Replaces Combat Mission finally and takes the wargaming genre in a large step forward
-The pre-mission brief gives you almost no indication of the forces you are to face so it makes picking your forces a bit of a guess.
-You can't seem to start a mission with your infantry mounted.
-Someone mentioned you can't highlight units and they are hard to see. If you click in the HUD it highlights each unit. You can also hit N to cycle through each unit. I do wish there was a way to see the movement routes for an entire Platoon at once.
-Ability to move the camera/map around is excellent. You can swing around, zooom in/out, move up down, click around on the mini map and more. All performs smoothly. Well done. There is a very cool 'Binocular' view (tab-tab).
-The pathfinding is my biggest complaint so far. Having no waypoints is really annoying. The game seems to try to compensate for this by having short turns with two phases so units don't really move very far between orders. This just makes for more order giving and is still a poor substitute as it defeats the platoon order concept. You give orders to a platoon but in certain situations you then have to really micromanage particular units within because of the pathfinding issues. There is no 'pause' order so getting platoons or units coordinated can be tricky. Also I can't quite figure out how movement distances are determined. In one case I had two platoons in the same field move differently with one platoon moving much sooner than the other (and thus further). You also have no way to know how far a unit is to (or at least can) move in a turn/phase. It would be nice if the movement line indicated the furthest the unit would (theoretically) get that phase.
-As mentioned, orders are given to PLATOONS. So, for example, you must give the entire platoon a move order. If you want one unit not to move you then need to change that one unit's assignment. At times this is really handy and at other times it is really annoying so I'll call it a wash. You have a number of order options including 'Bound' where the AI will move half the platoon and overwatch the other half. You can't pick which as far as I can tell.
-I may be misunderstanding what is going on at this point but the friendly AI doesn't seem to react well. At one point I gave a tank platoon orders to engage an enemy tank. An AT gun then popped up closer. The platoon engaged the AT gun instead. This was good AI. Mostly though the AI didn't do smart things like that and would not react well to a target being destroyed or other targets popping up. There seem to be secondary target assignments but I can't tell what they do. Units seem to maybe fire too much ammo. I'll need to play more to get a better grasp of this.
-Picking targets is unclear. As you move the cusor line over a target it will say 'moderate chance to hit' or something (and indicates the range) but exactly where you can let go is not clear (or it doesn't matter?). It doesn't 'snap' to a target like Combat Mission. HE seems to give you a target box to place. I suspect the manual will explain all this.
-The graphics are good. They are not so good compared to a modern FPS or RTS game but good for a wargame and at least as good as later CM games if not better in some respects. The 'Insert' key toggles a terrain view that makes it very easy to see where terrain features really are. I wish the map itself made it easier but this view works just as good. I wish CM had this feature. Graphic performace was great with all options turned on at 1280x1024. Sound is very good although the interface beeps and bops are a bit loud and annoying but that's a real nit. Gunfire is well done as are explosions; although, I miss that CLANG! from CM when you get hit!
-The terrain is very varied but you have to get down close to tell most of the time. One thing I really miss from CM is the Line of Site tool. In Panzer Commander it is tough to tell what can see what. The Engage/Target line will go transparant when LOS is blocked but doesn't indicate WHERE it is being blocked. If a tree or building is in the way it is easy to figure out but if it is just some fold in the ground within a huge field it is a real pain. I lost a lot of units just because I didn't realize certain units could see certain things. Using the excellent Binocular view (tab-tab) would probably help. I hope they add a better LOS tool/indicator.
-I got clobbered my first game so the enemy AI isn't that bad. But as far as I could tell it didn't move a unit the entire time. But I am not sure.
-The manual is excellent. HttR and CotA have spoiled me rotten but PC does have a fine manual. It is 96 pages but only 55 of those are rules. The rest is info on units, history, mod tips, etc. It is detailed and well written and I suspect once I finish reading it I'll have an easier time with the game.
-Someone mentioned some long phase times. Mine all went quickly. The longest wait was maybe 10 seconds. I'm on a 3.2Ghz P4.
-Overall I'd say Panzer Commander is a good game and a good buy and will grow into a very good series. I think it does feel a bit like a first release with perhaps some issues to work out but I'll withhold judgement on that until I finish the manual and play some more missions. I suspect it will be a winner overall though. Worth the $40 for sure.