Hey grognards: opinions on Theatre of War series

[Darwin]

I'm looking hard at Theatre of war, though from the demos I find it terribly unforgiving, ex: the ToW2 demo where you've got a half dozen shermans and infantry against what appears to be a whole panzer brigade.

Anyone else here played the full game? What do you think of the difficulty level, both in intended and unintended (wrestling with the interface)?

[CaptHawkeye]

ToW is a series that makes me sad because the controls are pretty so-so and the game expects you to perform a ton of micromanagement. Also, what you said about the impossible missions is sadly true. It's another one of those silly RTS titles that expects you to kill entire Battalions with a squad or two.

I like it's attention to detail and realistically sized battle maps. Overall though, ToW is desperately in need of a Grand Strategy system of some kind. As it is now it sort of cuts itself short of being a real "World War: Total War."

[Darwin]

I was hoping for missions that would be realistically beatable first time with good strategy and skillful orders, (like the Close Combat games) not trial and error with save/reload until the random numbers fall your way. =/

[CaptHawkeye]

The controls and game play are so needlessly complex that will never happen. I'm always ahgasted at the kind of control schemes developer's *think* they need for a sim simply because it's a sim.

[Darwin]

*Downloads a copy so he can try it out before dropping 2 jacksons on it*

*makes it as far as the second polish mission*

#@$#%@#^

I fucking call shenanigans on this bullshit.