The balance of units in Panzer Corps 2 is a noticeable improvement over that of its predecessors. Choosing an approach is an exciting new addition that will have you thinking over your options every time. Overall, I think this change is a step in the right direction and adds more replay value since there are plenty of options to tailor your campaign along the way, though some may miss the additional benefits bestowed upon particularly effective generals. Scenarios now end in either victory or defeat, marginal and decisive victories no longer exist. Having multiple approaches in these campaigns is nice but it comes with a loss of the merit-based paths of the original Panzer Corps. Casualties are inevitable but it’s integral to your success that you minimize them as much as possible. When this happens, you have the choice of bringing in elite recruits that will maintain the unit’s experience or bringing in much cheaper ones that will reduce it by a proportionate level. This means that every single casualty has long-lasting detrimental effects on your campaign and units them suffer them will need to be reinforced or replaced by spending your hard-earned prestige. Scenarios offer a set of objectives that must be accomplished within a deadline and the units, prestige, and experience carry over from one to the next.
Those who’ve played Panzer Corps will find the campaign setup quite familiar. With five campaigns and plenty of scenarios, you’ll find yourself in a variety of climates. The last thing you want to do is fight in the woods and mountains if you’ve focused the majority of your energy on improving your armored divisions. Instead it simply offers an overview of the challenges that you may face with each approach and what you’ll need to prepare for, an important choice if you’ve specialized your forces in a certain direction. Although an earlier build had direct mechanical benefits for choices (Poland offered prototypes for the north and increased prestige for the south), it seems this was scrapped and your choice no longer offers such benefits. Poland, for example, has a northern and southern approach that you can take which will give you two separate experiences with different scenarios and challenges to overcome. There are several campaigns available and they frequently offer choices that can alter the path that they take. It’s quite an accomplishment to develop a game that is so well designed that the majority of its flaws go under the radar until they’re later revealed by its own sequel’s improvements, but Flashback Games did just that.
Seemingly everything was improved at least a little and I found myself instantly hooked. Yet I was pleasantly surprised (maybe even ecstatic) when I began my invasion of Poland in Panzer Corps 2. Needless to say, I wasn’t sure how it could be improved upon enough to warrant a sequel and was skeptical that there would be enough that was new to make its price tag worth it. With a robust selection of units complete with a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses, determining the right tool for the job is a must to ensure that you don’t run out of resources and doom your campaign. Scenarios are tense throughout, resources and time are limited, and although your forces are always improving, so too are your enemies’. As far as tactical wargaming goes, I struggle to think of a title that did a better job of representing it than Panzer Corps.
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