I'd been watching the game make it's way through early access and liked the look of how it was shaping up. So far I've done the basic training and the first couple of missions in the Russian Campaign. I think I've only just scratched the surface of what the game has to offer.

I've seen a bunch of people complaining about the DLC which is a shame because the Devs have split the game up nicely for those who only want the Multiplayer part of it which I think is pretty neat. The base game is more than enough to say it's money well spent so for me DLC just means more hours of fun so when the next campaign is released I'll be getting the season pass for sure.

I'd really like to see more games set in WWI and Battle of Empires shows that if it's done right it can work really well.

This game has improved dramatically since it's inception, and the Multiplayer in particular is absolutely wonderful. That being said, it bothers me that the game doesn't have a "Skirmish" mode so as to try your skills against an A.I enemy. I think even a sort of "Wave Attack" game mode on the trenches vs A.I would be wonderful. The campaign is in short, awful.. alot of people are going to be annoyed by me saying that but it's simply the truth. The strength of this game is the entertaining multiplayer, this is magnified if you can find a group of fellow "BoE'ers" to play with regularly.

8/10 for multiplayer alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALGem_gopxk

This game is great. But the DLC... SUCH A CASH GRAB cannot recommend this simply because you need to buy so much to get a complete game.

It was fun at first, and sending waves of copy-pasted soldiers into the meat grinder in the editor is hours of entertainment, but I can't recommend this game just to save others from dissapointment.

I'll start with the elephant in the room, the devs are almost cartoonishly greedy it seems. They've cut the legs off the game to sell to us as DLC. It's analagous to selling someone a car, and then selling them a season pass that includes the rear-view mirror, the trunk door, and the two rear wheels.

Otherwise, the game fails to in any way captre the brutality of the first world war. This is do in part to the failing of the Gem engine to be able to accurately portray this, but nonetheless I expect more to that end from a project of this scale. Trench Warfare was frequently brutal hand to hand combat, but all this seems to depict is lazy potshots at one another from across no mans land. Artillery is frequently so weak it's virtually useless, failing to do any significant damage before the enemy has a chance to bandage themselves. The addition of horses was interesting at a glance, but the soldiers can't do anything from horseback, so attempting to make cavalry charges just results in a lot of dead horses. Hardly spectacular. Gas is rarely used in the campaign, and it's always a cutscene, watching a trenchful of your men just die without any kind of reaction. Nobody puts on the gasmasks that are clearly in their inventory, no body attemtps to run or seek shelther from it. It's like gassing mannequins.

All in all, a very poor depiction of World War One. Look elsewhere.

[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.