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Wargame: Red Dragon Review
http://www.gamebasin.com/news/wargame-red-dragon-review
Red Dragon tries hard to make you feel as though you are in complete control of a massive army.
From moving your units around on the campaign map to selecting your troops on the battlefield,
it does a good job at letting you know the scale and scope it can offer. It certainly is impressive but
it’s let down by poor design and implementation that end up making you feel like you are fighting
against the game’s systems and cheap A.I., rather than the enemy in front of you on the screen.
Red Dragon is developer Eugen’s third outing in the Wargame series, which is a series that focuses
on the cold war period of history and allows you to command an incredible array of units from 17
different countries. This time around Eugen has focused its efforts on bringing naval combat to the
fold, adding the naval units of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO to the ever growing roster of
miniature armies. It features four campaigns each from a different period in the cold war; all are
fictional but perfectly plausible. There are no tutorial campaigns, just some information pages at
the campaign menu, which would be fine if they were an in‐depth explanation of the game’s
mechanics and how to utilize them to your advantage, but sadly they are light on tactical
information.
Unfortunately tutorials are little more than a brief text overview
The campaigns will see you command your troops in one of two screens, the region map screen
and the battle screen. The former being a strategic overview of the mission at hand including the
units you have at your command, and the latter being a real‐time battle you control your troops in.
In the campaign you might be tasked with holding a certain territory for a number of turns until
reinforcements arrive whilst trying to keep your troops from being annihilated on the surrounding
territories. The campaign map is the turn‐based part of Red Dragon, but it’s also the place where
your frustrations will first start to surface. Firstly, there is little to no explanation as to what you are
capable of doing during each turn. For example, in one particular campaign I had some troops
grouped together in a region, but I was unable to attack the enemy’s region where the AI had a
much weaker force. It was not because the troops had run out of initiative (basically movement
points), but rather because the campaign didn’t want me to go on the offensive and to just wait
for the enemy to come to me. You might find yourself in a similar situation being forced to play out
the campaign in an almost scripted manner devoid of any real tactical choice of your own. When
you actually get into the battle screen it can feel just as frustrating and completely unpredictable,
because the AI feels cheap and always superior. That’s if you can figure out how to actually deploy
your troops in the first place, or try and take the command points with a command vehicle that
requires you to disembark the troops before it will capture. None of this is explained to you, leaving
you to have some very frustrating first encounters with what is arguably the real meat ofRed
Dragon – the real‐time combat. The frustration can be compounded further when you know you
have a vastly superior force by say 3,000 points, but still find yourself struggling to defeat the AI.
Time limits add an extra level of irritation and to top it all off you will find more often than not you
will be reaching for the auto resolve button because it’s almost the only way to guarantee success
when you have the greater army.
Firefights are intense but short
The same is true of the naval combat missions in the campaign, you will always feel outgunned and
for the most part the naval battles play out like a massive chase across the sea as you order your
battered navy to retreat from point to point. There appears to be little room for any actual strategy.
The naval units even turn on a dime rather than requiring a massive turn radius, which just seems
a terrible waste of what could have been an interesting feature particularly with larger ships.
Instead the whole naval battle feels very light and bland rather than the clash of fire and steel that
you might be hoping for. Visually Red Dragon looks excellent, units are well detailed as is the terrain
which when you are fully zoomed in on is a delight to watch and explore. Visually the combat looks
great too, and coupled with some great audio makes for some very intense firefights even if they
are usually brief. It’s also worth mentioning that the game performs incredibly well with no
noticeable slowdown in frame rate at any zoom level, no matter how much is going on. The engine
Eugen has used feels tight and robust. The presentation of the whole game is also well crafted,
nothing feels out of place and all is done tastefully with the only downside being the insane amount
of stats you have to consider for each unit, which can leave your eyes and brain reeling as you try
to take it all in.
Units have an incredible amount of detail up close
Away from the campaign Red Dragon feels much more balanced and fun, being able to choose
your own units and organize them into a deck for use in skirmishes both off and online is a real
boon. You are given much more tactical flexibility, you can even specify a customized deck for the
AI to use, allowing you to really try out a wide variety of tactics with the massive number of units
at your disposal. Removing the restrictions of the campaign lets Red Dragon breathe and it really
comes into its own, albeit at the cost of eliminating the turn based region map and just having fun
in the real‐time arenas. Red Dragon is an ok game hidden beneath a wealth of annoyances and
frustration. It can be hard to really want to plough through the early stages without wanting to
shut the game down and take a break as time and time again being thwarted by the cheap AI and
unexplained systems will leave you exasperated. Away from the shackles of the campaign, Red
Dragon starts to get into its stride, giving you the options to craft your own battles and fully realize
your tactics. It’s just a shame that the most touted part of the game, the naval combat, feels
uninspired and bland.
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