The Great War: Western Front - SNF Demo Preview

I’ve been on somewhat of a kick of early 20th-century wars and politics these last few weeks: Rising Front, Animal Farm, WW2 Rebuilder, and my excitement for the upcoming historical strategy game, The Great War: Western Front. In the early February Steam Next Fest, The Great War was one of the games I thought I’d give a short amount of my time. I won’t say my excitement is wholly gone as a result of playing the demo, but I will say it has been tempered slightly.

As a demo, it is (of course) limited in comparison to what you’ll get when the full game releases on March 30th. The demo for Petroglyph Games and Frontier Foundry’s The Great War: Western Front only offered the tutorial and a historical battle with stringent objectives to follow. Neither is completely flawed, but in reality, it didn’t give me a great amount of time to fully get to grips with the controls and the mechanics, or understand how to play properly. Part of that is down to how we regularly structure tutorials in strategy games, which is often very hands-off.

The Great War: Western Front is no different in that regard: A lot of it is done through great storytelling while the rest is a paragraph or two at a time on the history of dirt. Before you strategy-types protest (I know, I’m one of you sometimes), that’s what we call a joke. Every detail, no matter how small (though not as detailed as Crusader Kings 3), gets its own description in the tutorial. Call me impatient or label it a symptom of dyslexia, but regardless, I prefer a tutorial that gives you a brief explanation and then tells you to run hog wild to fully understand mechanics instead of feeling constrained by a tutorial.

What is offered in the demo’s tutorial is a brief overview of the turn-based frontline map and a small section showcasing the battles. For my limited time with The Great War, I’d have liked more time to understand the frontline aspect and how to best implement strategies better. In reality (as I say in a more detailed Rising Front piece), the war that is best summarized by “yes, but what do you mean ‘one‘?” was known for throwing bodies at the problem. War is wasteful in the first place, but unlike the fact of wastefully killing millions of men, The Great War limits your number of units.

You can send as many platoons of men too young to chop the fur off their faces to the front as you see fit, but you are limited by the number of active units you can deploy and the supplies you have. Active units are displayed along the bottom of the screen amid battles, each of which you can command individually or highlight them all and go over the top together. From what I understand and was able to enjoy without being confused by stop-start gameplay segments, I enjoy how brutal and grim the battles are. The overview of the front showcasing the towns you reclaim in inch-by-inch warfare is also really interesting. It is a game of tug-of-war.

What I really (for lack of a better word) hated were the times when control was taken away from me. This is of course based on the tutorial (and the small bit of free play thereafter) and a strictly historical battle segment, so there was a lot the actual campaign or skirmishes could do far better. Nonetheless, for a real-time strategy game, The Great War was giving me the same feeling I get when turn-based strategies take forever to do something simple like animate a bloke walking on from stage left. Pull your finger out and get a move on!

I care most about how games feel and The Great War: Western Front pushes its theming to give you a great sense of command, but also era-appropriate sentimentality. At the end of battles Nora Bayes starts her signature “Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun!” from “Over There.” Of course, what is there focuses on the front that Germany fought against once Russia signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. As is often the case it is easy to forget the whole of the central powers in this conflict.

I didn’t get to see Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, or Bulgarian involvement, nor did I see what Eurogamer calls persistent battlefields. Noted from early press releases back in August, you’ll find battlefields scarred by your previous battles throughout the war. Supposedly, this will prevent your units from advancing easily. As an idea, as a way of truly showcasing the horrors and reason why it took 4 years to call the whole affair off, this sounds fantastically interesting. Though it is difficult to say I got a proper look at this with such a limited amount of time with the demo.

I might say I have a more tempered view of The Great War: Western Front, but I am still terribly excited to get my hands on the full release at the end of March. When you’re allowed to think for yourself, battles are fun and deeply interesting compared to other strategy games I’ve been playing of late. Though I didn’t get a great amount of time to push the frontline back further back over the Rhine, I’m intrigued by what that could be like without the limits of the demo. Now I just have to wait until the end of March before I get to enjoy The Great War: Western Front.