Before your Navy Seals and modern US Rangers, the UK was forced to create the special forces as we know them today. While David Stirling and the SAS were off in Africa and eventually taking on Operation Pegasus, and the SBS were blowing up boats with nothing but a kayak and a dream for Pilotage, Operation Jedburgh was a joint mission between the SOE and the OSS. If I throw any more letters at you, I’ll be mistaken for Sesame Street. The Jedburghs though were a bit more irregular, using guerrilla tactics with help from the Maquis, putting airdrops behind enemy lines.

A mission designed to disrupt the Nazi war machine in the weeks and months before D-Day, Operation Jedburgh is one of the many moving pieces to the conclusion of the war that maybe isn’t talked about much. War in games is often made to be as big and bombastic as possible, but Absolutely Games and Team17’s Classified: France ‘44 is an XCOM(/X-COM) like with a heavy focus (at least in the design doc) on stealth, reconnaissance, and disruption with the likes of sabotage. In reality, there are gameplay limitations that don’t allow for as much stealth as you might think.

The majority of missions are more about taking a select few out followed by an ambush turn if you get a little too stab-happy, though there are proper stealth missions about stealth kills and skirting around certain guards. The latter lets you kill as much as you like without alerts. For gameplay, it sounds like a great idea. In reality, it feels almost as if it is a vision or understanding compromised to fit an action-orientated role. Something I think that Classified: France ‘44 does revealingly by having some of the worst elements of turn-based combat baked in from the very beginning.

Now, with a paragraph like that behind me I have to say I don’t hate Classified: France ‘44, and I’m not saying that to play nice with publisher Team17. I think when it works, France ‘44 is up there in the upper tier of turn-based XCOM-likes, but is it putting a challenge to the standards set out by XCOM 2, Phoenix Point, Mutant Year Zero, or hell, even Mario Vs Rabbids? No, it feels like two competing ideas fighting for dominance. A small-scale grand strategy with XCOM combat chipping away at the Nazi war machine, fighting the small-scale historical stealth operations.

It is the small things that sour my opinion with the turn-based tactics/strategy (whichever it is at this point) overall: A very basic and bold, in-your-face UI without UI scaling, a story that might be there but doesn’t take hold of you, and godawful audio mixing, to name a few. Put on top of that a few technical issues encountered every time I’d bother to boot up France ‘44, it genuinely felt like a slog to push and hold back the German war machine bearing down on you at all times.

Despite there being a story, one that is rather obvious if you’ve opened your eyes or listened to the news as of late (almost 80 years), it isn’t very interesting. Yes, sending the boche back with power is fun and reasonably interesting. However, what plot hangs on the emaciated corpse of a World War II story right now in France ‘44 is hardly enough to get you invested in the many protagonists you meet along the way. I remember the little Communist bloke and the woman, but for the life of me, you couldn’t torture their names out of me.

Every one of them gets a small introduction as a sketch of them appears in a book, often telling you some of their backstory; The American captain, the couple of French men, I think I encountered one English from the starting party, and the two women. Their only interactions came in missions or by the campfire, they’d often mumble or shout something. The introductions and the campfire chat did little to make me connect with anyone. The campfire is where you find out why the Communist fella is of that political belief and that the squad wants to take him to see Casablanca.

There is a difference between people and to a degree an understanding of their beliefs, though there was so little to get invested in as a player due to their lack of redeeming/charming qualities. They felt like characters but little else, the human elements of them were few and far between. The Communist bloke talks about using political beliefs to bring about change but once the Germans are gone he wants the Brits and Yanks gone too. It is a hint of something, but nothing to fully latch on to.

Of course, being the Jedburghs, your job is to connect with the local resistance fighters which are broken up into three factions: The radicals (students and Communists), Charles de Gaulle’s supporters, and the criminals. Each controls a region of the map, focused on northern France. Of course, it is Overlord you are prepping, Perpignan isn’t the target here. Fighting the boche back in certain regions gains favor with each faction, offering up their limited wears to better equip your team. That’s something that becomes quite important as you progress closer to the landing.

Each region, such as Picardie, is broken up a little further, usually into three equal parts. Doing missions within the region gives you favor, securing it, and filling in the entire region can give you additional perks: more XP, lower recovery times, and so on. This is the element of “grand strategy” I spoke of, there is a benefit to being selective with which regions you begin to liberate, not just for the stores of the Gaullists, communists, and criminals, but for your victory too. Along the top of your map screen is a bar measuring success and the countdown to D-day.

Overlord happens either way, so it feels like your actions don’t always have an impact. Don’t get me wrong, there are missions where you are blowing stuff up in semi-spectacular fashion, but most missions are thinning out the Nazis and stealing documents. In the broadest sense, there are three mission types: Assault, Ambush, and Stealth. The Stealth of course the one that isn’t as much of a focus as you might think from the premise. Assault is often about waves of Nazis coming in, sometimes while you protect an airdrop, and you have to kill them all, with a bonus for doing so quickly.

Assault, for whatever reason, still isn’t the focus. “Ambush” is a mix of the two previous modes, and more often than not, you’ll do this type of mission. Though mission variety is certainly there, if you’ve come into what is portrayed as a stealth action title, you’ll be disappointed by the stealth. To some, such as our Editor-in-Chief, it is boring and frustrating. For others like myself, it can be a nice long methodical battle against an enemy guarding V2 rockets. The trouble I have with the stealth of France ‘44 is that it feels secondary.

The reason games offer both stealth and action as an option more often than not is to give a sense of challenge: Go in guns blazing and fight a difficult enemy or slowly and easily try to pick them off as they become more enraged, delusional, or concerned for their own lives. See Far Cry 3 and every game ever since for reference. Here, it is often just easier to get into a gunfight than it is to use your trench knife. I’m sure if there were Australians in the team, they’d bring spoons.

