[DISCLAIMER: The following review is being continiuously updated]

Do I recommend this game? As it looks now, no. Unless you want to support the developers, which may or may not help them fix the issues I've encountered below. Don't count on it.

This is going to be my first serious review ever made, because it is needed.

First off, let me explain my experience with the Men of War franchise.
I was an ex-modder for Men of War, Men of War Vietnam and Men of War Assault Squad as well as the head of the Men of War Fanclub on moddb.com You may know me as craftan99. This is important to note so that you will know how much knowledge I have of how the game engine works and how it's assets is used. I have safely over 1000+ hours on Men of War offline back when It was a retail version. Now, on to the game.

The developers of this game, "The Great War Team", have claimed that the single player is finished. However, this is not the case. There are several localization issues where items and weapons miss names. The writing of the dialogues are awful and usually the voice acting and subtitles don't match to what they're saying and some dialogue is recorded with a very poor microphone. Also, little is explained as how to accomplish certain objectives without much direction as to what is required to do certain objectives. Some times you need certain items and it's a pain if you've somehow don't have that item because you dropped it somewhere. The game is also very lacking in Sound Assets, or maybe lacking isn't the word to use. I'd say that it has poor quality. Some guns sound very off when it comes to some kind of noise feedback that is in the background. Horses galopping is also a great example at terrible sound. This series is known to have bad voice acting as Men of War's developers had the same issue. However, I don't know if "The Great War Team" was even responsible for the voice acting or if they asked for support from the main developers of the franchise. In any case, it needs to be redone completely. There are tons of people who would volounteer without payment. Websites like behindthevoiceactors.com let's people try out for voice roles. Why they didn't do this, beats me.

The mission designs aren't the best either, they aren't very consistent and stealth is usually a hard task, but it is possible. However, stealth missions are rather tedious. Speaking of difficulty and missions, I always found the defense missions in the French and Russian campaigns to be extremely easy to complete. I think it's because the waves of enemies where so small that they were easily fended off.

When it comes to balancing, the artillery reload speed need to be longer and the infantry sprint endurance bar needs to be longer. Either that or faster recharges on the bar. Artillery HE rounds could also use some balancing to maybe lower the AoE just a bit, I always found the artillery redicioulously overpowered. Even with realism, balancing is needed to make the experience more fun and engaging. Artillery spam is hardly fun. Tanks are perfectly balanced in my opinion and I don't see much needed in the ways of improving that.

This wasn't much of a review as it is explaining what this game needs to fix. Even if this is in Early Access, these are things that have been overlooked and should be completely redone.

Basically:
* The Campaign is not finished, even if the developers claim it is.
* Awful writing.
* Awfully easy defense missions where the waves are too small.
* Poor sound assets with bad voiceacting.
* Some icons have bad artwork.
* Localization issues.
* Tedious Stealth Missions.
* Balancing Issues.

Suggestions:
* Add realistic color to the mustard gas, yellow.
* Add more types of gas and apply equally realistic color. (White Cross, Green Cross and Blue Cross.)
* Add more unit types to Multiplayer. (Bavarian Infantry, French Chasseurs, Canadian Royal Rifles, White Russian Guard)
* Add Cavalry and the ability to attack with horses.
* Add better and fresher animations for the infantry.



All in all, I've enjoyed the hell out of the game, but I would enjoy it even more if these issues were fixed. I would be so happy if it was.

Thank you for your time.

Where to start. Well this game was a eye opener to me. I never heard of a "men of war" before and when i played this i bought the original game just months later. I really love this game. First off this game is SOOOOO detailed its kinda scary. Example: If an artillery shell goes off near a truck and a small peice of shrapnel hits the gas tank, the truck will explode, flip on its side and your men can use the blazed truck as cover. Thats how detailed this game is. It is also very historically accurate and fun to play. Playing the french campaign was a blast. The only bad things with this game is level design for some french mission. For instance i cant pass the fort vaux mission because the AI is too damned advanced to beat. The english voice over is a bit awkward but its definitly understandable since the devs are french and i think russian. So overall i highly recommend giving this a try. There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to controls but it is a very fun and genuine war game :)

best game ive played since men of war assault squad.

