Hello everyone and welcome back to the Tank Encyclopedia channel!
I'm Lucian and i'll be your host for our first ever game review video!
We'll be having a look at an old time classic called Blitzkrieg.
So, let's dig in and see if this game is still worth the while
Blitzkrieg was released 16 years ago in 2003,
being developed by Nival Interactive, a Russian company that also
developed Silent Storm and Heroes of Might and Magic 5.
It was originally published by CDV, a German company that also published games such as
Codename Panzers, Cossacks, Doom and Sudden Strike.
As you might have guessed from the title, the game is set during the Second World War, with the player taking
the role of a commander on the German, Soviet or Anglo-American sides.
So, let's answer the question, is it still good?
Blitzkrieg is a real-time tactics game.
Basically, every mission drops you on the battlefield with a number of units and a
lot of enemy units. There is no building construction or ways to buy new units,
although paratroopers can be dropped in during certain missions.
The player can also replenish infantry units that suffered losses and crew artillery pieces that
had their crews killed but have not otherwise been destroyed.
The game sometimes gives you some reinforcements, but that is highly scripted and only
appears in a handful of missions.
However, as far as armor is concerned, what you get
at the start of the mission is generally what you have to get the job done with.
Because there is no resource gathering and construction and all the other stuff
usual for the RTS genre, Blitzkrieg is intently focused on combat tactics and, surprisingly, logistics.
The enemy is also similarly limited and the basic idea is
to take out the enemy's troops while preserving your own to the best of the
player's ability because every loss will hurt.
That is until you finish the mission and don't care anymore because nothing really carries over
the game doesn't seem to care that much about your units anyhow.
You have a set of tanks and artillery pieces called 'core units' that you take along from
mission to mission, but the worst that happens if you lose
one is that you get a new one that has less experience.
Blitzkrieg aims more on the realism side of wargames, although the many technology limitations of the
time means there are arcade elements aplenty.
The game does, however, succeed in having a more realistic feel than many newer
games, but it really hurts in certain sections, especially with regards to
vision and firing ranges and damage mechanics.
There are two kinds of missions in the game. Random missions that are auto-generated and are
different every time you play them and historical scenarios that are large
scripted engagements revolving around a certain battle or operation.
These are grouped in chapters and, basically, to complete the chapter, you need to finish
at least one random mission and then the historical scenario to end the chapter.
There are three types of random missions per chapter, easy, medium and hard and
each give out different rewards in the shape of singular unit upgrades.
For example, receiving a Tiger tank for the next missions.
These random missions do tend to get repetitive and grindy after a while.
The maps are all seriously small for the kind of combat the game is meant to illustrate,
probably because the game was made back when computers would dumber than a wristwatch
but this does have some predictable consequences.
Planes just circle around a lot in order to try and stay on the map.
The vision and firing ranges are also annoying.
Every unit has the same vision range, negating an important advantage of infantry and disadvantage armor.
Bushes and buildings can obscure the line of sight,
as do smoke shells, a mechanic so useful I have not used it once in my many many playthroughs.
However, the range limitations are even more annoying.
With the exception of a couple of long-range artillery pieces, all the tanks, infantry
and AT guns have the same firing range.
You know that amazing 88 mm gun that can blast in enemy tanks many kilometers away?
In-game, it has the same range as your average sub machinegun.
Or, even worse, the tank guns have the same range as the late infantry rocket-propelled guns, which makes
infantry severely dangerous to armor late in the game.
Also compounding this, the vision and firing ranges are usually the same.
So, if you want to kill something, it will be able to see you and fire back.
Now, the combat is actually refreshingly quick because, while the game still uses a health point system,
most units die pretty quickly, which puts some extra pressure and planning attacks
and defenses because if things go south you won't have a lot of time to reassess
and disengage before your forces are terminated.
This is a real breath of fresh air compared to how other strategy games, old and new, handle combat,
with tanks chugging away at each other for minutes before one dies.
However, armored combat is a bit wonky, as tanks will face each other and just keep dinging and
missing each other before one goes up in flames.
Damage taken is also not that predictable. You can take a shot and lose
a nail of health and have the next shot from the same enemy completely obliterate you.
However, this also makes combat seem really intense and puts you on the edge of the seat.
The game does reward proper planning. Are your tanks entrenched?
