outside the scope of this post, though, which is already running long.
--As for the difficulty, I'm finding it comfortably challenging, but I'm only on the easiest of the three campaigns. The difficulty feels about like the difficulty of the later missions in the AWDS normal campaign--if you S-ranked those, this game won't bother you much, though you won't call it easy. You'll get used to it, though.
--In short, if you have prior experience with turn-based strategy gaming (say, you've beaten an Advance Wars or a Fire Emblem game), this is a must-own on the DS. But if you are a newbie to this kind of game it'll be a serious trial by fire. (And ignore the 6.0 review from IGN--it's worthless and it has a few things incorrect, like the way that multiplayer matches work over Wi-Fi.)
Screens:
(note that the top screen is the entire map, and the bottom screen is represented by the red rectangle at the top)
Guess I'll be playing this until FFT, 
