Panzer General and its successors
The genre of turn-based hexagonal wargames stood always a little apart in the general diversity of strategic games. These versions are intended, so to say, for fans: the response time and speed of development don’t solve anything but the calculated tactics is critically important. The economic dimension in such games, as a rule, is minimized but the diversity of units and tactical capabilities allows you to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of real and invented wars, developing your talent for commanding completely.
Actually, the turn-based wargames are the same table games put on the screen of a monitor.
The series Panzer General is rightly considered the most “awesome” representative of the genre. In due time these strategies were very popular. The games Panzer General I-III were devoted to the theme of World War II. Commanding a military unit of certain soldiers (tanks, infantry, reconnaissance, artillery) the player had to defeat the enemy units and to occupy the strategically important points. The map consists of various types of terrain where everyone has its own tactical meaning: for example, a road speeds up movement but a river must be cut across. A tank defeats easily infantry on the plain but if this tank attacks the very infantry, having dug defences in the forest , it will have to pay for it. It will have to call for artillery.
All this diversity of tactical capabilities makes the player rack his brains seriously and gives much fun to the fan of a thoughtful and unhurried war. A mission cannot be often accomplished point-blank — as a result, you will only lose your troops in the battle, but a turning movement or an assault force dropped at the right time at the right point permits to gain a victory with minimum losses. And of course, the coordination of branches of troops is necessary.
The success of PG I-III has led to the appearance of the various variations of “Generals”. For example, the game People’s General has been already devoted to the hypothetical war of the alliance of HATO countries and Russia against China and North Korea. Unlike Panzer General, here, on the battle field you may use helicopters and jet-aviation (it’s the 21th century, after all)
Although, in spite of the success in due time, now all these games can be hardly called attractive. The obsolete graphics and very trite gameplay will hardly attract the most hardcore fans of wargames.
It has recently become known about making one game in the spirit of Panzer General — the turn-based strategy Panzerstrategy: Blizkrieg.
The game-makers from the studio Starni Games promise an original tactical model and even now they are demonstrating very attractive 3D graphics from the test level. The game will have been released by the end of 2017. There are reasons to hope that the new game will revive the genre of hexagonal turn-based wargames and spark the interest of the user in it again.
