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Strategy & War


East Front II
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 best

By Martin E. Cirulis
(7/1/1999)

The good: Good AI, tons of scenarios, two different types of campaigns, full editor. 
The bad: Dated graphics: palette makes some units hard to see, interface bogs down at times. 
The bottom line: A good old-fashioned tactical war game--what East Front should have been. 
Multiplayer: Very good 
Single player: Excellent 


East Front was an ambitious war game design that covered the German invasion of Russia at the platoon level. Unfortunately, despite patches and an overhaul provided by a campaign disc, the game never overcame its growing pains, and East Front went down as a near miss in the minds of most war gamers. Never one to take a defeat lightly, TalonSoft is once more rushing into the fray with a much improved East Front II, showing that a little ironing out of design kinks can go a long way.

West Meets East
Fans of the series will quickly realize that East Front II owes its polish to the recent West Front. If you view West Front as an attempt to put all the promise of the first East Front game into practice, then East Front II is a further refinement of that process. Where West Front removed most of the bugs from the engine, East Front II tweaks the engine and gives us the game we were hoping for in the first place. There are numerous improvements and additions to the West Front system, and the game even includes all the scenarios from the first East Front, so you can now play them "properly."


 
Screen Shots
Click the captions for more game shots!

-Axis vs. Allied
-Scenario options
-V for victory

East Front II is a platoon-level war game that takes place on a traditional hex map, but instead of a flat map board, you get a skewed 3D landscape that's more reminiscent of a miniatures battle than an old board 'n' counters slugfest. As its name suggests, the game covers WWII's Eastern European campaign, from its outset in Poland in 1939 to its final bloody moments in Berlin in 1945. The battle scope ranges from a handful of platoons to full divisional conflicts involving hundreds of counters.

You can choose from more than 70 individual battles, or play 2 types of campaigns. Linked campaigns consist of a tree of individual scenarios through which you proceed, based on the levels of success you achieve in each battle. Dynamic campaigns are a string of randomly generated battles that roughly approximate what a commander might have faced over a given period of time on the Russian front. Both provide excellent play value for the money. If you manage to work your way through all of this, there is a very detailed scenario builder that lets you pretty much re-create any battle you can find in a book, or you can just create new scenarios on your own.

And to say that East Front II is fanatical about realism would be an understatement. Nearly half of the 200-page manual is devoted to detailed equipment tables covering every single weapon and platform used on the Russian front. The scenario builder contains the best Order of Battle database I've seen outside of a board game, and you can easily choose the historically accurate units for any of your battles. Weapons fire is very well done, and the system takes in a variety of factors to determine a hit and its effect. Morale and supply are realistic and handled automatically by the program; you're notified only if a unit you've selected is deficient in either of the categories.


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East Front II


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