Are you facing the enemy? Is the enemy facing you?
Are your tanks well armed and armored? All of these will influence your chances in the fight but it isn't deterministic.
There's a lot of randomness to it and sometimes gives a a good feeling of realism.
Sometimes it just gives a good feeling of bullshit!
Now, there are 5 unit classes in the game. There is infantry, artillery, armor, aviation and logistics.
Infantry is probably the weakest of them all, as they just get
mowed down by machine guns and enemy entrenched infantry.
However, there was is one type of infantry that is completely overpowered and that is the sniper which,
when lying down, becomes completely invisible to anything not within ten
meters of him, which makes it laughably easy to rain down artillery on enemy units.
Oh, and he can also take out the crews of any guns while still not losing cover!
Artillery comes in three shapes, AA, AT and long-range.
AT guns feel like cheap defensive tanks that can get killed by infantry and snipers.
They're quite useful in defense and you'll need to be wary of enemy ones.
Anti-aircraft guns, on the other hand, will make you understand why the 88 has a reputation it has!
Besides the fact that a single AA gun will obliterate waves of aircraft
without breaking a sweat, they are also vicious against armor and
infantry due to their high penetration, damage and insane fire rates.
Just slightly overpowered!
It was at this moment he knew, he fucked up!
Long-range artillery is able to shell most of the map and is supremely useful either in
softening up enemy defenses or obliterating them with the help of
spotting from a sniper. However, artillery is vulnerable to enemy
artillery and the enemy AI will make a point of sticking it to you with counter
artillery fire if they have the ability to do so.
Honestly, the counter artillery mechanic in this game is a really nice touch and
adds a nice layer to the gameplay.
Armor, just as we love it here at Tank Encyclopedia, is the meat of the game, with tanks being vital to most
attacks and counter-attacks. However, except on the easy difficulty settings,
doing a tank only charge into enemy defenses is a surefire way of losing them quickly!
Aviation, while quite complex and powerful, is usually best
left alone because it is so easy to counter. You can basically call a single
type of air unit every couple of minutes and so can the enemy so.
Pretty much anything you call in, the enemy will call in fighters and destroy it and you
do the same to him. You can try to be sneaky and let the enemy call in a recon
plane in sand in dive bombers while his Air Force is on cooldown but even then
you'll find out that AA guns make minced meat out of aircraft.
There's really just one mission, in Italy, in the Allied campaign, where aircraft just rule
and kill everything off the map but in any other mission, not quite valid!
Finally, and most boringly, there's logistics. In order to function, your
tanks need ammo and repair from time to time. Furthermore, bridges can be built or
repaired, mines laid or removed, trenches dug, obstacles placed and abandoned guns captured.
While the game doesn't usually give you the time or the need for such
defenses, supplying and repairing your units is highly important.
The Maus may be nigh unbeatable but if it's tracked and out of ammo, it is also nigh useless
so take care of your trucks.
The factions are pretty well balanced,
although there is some bullshit related to the Soviet side, which has higher HP
for the infantry and also extreme accuracy for the ground attack planes.
Not to mention the Peshkas that just eat up 109s for breakfast.
Hey, what did you expect? It's a Russian-made game and Russian bias never gets old!
There are four difficulty levels in the game, which vary from 'a Humber armored
car can take on the entire Wehrmacht' to 'bomb everything and then bomb it
again' to 'Oh my God, a Panther, the Motherland is lost!'
I highly recommend sticking to medium. Easy's for people in a coma and hard is just unfair.
All in all while the gameplay suffers from limitations of the time when the game
was made, which is an explanation not an excuse, Blitzkrieg does still feel
interesting and it somehow works together quite well.
It cannot top newer games in the genre, but it can hold its own pretty decently.
The story in Blitzkrieg is the best there ever was, the Second World War.
However, there's a big asterisk to this sentence!
The missions and action in Blitzkrieg are
not historical, they are historically themed, merely emulating a pop-culture kind of
representation of the fighting they are meant to illustrate.
There are three campaigns in Blitzkrieg with seven to eight chapters each, covering the
invasion of Poland, the Winter War, the invasion of Norway, the invasion of
France, the fighting in North Africa, a lot of the Eastern Front, the invasion of
Italy, the invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Berlin
However, there are significant issues with the way these missions are
presented and structured even if they're not meant to be totally historically accurate.
