More gameplay

There are of course a limited number of reinforcements that can be called in, both per mission and for an entire theater, like North Africa or France. If you want to have the maximum number of reinforcements available for the final battle, you need to economize during the missions.

Not only do the units gain the experience of their commanding officer, but they are upgraded as the game goes along. This is done the same way as unit unlocking. Initially the player’s available unit pool is small, but winning missions permits the use of new units. As the game progresses, he’ll get upgrades to those units by winning more missions. Thus, your lowly Heinkel He-111H-2 bombers upgrade to the H-6 variant, then Ju-88s and so on.

In a fast-paced tactical RTS like Blitzkrieg, the player’s attention and ability to micromanage his units is as much a resource as his units and reinforcements. Backing a force of light tanks away from a cluster of rapid-fire Bofors AA guns and letting the heavies deal with it, or bringing artillery in, is important, but is it as important as providing cover for the trucks towing the artillery? Or would it be better to use up a reinforcement call and bring in a bomber strike (which may or may not hit the target)?

Though a deceptively simple game at first appearances, which seems to reward the big huge tank rush, the difficulty and complexity of interactions quickly ramp up. Tactics, proper reinforcements and the ability to respond to threats as they reveal themselves from camouflaged states are vital. There’s a fair bit of twitch involved, but nothing that should overwhelm casual players like StarCraft multiplayer might. Since there is no base management, this leaves players free to focus on the game and solves what is a rather tedious aspect of the game.


Overall, Blitzkrieg II is looking to be an evolutionary improvement over its predecessor, it polishes up the weak spots but doesn’t do anything wild to drives away its core audience. Who should be interested in this? Well, if you tried Codename Panzers: Phase One and hoped for some more realism and a lot more challenge, that will almost certainly be the Blitzkrieg series.