Sudden Strike 2 (Windows)

List Price: $36.99 Discount Price: $4.21

Features:

• Choose from 50 different playable units and engage the enemy in 40 missions
• Travel throughout Japan in historically-accurate maps and levels, during five campaigns
• You can capture and take command of boats and planes in different scenarios for added levels of strategy
• New order options and a new morale system add to the gameplay
• Variable weather patterns add a new level of challenge to your gaming -- learn to adapt to wartime conditions in the rain and snow, or you're toast

Customer Reviews:

One Great Game [Posted on 2004-03-07]
I think the previous reviewers have been overly critical of Sudden Strike 2. This game was marvelously entertaining and engaging. I was enthralled for months. Similar to the format of games like Age of Empires or Starcraft, this World War II based game allows the player to be all of the major Axis and Allied forces of that conflict. You have different types of infantry (officers, riflemen, flamethrower men, etc.), tanks, artillery (field guns, anti-tank, howitzers) and a multitude of other weapons and vehicles. All are accurate and detailed to the originals. Each stage is played out on a "board" of set dimensions wherein you are given a mission to accomplish, such as defend or take an area, free captives, land you men here or there and so forth. Unlike the two previously mentioned games, you do not harvest supplies to produce forces. You have a finite amount of units to work with. Furthermore, unlike the other two, a mission does not consist of overpowering the opposing forces with greater numbers. Progress must be deliberate and measured. Your forces will be destroyed if you do not because the enemy fights more intelligently. I found that Age of Empires became anti-climactic halfway through a mission because the opposition was essentially too weak to give up all but a token fight. In Sudden Strike 2 one cannot simply bowl their way through the enemy.

Sudden Strike 2 is also much improved over the first one. They have worked out a few loopholes that opposing forces could exploit. The best example of this is with the line of sight of the units. In the first SS, tank and vehicle units, which have shorter lines of sight than infantry, when destroyed would eject their dying crews allowing an extended line of sight for a split second. For the computer, this means that all of its forces within range and its long-range artillery can target all of your forces within this longer field of vision and fire on them. Additionally, tank and vehicle units are more versatile (you can load and unload crews, have your crews take over abandoned enemy tanks and have infantry ride on the tanks). Damage to tanks is more realistic (in the first SS, five or six hand grenades could take out a King Tiger!).

The main thing I did not like about SS2, is that most of the missions seemed to be of the infiltrate-and-destroy (or take over) commando-style operations. Also, there seems to be less of an emphasis on the use of masses of long-range artillery in the missions as in the first one (the long-range artillery was my favorite). All in all, this is one great game. It is quite difficult and requires much time and patience to survive. I highly recommend it for those wanting to play a mass combat, WWII game.

Great strategy game, specially if youre a world war 2 fan!!! [Posted on 2004-08-03]
I am really into strategy games, I used to love playing Age of Empires and Star Craft. However, Im a huge world war 2 fan and i had never heard of a WW2 strategy game. When I found I totally fell in love with it. It is a different game compared to most strategy games out there, including the ones i mentioned above, but different in more interesting way. For one, in Sudden Strike you can't make troops, youre supplied with them, when you need them. However there is a limit to the number of troops you can get which is what makes it real. The variety of troops is huge, with riflemen, submachine gunners, machine gunners, officers, anti tank personnel, etc. Theres also a big varity of tanks and armored vehicles.You can call for air support: you can call bombers, paratroopers if your running low on men, or for supplies. There is also all diff. types of artillery: field guns, short range, long range artillery, anti tank guns, anti aircraft guns, etc. When it comes to infantry, the diff. types of things they have are: experience, health, morale(new to SS2), primary ammo, and secondary ammo. The more experience they have, the more accurate they shoot both with their guns or when in artillery guns. The higher the morale, the better they fight in battle. Having officers around your troops helps to keep morale higher. When it comes to supplies, it is the "supply trucks" that contain supplies. When they fix tanks, the supply number gets lower, or when they make anti tank obstacles or barbed wire. They also provide the ammo for the troops, tanks, artillery, etc. Supplies are obtained from brown and silver boxes. Brown boxes contain "ammo" while silver boxes contain "parts"....The things i mentioned here make up only about 40 percent of the game, there is a lot more to it. I hope this review has been helpful to everyone.

Sudden strike 2, Don't buy it [Posted on 2004-10-03]
I do agree that Sudden Strike and Sudden Strike Forever are very hard games. But I do like them both. Once you got a hold of the game, it's fun. However, Sudden Strike 2 is a mess.
Well, first of all, the sound effect is not as good as Sudden Strike or Sudden Strike Forever. It sounds strange, not nearly a sound of battle.
They did change the level of diffulty from almost impossible to manageable, but players now have to worry about other tedious details. For example, a new control enable the player to move the tanks and the infantry at the same speed and there by eliminate the frustrating situation where the tanks out-run the infantry and get killed. However, say the player's tanks shoot and kill the enemy tanks, they are burning up into flames and the palyer's infantry just go bindly into those flames and get themselves killed.
Loading troops into boats and airplanes is frustrating, so is unload. The troops just won't get into the boats or the airplanes unless either the boats or the airplanes being oriented in the 'right' directions which depend on the terrains.
Great care must be taken before ordering an airplane to take off, for it will plow into a group of infantry and kill all those who are in its way. The number can be of hundreds. The airplanes are said to be controllable by players. That's not true. It's possible to set the waypoints that the airplanes should take, which adds tedious works.
Also players now have to manage all vehicle crew including not letting them got killed and assign them to vehicles, including heavy armored tanks, whose crews have been killed by enemy's rifle men.......many other bad things
Anyway, if you are someone like me who only have a couple of hours to play a week, you are not gonna enjoy it.

Absolutely the best wargame ever.. [Posted on 2004-12-24]
I have been a Sudden Strike addict for about 5 years and never tire of this challenging game. Not an arcade game. Takes a little time to understand the capabilities of the soldiers (riflemen, machine gunners, snipers, minelayers, anti-tank soldiers, etc), tanks (full range of WWII German, Russian, American) and full range of artillery, air and support vehicles.

What makes this game fascinating is that you can download endless largescale maps and Mods that offer realistic historic WWII battles with ballistics and tactical strategies..You have up to 1000 "pieces" at a time on a given map that are manipulated with only the mouse..The standard maps that come with the game are challenging and many fan maps are available with all levels of difficulty and detail..
Custom maps and Mods (RWM 6.5, SSNM2, LRM,) can be found and downloaded [...]

There is also an excellent Sudden Strike 2 forum [...]
Best game investment I ever made..

Awesome WWII tactical gameplay  [Posted on 2005-04-03]
Superb WWII action Starcraft-style without the tedium of building units.

Great 2D graphics, nicely detailed and accurate.
Lacks in animation on some points, otherwise outstanding stuff.

Multiplayer is the bomb !

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