I have to admit that before I was offered the chance to review Commander: Europe at War I had never even heard of it. It's only available for digital download at the moment from www.slitherine.com or www.matrixgames.com which might explain the lack of hype. Looking around online I didn't find a great deal of information. All I really knew was that the game is a turn-based strategy game set in World War II, historically accurate and all about tactics. I don't often play games like this, so did I make the right choice in choosing to review it? The answer is definitely yes!

As soon as the game is installed, the simplicity of setting it up and running it is an immediate advantage over many other PC games. There are no complex options to fiddle with; all mind-boggling settings like VSync and anti-aliasing are gone, replaced with two simple buttons. There is a "Low" button for minimum spec machines and a "High" button for recommend spec machines. Click one and the game loads with the appropriate settings for your PC. That's all you need to do. This is a great system and other games should really start to follow suit.

Before starting a new game, I strongly suggest you play through the tutorial. It explains most of the concepts used in the game, from the simple controls to how to declare war on other countries. The minor problem with the tutorial is that it lasts a bit too long. After I had crushed all troops owned by Poland, I had forgotten what I was meant to do! There is no obvious way to review your objectives, which left me confused. The tutorial seems too open; it merely brings up a text description when you do things like open the research view or initiate combat. A more step-by-step tutorial would have been better for new players without the patience to read the large manual.

There is something about Europe at War that feels like you're really orchestrating a war. There's no special detail put into cleverly animating units or intense action sequences; but it feels exactly like it should to be an armchair commander, away from the mud and flying shells. You select control of either the Allies or Axis and you're given troops, tanks, planes, boats and so forth. These can be moved around an absolutely huge map, stretching from western USA to the mainland USSR. The map is divided into hexagons of equal size. Each turn a unit can move a number of hexagons and/or attack (although tired men can't fight so well). As you'd expect, planes can zoom across the battlefield, but curiously seem to be unable to fly over the sea. Each hexagon has differing terrain. Troops can quickly march over grassy plains, while they struggle on rough ground. Once a unit has moved, that's it until the next turn. Even if you've just moved a unit one hexagon when it could move further, it cannot be moved any remaining distance again later in that turn, which is a little frustrating.

Fortunately, men and vehicles cannot get stuck in marshes or seized by cold environments. With no constraints on movement like this, the endless shifting of troops around the map can get quite boring after a long play session. However, there is an option called "Oil Consumption" that you can switch on before starting a new game. Whenever you move tanks, planes or any other armoured vehicle, you lose oil, with remaining oil displayed at the top of the screen. This regenerates over time with controlled cities and oilfields. Some cities produce more oil than others, so you have to think strategically about where to attack and with how large a force. If your oil ever runs out, your whole war machine grinds to a halt, becoming easy prey for the opposition. This adds a whole new layer of strategy and realism to the game that tactical minds will relish. It's an excellent feature that the developers allowed this to be turned on or off (it's off by default) though, as it really does make the game a lot more challenging.

This brings me to another minor issue I have with the game; there are not enough cities and some large stretches of land are void of resources altogether. Where there are cities, it seems far too easy to capture them. You just need a unit present in that hexagon, provided there are no enemy units already there. I would have liked a little challenge once enemy units defending a city are destroyed. Should there not be some militant uprising from civilians against the new leaders? There ought to be some greater sense of achievement, but sadly the game just continues.

Units look exactly as they should for a game set in this period and you can easily identify the type of a unit from its appearance. Sure, they are just 2D static images and wildly out of scale with each other, but this just adds to the realism of being a commander away from the front. A commander of this era wouldn't be able to see the battlefield directly, but rather move representative units around a map. In fact, during play you can access the options screen and change unit displays to 'counters'. This replaces units with symbols indicating their type. To me this just makes it confusing to tell which unit is which, but it does add more realism I suppose. The map is also well drawn, not being cluttered and keeping the armchair commander theme. It uses shading to show roads and buildings in the background. The terrain type of a hexagon becomes obvious from the way it looks. The only disappointing graphic is that for a fortress - a simple white outline around the hexagon.

The units sound just like you'd expect as well. Troops can be heard marching when ordered to move, machine guns rattle during combat, submarines sound alarms when under attack and so on. The music is suitably quiet and does not get in the way of your thoughts - it can be turned off if you like, but after a while you'll forget it's even there.

Another good feature of this game is the challenging and clever AI. The Allies are more spread out than the Axis and so production points allowing them to build units are automatically shipped about in convoys. These are vital to the Allies. Naturally, if you choose to play as the Allies you will want to protect convoys, as those Axis meanies will do their best to destroy them. If you choose to play as the Axis then the AI controlled Allies will do their best to protect their convoys, just as you would. The AI also circles around behind units, cutting off their supply lines, making them less effective in battle and ensuring they cannot be repaired.

By far the highlight of the game is the combat. I mentioned earlier that each hexagon has a different terrain type. The position of troops on different terrain types influences the odds of winning a battle. Well, when I say winning, it's actually fairly rare that you come out of a skirmish unscathed. The best you can hope is to do more damage to your opponent than they do to you. It's often the case that your enemy may do more damage to you, even though you initiated the attack, which adds more realism to the war theme. Other factors influence combat too - unit tiredness, strength, supply, air support, entrenchment, whether a commander is attached to that unit and so on. This is all neatly summarised by a ratio that indicates the chances of your units against the enemy's units.

For a game that takes pride in its historical accuracy, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of espionage units. There are no spies, assassins or saboteurs. This was around the time when all the spy games stuff kicked off, so why have they been left out of the game? There were many daring and often foolhardy attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. They all failed, but it still would have been nice to dabble in this part of history.

Commander: Europe at War is a high quality tactical strategy game. I haven't even mentioned the multiplayer, nor the modifiable scripts used to change scenarios. To get the most out of this game you have to understand the type of game it is. If you're expecting a fast-paced, all-action in-your-face war game like Company of Heroes then you won't enjoy it. If, however, you're looking for a slow, tactical war command simulation then you need look no further. I prefer action games, yet I still very much enjoyed this one. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to invade Edinburgh and crush those Allies once and for all!

Reviewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).