Awesome game with some HUGE potential. Really can't wait to see how this game will shape up. Would be great to see the Ottomans as an added faction and the new Russian campaign. My major gripe with the game so far is that its difficult for me to detect what's useful in the campaign levels and what's just scenary and cover. Sometimes there are boxes with ammunition for your troops, and sometimes those boxes are just cover. You really have to survey all your surroundings to make the most out of your strategy and I wish that the UI made this a little more user friendly. It'd be great to just press and hold a key to light up all available boxes that you can use so you don't miss anything.

I also really got a kick out of artillery in this game so far but found it perhaps a bit too accurate and too fast with the amount of shots you can keep pumping out. Awesome how you can link it up to a horse and race it to another section of the fight though, great stuff!

Overall to me this feels like a Total War WWI game that we'll probably never see from SEGA so don't pass it up.

Have not been able to play the game for months due to this error: http://i.imgur.com/1GdhFFs.jpg

Loved the game itself, but I've payed for an expensive paperweight on my hard-drive that the developers don't care to help me fix at this point it seems.

EDIT: Game is now fixed with a DIY guide by one of the developers in the community hub. Still disappointed I had to jury rig the game to work rather then an official patch. I will now recommend the game, if you can bother sorting out technical issues.

I don't like men of war, but i do love this game ! Best World War 1 game i know.

Stealth mission are hard but cool.
Coop campaign is awesome and fun to play with a friend.
Realistic.
Kind developers, taking care of the game.
Good translation.
Graphics, they maybe look old but they are not.

You should take this game if you like WW1 game and RTS.

Over all a good game. Its fun but has a few bugs. One that is really anoying is when a shell comes in an hits near your men they drop there rifles and don't pick them up atomaticly. most of them do but sum you need to tell them to pick up there guns. sometimes there unable to pick there guns up and you have guys who are useless. Controls could be better. I wish mouse controls were like men of war 2. The campaign is fun, im on mission 4 of the french one. Its has stealth, defence and attack missions. The missions donot feel like the same thing. Online is fun when you get into a game. More people need to get this game its fun. A 6/10 at the moment. Cooll game, there needs to be more ww1 games.

Drove Tank in trench.

Got Stuck

Tank Blew up

Killed 11 of my men

11/10 Would get stuck again.

The dude sorta abides knowing it early access i dont expect much but there needs to be some kind of historical battles scenrios and need more campaign options like german campaign or austrian hungary also my russian DLc wont work says i have but wont install i will recomend this game tho but on the hopes to see some historical battle scenarios and atleast German campaign

Great game, patriotic Russian campaign!

I have followed BoE since it first appeared on Greenlight, and have been eager to get my hands on a copy. Well, my eagerness has not been dulled since purchasing and playing this early access ww1 game.

The gameplay is the typical MoW style, with objectives to be completed in order to progress. The models and overall graphics are well suited to the era - and should look quite amazing with the rtm version. No performance issues running on a Windows 8.1 laptop (..mine has 4GBRAM /500GB HDD/Intel HD &Radeon 3670m 2GB (Hybrid) graphics with the settings all maxxed out).

There are many types of units and equipment included in the "ea" release. So far I've played with the Infantry, Artillery, Mounted rifles, a British tank (and yes, they make excellent target practice for the Germans), support troops (ran a telephone line! ...and threw smoke to call in arty). All seems to be well represented and functional.

Missions and factions are limited right now, but more content will be added over time.

There is a passable tutorial, which is good enough to get you started - and a fairly challenging but enjoyable first mission. There are 8 missions, I think, in the current campaign.

The ambient sounds are good, although the gun fire does sound a bit "wrong". The voice overs are definately wrong - but funny at the same time. I feel I'm in command of a rag tag company :P

There are ingame options to select, although I could not get the music to go lower than the tutorial captains voice - so he was hard to hear.

Overall, straight off the digital shelf - this is an awesome effort by the developers in bringing a ww1 rts to life. It's definately worth adding to the list.. and if you are wondering, it's similar to the CoH mod: The Great War 1918, and of course if you own CoH and/or the Men of War series you know what to expect gameplay and graphics wise.
No crashes or glitches have been encountered - after 1.4 hours of gameplay.

Review Update 3.5 hrs playtime: Having played around 3.5 hours now - I have had one crash, after playing a MP match and was in the lobby chatting away. ALT+TAB'd out and when I went to ALT+TAB back in, the game threw an exception. Not a show stopper tho. Just relaunched the game.

