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I'm old enough to remember when the first "3-D" movies came out; all us kids thought they were so cool, we didn't even mind wearing those goofy, uncomfortable cardboard glasses so we could see lions jumping off the screen, boulders crashing into our laps, or guns aiming straight at our noses.
My first response, upon seeing the new 3D Panzer General, was to reach for a pair of those glasses. Since "3D" is the main selling point for this product (which may be the first turn-based wargame ever fully rendered that way), let's deal with that aspect first. On the plus side, some of the effects are remarkable. Water looks wet, hills have palpable mass, valleys enclose you when you maneuver through them, and aircraft dogfight in what appears to be real volumetric space. The trade-off for these effects: everything except the unit icons themselves is blurred. At first, this gave me a shrieking headache, as my eyes instinctively struggled to refocus. One quickly gets used to it, though, and there's no question that "taking the high ground" becomes a literal proposition.
Fortunately, the tactical view can be rotated 360 degrees - and you'll be doing that a lot, since the very depth of the images often masks some necessary visual information. Airplanes obscure ground units, elevations can hide roads and objectives, positioning AA guns within range of enemy bombers is always tricky, etc. In short, the graphics are a mixed blessing.
There's been a major overhaul of the classic Panzer General engine, too. Here again, I suspect opinions will be strongly divided. Some players will regard these changes as revolutionary enhancements; others will find them merely fussy and arbitrary. They certainly make a big difference in how the game feels and plays. I finally came to appreciate the cleverness and balance of these elements, but it took several days to become comfortable with them.
The biggest change is the scrapping of the venerable "prestige point" system for upgrading units and equipment in a campaign. Instead, there's a three-tiered arrangement of "stars, slots, and promotions." Here's how it works: each leader can perform X number of actions per turn (with "X" being equal to that leader's number of "stars"). The more actions a commander can perform, the more effective will be the unit he commands. Units commanded by one to four star leaders occupy one abstract "slot" in the roster of available units. When a leader is promoted to five stars, his unit occupies two slots; eight stars equals three slots.
Between battles, you can swap leaders from active duty to the officer pool. Victories bring promotions, which you can distribute as you see fit (being able to promote a leader on-the-spot, if he achieves a really slick maneuver, is a nice emotional touch). What this all boils down to is the option to deploy a small number of extra-potent units, or a larger number of mediocre units, depending on your planned strategy. In the aggregate, all the features of the Army Management screen give you much more control over your resources than was the case in all previous PG games.
Those extra promotion stars come in very handy in combat. Some of them are logical and some are fairly esoteric (tank units gain "overrun" bonuses, recon units acquire "long-range patrol" ability, aircraft become deadlier with "dive-bombing accuracy," etc.). There are about 50 of these features, and skillful use of them can make all the difference. But until you become familiar with them, you'll spend an ungodly amount of time flipping through the manual.
Stand-alone scenarios cover the old, familiar list of the Western Front's Greatest Hits. If you're new to the Panzer General series, you'll enjoy them, but if you're already familiar with the earlier games, they are a been-there-done-that experience. Multiplay is a blast, but solo play is also very gratifying because the AI is aggressive, sneaky, and surprisingly dynamic.
The campaigns have been revised greatly. You can play long ones as a famous leader (Rommel, Montgomery, Patton, Guderian), or shorter, rather more interesting campaigns as Kesselring, O'Connell, Leclerc, or even General Patch. I recommend the shorter ones: the battles are less familiar and you have a fair chance of winning on the default level of difficulty. As for the long campaigns, they are much more tweakable than ever before. In all previous editions, it was infuriatingly hard to score a "major victory." The system was rigged so that you always seemed to be a unit short or one turn too late, even if you'd torn the enemy to pieces. Panzer General 3D Assault gives you a very generous menu of campaign set-up options, enabling you to balance the odds to match your preferred style of play. These are also extremely useful for handicapping multiplayer games.
There are a few rough edges. Occasionally, the transitional videoes don't match the actual progression of battles (after conquering France as Rommel, the narrator jumps ahead to D-Day even though the campaign itself segues into Greece or North Africa). The Primary Objectives listed in pre-battle briefings do not always match the Primary Objectives shown on the map (when in doubt, use the map as your guide). The most irritating change, I think, is that the symbols on the strategic map no longer indicate which units have moved and which have not, forcing you to waste time by checking each unit's individual status on the roster. On the other hand, the game is exceptionally stable; in approximately 50 hours of intense play, I encountered only one crash - but since the game automatically saves at the end of each turn, even that was not a major problem.
A major part of Panzer General's original success was due to the cunning balance between historical plausibility and its addictive, intuitive interface. I think 3D Assault errs just a bit on the side of Wargaming Lite, but the numerous customization features give it a fine-grained sophistication that amply compensates. Even with out-of-focus graphics and a much steeper learning curve, this much-revised sequel is certainly a worthy addition to the Panzer General heritage. Some of the new features are sure to be controversial, but at least they are creative and significant, and not just cosmetic.
On balance, 3D Assaults virtues outweigh its quirks. I did not care for it until I'd struggled with it for a couple of days, but after I learned to accept it on its own terms, I found it refreshingly different and every bit as addictive as its illustrious predecessors.