World War I

Honestly, a solid if not a bit hardcore WW1 RTS. Super unforgiving. You'll need to cheese a lot to succeed. Punishment aside, the bodies piling up from simple error and the necessity of excellent or unorthodox strategies and planning make for a very interesting strategy experience. Definitely worth a shot if you're looking for a unique challenge set in the Great War.

I spent some time playing it, and despite a few things, I enjoyed it. For its time, it was unique (I think?). However, 20 years later, I realize that despite the nice effort put into the theme, the game’s timeline is a bit of a mess. Rows of A7Vs lined up like slot machine payouts, soldiers who repeat themselves too much... Things that could have been optimized if only time had given it the chance. I would have given it a very good score back in the day. Now there are mods and games to relive that era. Plus, it isn’t necessarily very pretty or accessible. Nevertheless, and without faulting it, we’ll give it a passing grade... 10/20. A gift.

underwhelming gameplay, uses dated engine considering there was better at the time, very small scale battles

TL;DR: This game is unbalanced and frustrating. If you don’t have any nostalgic feelings toward it, I wouldn’t recommend playing it. If you never played Blitzkrieg before, I wouldn't recommend you picking this up. I spent way more time on this game than I should have because I’m a stubborn dude with strong nostalgia, and I wanted to finish all the campaigns, including the miscellaneous scenarios. I remember looking at the cover art and really wanting to play it, but I never managed to get it working back then since my copy was bootlegged. WW1 uses the exact same engine as Blitzkrieg 1 (2003). Oddly enough, it was released in 2005, the same day Blitzkrieg 2 came out, with a much better engine. Even though WW1 released two years after Blitzkrieg 1, the game is still very unbalanced, and most mission objectives feel like they exist purely for “gameplay” reasons to fill up the empty areas with some objectives. Graphically, I knew exactly what I was getting, so I have no complaints there. Using pre-rendered units combined with stylistic 3D vehicle models is surprisingly hard to get old. So why am I recommending this if I don’t think it’s that good? Because it’s literally a piece…

I am able to play this game on Windows 11, It works if you take time to start it slowly. It plays like the screen images show. I have a cheap laptop without a fancy graphics card and it plays OK. WYSIWYG.

- Infantry, tanks, machine guns, AT-guns etc. pretty much share the same firing range. - Artillery range has been decreased in order to fit smaller scale battles. ( ex, a 152 mm howitzer has the same range as a mortar). You cannot use artillery to fire across the entire map like in other enigma engine games ( BK, M.Kursk & Barbarossa, Stalingrad etc.), although the game has some heavy art. pieces (fixed, cannot be moved/towed) that have the biggest firing range, very useful in defending positions. * new unit Cavalry - group of fast soldiers better used in flanking, hit & run tactics, hunting down supply & repair vehicles. Since they cannot take cover on ground or in trenches, they are very vulnerable to AOE shells. - Airplanes are rarely used. Only scouts and fighters. Reasonable approach since it's WW1. - Few tanks ( awww ) but very useful, alongside with armored cars. - Snipers ;). Enough said. - Rain and snow affect line of sight, and plane usage.