In the Winter War historical scenario, the Mannerheim line is
presented as a well-prepared series of heavy fortifications manned by
significant numbers of Finnish soldiers.
The Battle of the Bulge takes place
during autumn because the developers couldn't be arsed to make winter camos
for the Allied units. Also, the Germans go up against well fortified Allied units
backed up by ample supplies of armor and artillery.
During the battle of Stalingrad, you are tasked with defending the outskirts of the city, which is
somehow meant to represent the two months of bloody fighting within and
then you have to break through the enemy lines which have somehow appeared on the
left side of the Volga. Oh, also, there are Tigers!
The main exposition method is of course a whole lot of text at the start of each
chapter explaining the situation and where the operation or battle originated from
and this is basically all that keeps the game from being a disparaged
mess of totally unrelated scenarios because there's nothing linking most of them.
You're not a certain commander or focused on certain unit and there is no
other reason the chain of missions is as it is other than that they are more or
less famous and chronologically in order.
The long texts at the start of each chapter flesh out the historical context and help the player with his appetite
for more information to be then searched in more reputable sources.
That is not to say that these texts are not without their mistakes or intentional omissions.
For example, returning to the Winter War, this was caused by the Soviet Union's
'search to improve its strategic position', not its ongoing crusade of trampling
over the independence of the states of Eastern Europe in concert and agreement with the Nazis.
There are also smaller texts for each mission but they are less
historical and more informative from the gameplay point of view.
There is also a fairly large in-game vehicle encyclopedia, which is half-way decent and
is an amazing addition for 2003.
However, nowadays there are a lot more and better
information sources available online for free so just come read Tank Encyclopedia and Plane Encyclopedia.
There are also videos at start and end of each campaign
composed of part horribly colorized historical footage and part CGI but they
seem to serve little exposition purpose except some eye candy.
So, while the story is the best ever was, the storytelling is plain boring-ish and sometimes wrong
Blitzkrieg is full to the brim with tanks and AFVs. There's not even a single
mission without at least a couple of them in.
And there's a bewildering variety of models represented ranging from the
Vickers 6-ton medium all the way up to the Maus, all with their own armor,
penetration, damage and mobility values and almost all of them with the same view and firing ranges!
But the thing that I really love about tanks and Blitzkrieg
is that while they feel immensely powerful, a bit too much so actually,
and they are one of the most important instruments of war in your arsenal, they
aren't the ultimate wonder weapon a lot of people believe they were.
Poor deployment, lack of interarm support, lack of reconnaissance and proper logistics
will let them down and there's a lot of stuff on the battlefield that can and
wants to kill them. They feel powerful while also feeling vulnerable which is
the kind of balance a lot of strategy games fail to achieve.
Of course, the game has a lot more stuff to illustrate and remind to those interested in the
history and particulars of armored warfare and a lot of this is really
common sense but seems to have been drowned out lately by a lot of white
noise in the military history circles. So, just a quick recap:
Anti-tank guns are extremely effective in the defensive unless properly softened up by artillery
and they were responsible for most of the tank losses in the Second World War.
Anti-tank rifles were a thing that could really kill tanks, until they couldn't and
infantry became powerless against tanks for a while, and then rocket-propelled
grenade launchers became a thing and the doctrine change forever.
Air power can kill tanks, but it's not really that good at it. It is, however, very good at killing
everything that supports tanks and thus making them less effective.
Reconnaissance is often the difference between life and death.
Most of the vehicles designed and built by the great powers were quite competent in their roles.
Mines were actually really important at a tactical level.
The SU-152 was an amazing tank destroyer and a horrible tank destroyer at the same time.
The T-34 and KV-1 were really scary to come up against
during Operation Barbarossa, when they worked and the list can go on forever.
There is a good deal of bullshit as well, like Tigers at the battle of Stalingrad, but
there's also a lot of good stuff and it's a joy to play for the tank enthusiast.
Many people don't lend much importance to game tutorials but,
taking into consideration the various genres and mechanics we will encounter in our
travels through the world of tank gaming, some introduction and basic overviews are more than needed.
Blitzkrieg has 6 tutorials, one for each
of the unit classes plus the first tutorial for people who have never seen a computer before.