Review Update 6.4 hrs playtime: Had a few 2v1/2v2/3v3 multiplayer matches - and all I can say is "wow" . The mp is epic! And very true to the murderous "advance with rifle" ww1, strategies.

It has to be played to be experienced...

Review Update 13.4 hrs playtime: Having alot of fun in the single player campaign - I have progressed to the 3rd mission (Night before the offensive). It's a stealth mission which brings in quite an interesting element to the game. I've been playing mostly multiplayer - and really enjoying it. I do struggle with the limited squad selection ability, but it does mean a bit more micromanagement - hopefully this gets improved and greater troop numbers are made available to the player. 3v3 is still epic tho!


"The tides may turn, only after many souls have fallen."



Early Access Score: 8.5/10

Infantry wins firefights, Tanks wins battles, Artilerry wins wars. This game preety much sums up that quotes..

Battle of Empires: 1914 -1918
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Battle of Empires is very similar then Men of War series but in World War 1 era.

You have to complete all objectives to move further into each mission.

Nicely polished graphics and the game runs very well. All units and weapons of this era are well represented in this game.

As you would expect this type of strategy game is challenging and keeps you on your toes from early on, which is exactly what you want.

This game is currently on early access and after playing 1 hour and 30 minutes, I did not encounter any issues so far.
One little criticism; some of the unit actions like reloading artillery are just a little bit hard in my opinion. Bear in mind, I am comparing it with a game that works extremely well (Men of War: Assault 2). I guess a little tweak in that regards. I think the final version will be just fine.

Positive:
~~~~~~
- Era well represented (units, weapons, etc)
- Challenging mission from early on
- A lot of achievements
- Nice graphics

Negative:
~~~~~~~
- Some of the command action (units) need to be smoother

Overall, I like it and I am looking forward to the final version.

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TL;DR
Men of War, but World War One RTS.
9/10

The campaign plays brilliantly like the original MoW..
It provides differeniating scenarios in which you may attack, defend, use stealth or a mixture of all of them to complete your objectives. The multiplayer is currently limited to Front Lines and Co-Op however I believe there are plans to roll out additional game modes (Such as Domination and TDM).

The graphics are fine, and the weaponry and uniforms are fitting to the era. You may play as the British, French, Germans or Russians, and play against eachother online in any combination. Furthermore, the game now focuses on strategy on a larger scale as opposed to the traditional MoW games. Micro-management can still be the decider of battles online and on singleplayer and can be the difference between a crushing defeat or a stunning victory.

you know this is a good game when 200 of your men are instantly ripped apart by machinegun fire, cannons, and gas within 10 seconds and you cant even find the corpses

10/10

Hours of fun with friends.

Unless you have none..

After getting upset with Verdun over the poorly designed depiction of WW1 soldiers and fed up with the gameplay, I was skeptical of WW1 games this year, figuring this year being the 100 year mark of the Great War people are just going to pump out garbage games. As a fan of Men of War series anyway from the first one, I decided to buy this the day it game out.

First and foremost, lets get the bad stuff out of the way. The voice acting is.... dreadful. Having Russians trying to do voice overs for French soldiers is just.... bad. They still dont have animations for the soldiers using the bolts on their rifles. The engine is getting on the older side but Im running in at 4k resolution with my 295x2 with no problems with framerates and the soldiers do look crisp up close. Some of the sound animations for the units are carry overs from the first Men of War as well. Some of the missions were you lead a small force can get into a save/load quagmire in a hurry.

As a professional German reenactor for for both world wars I wanted to see how authentic the uniforms and equipment would be. For WW1, I typically reenact as a Pioneer in the 5. St. Komp. I was delighted to see German troops in the early battles with early equipment, tunics, and helmets. I went crazy when the time switched to 1916 and my fellow sturmtruppen attacked my French lines in splendid pioneer style uniforms armed with a kar98az with classic leather patches on their elbows and knees. Some even had camo 1916 model helmets as well! After inspection, the only real fault I saw was wrong colored piping around the epaulettes using white for infantry instead of black typical of pioneers and sturmtruppen and the helmets being awfully black instead of a typical OD color in WW1 and feldgrau in WW2.

Quite an unfinished game at this point and dreadful Russian Voiceovers that may have you reaching for the mute button, its seems its going to be a great little ww1 rts based on the Men of War engine that sadly really doesnt have much competition at the moment. And at 15 bucks now its a steal since the price will be going up higher towards release. I just cant wait till the German campaign comes out when I get to lead my own squad of sturmtruppen over the top.