The point is that the action feels like the easier option which isn’t the point of a good stealth game, and that right there is the problem, France ‘44 isn’t a good stealth game. It is a serviceable one. Bodies turn invisible once killed, there is only one option for stealth kills, and as much as there is a warning where enemies turn or which direction they walk in, there isn’t a guarantee you’ll know where their cone of vision ends when they move. Yeah, the latter is understandable to a degree, but with a messy UI scared you’ll miss something, it is a detail I feel I’m just missing.

Classified: France ‘44 does have some unique aspects and they certainly make Absolutely Games’ title stand out as its own thing, but the morale system only goes so far. Yes, overall the gameplay is very much likened to XCOM, but there is a more strategic aspect thanks to a second health bar, of sorts. Right under the health bars above the highlighted Nazis dotted across the small maps, the morale bar offers you an opportunity to suppress and even break the enemy, limiting or stopping their next turn. This offers a unique way to escape from the location.

Morale doesn’t just affect the Nazis, however, and your small teams often of four or maybe six on recruitment missions can also be pinned down by suppressive fire. This means you’ll have to be smart about how you approach any attack. You can use even lower hit percentages to your advantage at the cost of ammo. Now ammo and battle supplies themselves aren’t a thing to be concerned about outside of a fight. Grenades and such replenish between each fight, but with period-appropriate equipment, your M1, Trench Guns, or Tommy Guns aren’t high on ammo capacity.

Combat itself is that XCOM-style of fun and strategic gameplay, though as I say, with the added layer of morale to contend with. It is hard to pick holes in such a tried and tested formula, which is well-oiled enough to keep me playing for more than 25 hours. Though I did say much earlier on that Classified: France ‘44 does have some of the turn-based crimes I hate of the genre, and I think it is fair to note them as I get towards the end of the review.

If there are no reinforcements on the way and I’ve killed everyone in the camp, why in the holy baby Jesus do I need to leapfrog the team through turns to the exfil slowly? There is no one around, there are no reinforcements, call the mission there, and let the team go home. What benefit to gameplay or enjoyment is there to leap-frogging turns and possibly triggering the reinforcements as you reach the extraction zone? This is one of the most frustrating things I found about any turn-based title. Leg it lads (and lass), you’ve done the job.

The other war crime of turn-based titles I find frustrating is the enemy turn. There are three options of turn-speed for the Nazis, but even then it can take a good few seconds for Classified: France ‘44 to realize Hans is standing still. I understand that there is a fog of war over unseen sections of the map, other Nazis could be doing something, but why do I care? Let me skip the animations and deal with the consequences of the previous actions, I’m already having to do that, so why should I wait for the AI? I’ve never understood this of turn-based titles.

While I’m on the Last Train Home (wink wink, nudge nudge) to Complaintsville, I’ve encountered several graphical bugs, technical issues, and general clunkiness. I’m not going to complain too much about the graphical quality of France ‘44, it is an isometric tactics title, it isn’t supposed to be graphically stunning. That said, I am pulled out of the world when my people are holding guns backward and upside down as if they’ve said “Look at this lads, I’ll Butch Cassidy this Nazi!” I don’t need Annie Oakley or Buster Scruggs, I want David Stirling and Paddy Mayne.

On the more technical and clunkiness side, I’ve had some members take their shot, and France ‘44 forgets to swap the team members, causing me to manually do it to complete my turn. On occasion, I’ve also encountered missions where I’d be unable to move the camera, at least for a few moments. Be it first loading in for a mission or when I’ve had to save scum as Nazis slide across the map. Speaking of load times, I’ve had some of them take a good minute or so on almost every single load screen; running from an SSD, it’s odd given the size of maps.

I’ve already said it, I don’t hate Classified: France ‘44, but I do think the small things have worn me down over 25+ hours. On its merit, France ‘44 is a commendable and enjoyable XCOM-like that maybe just isn’t as interested in stealth as it would seem. There are select missions in the “Spec Ops” mode that might offer a more stealth-orientated challenge down the line, especially as player-created maps become more prevalent, though the map creation tool is currently in Beta.

There is plenty of charm to the ideas put forth, I like the art direction that while yes looks a little drab in sections gives each map/location a sense of identity for the most part. What takes away from that charm, more or less, is the lack of definable character from everyone in the plot; generic stereotypes with clichéd accents.

Put on top of that a UI that’s clunky and cluttered, happy to give you more information than you need despite having “classified” in the title. I get it, not everyone needs to have a themed UI, but when the in-game encyclopedia isn’t even keeping the latter enemies a secret, what’s the point in the classified name? At least play with the idea a little here, make it fun, and give me a reason to unlock their info.

Ultimately, Classified: France ‘44 has a lot going for it as a period set piece XCOM-like with a heavy focus on gameplay first. That is something I appreciate as a fan of that approach. However, I do at least enjoy a good bit of storytelling to go hand-in-hand with that gameplay, and France ‘44 forgot to ground itself in those characters. Visual glitches, some bugs, and general clunkiness don’t help Absolutely Games’ first title either, though I’d hardly call that the main detractor to the turn-based title. It is a rough but admirable start, which I hope updates and maybe the forthcoming DLC, bring a smoother experience.

A PC review copy of Classified: France ’44 was provided by Team17 for this review.

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Classified: France '44

$34.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Solid gameplay.
• A fantastic setting and an untold section of the war.
• "Spec Ops" seems interesting, just have to wait for player-created missions.

Cons

• Lackluster story.
• Audio problems.
• Clunkiness/bugs.