There is also a sort of introductory mission added to each of
the campaigns although it is only mandatory on your first playthrough
after installing. It acts as a sort of overview of the most important mechanics,
a sort of memo if you pick up the game after a while and can't be bothered to redo the tutorials
All in all the tutorials and learning part of the game
are competent if a bit sterile but they familiarize you with most of the mechanics of the game.
The AI in Blitzkrieg has two parts: the unit AI and
the enemy commander AI. The unit AI is fairly acceptable. Pathfinding is decent,
units attack when they're told to and usually what they're told to - that's not to
say the units don't do the dumbest stuff at times. For example there are
times when you want to quickly disengage your tanks from a problematic engagement,
in which case they should ideally back up. However, there's always that one
stupid tank that decides to take its time, turn all the way around and present
its fat juice ass to the enemy guns. Trucks also sometimes decide that they
need to go to the supply depot that is through the enemy lines and get killed.
Furthermore, the move attack command is sometimes bugged and units don't stop
when they encounter an enemy to engage it. While it doesn't always happen, it's
often enough that it is annoying and requires constant attention.
Furthermore, there's no way to set the behavior of the AI. You can't ask for it to be
evasive or especially aggressive. However, besides these, the unit AI is
okay at what it has to do not that there's much there with no cover system and all.
The commander AI, on the other hand, is
generally quite passive and, unless scripted, will barely react you barging
through its front lines. The only things it seems to do is call
artillery on your troops, counter battery and very limited local counter-attacks
with troops that are in the immediate vicinity,
although these counter-attacks seem to mostly depend on the difficulty setting.
However, if you've broken through and are threatening the enemy's rear,
it'll gladly just sit there and wait for you to mop up all of its units even if
the forces at its disposal could erase you from the map. And while this wouldn't
be that much of an issue if all the missions were heavily scripted to
overcome it, most of them aren't and rely on this AI laziness to allow you to
defeat far superior enemy forces in a piecemeal fashion. You generally won't be
fighting the enemy AI commander as much as you'll fight the already existing
troop dispositions that you'll need to figure out how to destroy one at a time.
Blitzkrieg's combat interface is pretty straightforward and Spartan. There's a
mini-map in the lower left side of the screen which is probably the most useful
part of the interface letting you know about enemy AA and artillery fire
reinforcements and losses of core units. However, it's quite quiet when non core
units get killed which is a bit annoying if you're fixating on other parts of the screen.
Next to it is a panel of buttons with the orders you can issue to the
units you have selected, as well as the button to call in air support. These are
fine but on larger resolutions are quite small and tedious to press so it's
better to stick to keyboard commands. Next to it is a small summary about the
unit your mouse is over, mentioning the unit name, armor and armament
characteristics. There are also really really tiny bars for health, primary and
secondary ammo and experience for the unit you have selected in the lower left
corner, just under the mini-map. Other than these and the objective text boxes,
there's nothing else getting in your away.
The rest of the interface that appears for the chapters and mission selections has
an interesting aesthetic, the background looking metallic and slightly worn out,
kind of like how Tank Encyclopedia is, so I might be biased on this one, but I'm OK
with it, it keeps the tone. All in all, the interface is competent and does the job
quite well, even though it doesn't scale well to modern resolutions.
For a game that is over 15 years old, Blitzkrieg's graphics have not aged that badly.
Don't get me wrong, they have aged, but, somehow, the sprite-based graphics
still look quite okay, honestly far better than the fully 3D Blitzkrieg 2.
Let me explain, all the units, foliage, buildings, bodies and husks, explosions
and shell craters are not actually in 3D. They are 2D images that are placed on
the only 3D element, the terrain and yes there are hundreds of images for each
unit in order to show it from all angles and allow the game to do complex stuff
such as turning around, turning the turret, firing and absorbing the recoil
and raising the gun barrel. However, the method of rendering the game was also
far less computer intensive and the quality of the sprites make the game
good to look at even today. All the units are superbly made and the level of
detail on the tanks, for example, is far above what could have been obtained in
that time using 3D models. The effects look quite good, from the explosions to
fire, the track marks behind the tanks, weather and engine smoke. The unit
destruction effects also look quite good with turrets flying off the tank
depending on the kind of damage it took. Now, the resolution is limited to it at most
1080p, which is not exactly eye candy material by today's standards.
