First Impressions

[Texican]

ORIGINAL: Johnnie

Anyone who wants to play a "WITP" light, should try WAR PLAN PACIFIC from Shrapnel Games. It's a strategic treatment of the pacific campaign, playable to completion in a few hours. Combat resolution is somewhat like Carriers at War, quick and fun. By and large, historical outcomes. Very elegant game. I don't know why it isn't more popular.

Played that. While initially fun, the AI is not enough of a challenge, and the American carriers can make it all the way to the Singapore area in a single move from Samoa or Pearl (forget which).

So you plan your gigantic Battle of Singapore with all American and British carriers and land-based air and ... you win. This extended carrier deployment should not happen unless they are based in Australia, IMO.

But, that's another game. I prefer the Order of Battle game over it, but did get my kicks in with WPP. Now, if they ever patch again the latter ...

[Johnus]

Texican: There is a prohibition on moving through (not into) an enemy occupied area. But, although I have played WPP a lot, I have only played the Japanese side and can't dispute what you say.

Playing as Japan, I would say the odds (for me anyhow) are no better than 50/50, maybe worse. It is a challenge.

[Texican]

While the game is overall fun and challenging, I will have to say some of the victory conditions really need some work. You can literally obliterate the enemy and end up with a Loss because one wimpy enemy unit survived. You must achieve the victory conditions BY THE LETTER. I mean, you can practically clear the map, but just that one little unit surviving can cause you to lose a scenario and therefore the campaign.

I just played the New Zealand scenario and lost because one damaged enemy AA unit survived. Really. And with a arduous 60 turn scenario, is it really worth replaying?

I think this game needs various levels of victory and campaigns should not be lost because of all or nothing stipulations. Or, maybe losing a scenario causes the campaign to branch in a different direction. If the Japanese cannot capture New Zealand, maybe they end up in the Marianas scenario next round, or something like that. More branching, more options, more assessment on what constitutes a victory.

Otherwise, still a great game.

[Dragoon.]

I agree with Texican, but they (The Aristocrats) have only one scenario designer. I guess there is a limit how much one man can do, specially in a game like this. I find scenario building complex and time consuming, without even considering testing.
I really hope this game turns out to be a finical success, so they can hire additional help.

[Meteor2]

I agree with the above.
Game is well made and has the "only one more move" effect, but it is really short.
Some branching or even better a random scenario generator would be a very welcome addition.
I remember the old steel panther days, when you choose campaign length, core units and opposition
(the campaign was created) and then had fun for an endless time...
In OoB:Pacific, I was surprised by campaigns end and thought: That's it?

And I am also not very happy with the point system, were I can only allocate a specific number of points
for army, air and navy.
A lot of my previous purchased units were useless due to this limitation in a lot of scenarios and so I
hadn`t the old feeling for my core units, as in Panzer General.

Maybe the developers can do something in this regard ... Nevertheless, I am enjoying the game much.[:)]

[Texican]

Well, I am a fan of the point system in this game. And I think the Afrika Korps expac for Panzer Corps needed the same system (to keep folks form deleting their Italian units and filling those slots with German units).

The Pacific campaign was a combined arms affair, so it's important to have the land/air/sea resources somewhat balanced. Also, units not used in one scenario will still exist and come back into play in a later scenario.

As far as campaign branching goes, there may be more than what I saw. Just won the Japanese Campaign on captain level, but I recall barely eeking by in the Java sea scenario. I think maybe that's why I never saw the Indian Ocean scenario, if there is one. Hard to tell without seeing a campaign tree.

Overall, a pretty good game.