7/10

WW1 titles are rare, if you have been hoping for a good WW1 strategy then by all means, do get this game!

Battle of Empires: 1914-1918 (which I will refer to as BoE in this review) is a pleasantly surprising strategy game made in the mold of the Men of War series. In fact, it originally started out as a mod for MoE but has quickly shifted to become its own entity. So fanboys can stop reading, add to cart, and start enjoying - you're already sold because gameplay will be very similar and, in fact uses the same game engine. There will be a few slight differences which can be considered improvements although some nostalgic MoE players may disagree.

As for the rest of you, think World War I combat strategy on a somewhat grand scale. During gameplay players will have a variety of units to command: infantry, artillery, tanks, etc and each have their own individual inventories to allow total customization based on your combat needs. The combat is real-time and the maps are fully interactive. This means that obstacles can be destroyed, used for cover, and manipulated over the course of the battle as well as reflecting the changing landscape of the battlefield due to artillery shells, bombing runs, or even from building make-shift sandbag barricades to be used as cover. The amount of detail put into the units to reflect the time period is admirable and the effort does not go un-noticed. BoE truly feels like a WWI timepiece.

The game is extremely vanilla in its current Early Access state but still very playable. The developers have 5 different campaigns planned for inclusion into the full release version of the game along with additional bonus missions (possibly DLC?). Currently only the French campaign is included but the Russian campaign is almost completed and the others are currently "in progress." There is already an editor included for the purpose of modding so one can expect a lot of extra community content to be added as well.

The game also features both co-op and multiplayer as well and both are already working in basic form but I believe more features will be added before completion. For an Early Access game there is a lot of content and playability available and I experienced no bugs or crashes so there is no need to wait.

There are a few things that I hope to see improved before the final release. The sound and voiceovers are mediocre at best and still leave a lot to be desired. Another issue is with the limitations on squads. While the game consists of large scale combat, it becomes a hindrance moving troops all around the map when you can only control a specific handful at a time. The user interface feels cluttered and unorganized. It gets the job done but overall it just doesn't feel very efficient.

BoE includes a tutorial along with a skirmish mission before actually beginning the campaign in order to familiarize players with the various controls and such. However, at times this tutorial is vague and can be confusing, even more so for a player not familiar with this type of game and a lot of information is stuffed into this small sampling so it can quickly become overwhelming. Hopefully these elements all get ironed out before the game is released as a final product.

+ Authentic WWI atmosphere
+ Challenging strategic gameplay
+ Large variety of units and customization
+ Quality graphics
+ Low CPU usage
+ Game speed options
+ Multiplayer and co-op features
+ Mod friendly w/editting tool included
+ Rotating camera functions smoothly
+ Steam Achievements
+ High replay value
+ Active development team


+ Average sound and sub-par voiceovers
+ User interface is clunky and needs improvement
+ Confusing tutorial/steep learning curve
+ Squad limitations on mouseover

While Battle of Empires : 1914-1918 is still an "Early Access" game and the price may seem a bit lofty, there is already a lot of quality gaming content included with a lot more already in development. Plus it has an early stage multiplayer feature and comes with an editor for modding. I recommend RTS fans to grab this game now because the price could easily go up once all of the content is added. The gameplay is solid, the content is of good quality, and this game is just as fun and challenging as Men of War.


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One of few WWI games and the first WWI RTS to my knowledge.

It's sorta similar to Company of Heroes, but with a WWI theme and more realism and control of your units. Think of the old Commando games, but with much more units under your control.

Examples:

+All units actually have limited Ammuntion. Every unit has a inventory that can hold ammunition and weapons.

+Armor Penetration

+You can control every single unit in your sqauds. Order units to crouch or go into prone.

-/+ You don't build bases and spit units out of buildings. Unlike most RTS games. You call in units. Everyone starts off with a cap of units that they can call in. When you use up all your points on units that's it! You can construct some defenses though.

-/+ No ingame economy like most RTS games. You don't fight over resources. You fight over trenches and capture points. You take turns attacking and defending trenches .



Downsides:

-Horrid voice acting. Russians with broken English trying to voice act the French.

-Lower quality graphics compared to Blockbuster RTS games like Company of Heroes. They get the job done though.

-Larger multiplayer games are kinda laggy.


Overall I'd recommend if you're into WWI.