Also, expectably, there are none of the modern gimmickry
such as anti-aliasing and post-processing. The main menu interface is limited even
more and is probably the ugliest part of the game. Still, all in all, I think
Blitzkrieg's graphics and aesthetics have aged surprisingly well and it's still a
pretty game if its slow resolution is forgiven.
Blitzkrieg's audio is pretty standard. It doesn't especially shine but it has
no major flaws either. The music mainly consists of various drums, violins and
trumpets with a clear classical and militaristic feel. It does complement the
game and it's style quite well and is well time with the action and
game bringing some valuable atmosphere. The sound effects like noises from the
engines, tracks, firing guns, firing machine guns, firing rifles, explosions,
planes flying overhead, are all good enough but they appear a bit bland after
some time. All tank engines, guns and tracks sound pretty much the same and it
is slightly annoying that sometimes the tracks sound far louder than the engine
which, shouldn't be the case. They also have an interesting mechanic where you
can hear engine and track sounds from under the fog of war, allowing you to
guess when and where the enemy attack is coming from but it might be a bit
overdone to the point it is easily abusable if needed.
When you select a unit it responds in its native language, be it Russian, German
or English. This is neatly done with the accent sounding quite natural and the
unit's response depending on the unit type and the command it was given.
There are even different answers and accents for the British and American units.
However, one problem with the audio of the game is that it's not very
informative. Sometimes units will scream that they're
under air attack but otherwise they'll stay quite quiet while getting massacred by the enemy.
For example, I had a moment in my campaign with the Allies when I took
my tanks to attack an enemy armored group and was just calling the artillery
supports, however, my artillery wasn't firing. Why? Because they had just been
massacred by a single Panther. The game didn't utter a single sound to let me know.
However, all in all the audio is ok and does the job well.
I had never played Blitzkrieg multiplayer before during this review so this was definitely a new
experience for me. Nival, the developers,
recently launched new multiplayer servers for the game and it works
through Steam. You can send invites to your Steam friends and they can join you
in games you play. It's a nice touch for a game this old. You can also play over
LAN and over the internet but I have not tested either of those variants.
There are two gameplay modes assault where one side attacks and one side
defends and flag control in which each side has to capture some points on the
map and they get some tickets for each point held. There's not much complication
to it although I do love that they have embraced a symmetrical balance with the
opponents having seriously different armies on some maps. Not to say that that
always works. One of the games I played pitted the Germans, which had no aerial
support but a metric ton of flak guns, against the Americans, who had a lot of
aerial support which was sublimely useless. There aren't that many maps
around, about two dozen or so. The games play out just like the normal missions.
Each side is granted to set a number of units depending on a map and off to the fight
you go! However, there are some problems with the server lag. I have no idea where
the physical servers are based but both me and my opponent had large lag between
issuing a command and having the unit execute it and this was by far the biggest
problem with the mode. Having such lag is not ideal when you're trying to
disengage from a bad situation. All in al, I really enjoyed the
multiplayer, it's really fast paced and having a proper opponent makes the game
shines far better than single-player does. The server lag is an issue, so it
might be advisable to stick to Hitachi or other ways of playing multiplayer but
it is not game breaking. However, there's no progression or awards or any of the
gimmicks usual to newer games.
I came into this review really expecting that my peachy view of Blitzkrieg would be shattered once I took a more
meticulous look at it, but, honestly, the more I play it the more it seems like a good if old game.
The gameplay is solid and actually enjoyable, there's
tanks galore of all shapes and sizes and the interface, audio and graphics are
okay. The multiplayer is quite fun as well if you can find anyone to play it with.
It has aged, that is true, but the game has aged far better than most of
its contemporaries and many newer games. Furthermore, at a price of just $5 on
Steam along with two expansion packs sprinkled on top, it's a steal. There are
better games out there on which you can spend your time but if you've already
been through them or you just want something good on the cheap,
Blitzkrieg is still a good choice I recommend it. Plus, it works on potato computers as well,
although do note some compatibility issues with newest systems have been
noted by some people.
So what did you think of Blitzkrieg? Did we miss anything in our review?
If you like our content please consider donating on our Patreon!
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Anyway, this was all for this video! I'm Lucian and until next time, when i'll be
reviewing Armor Contest, keep us in your sights!
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