Frontline: Fields of Thunder Demo

Nival Interactive has a long and rich history when it comes to developing strategy games, since they are the ones responsible for the highly-acclaimed Blitzkrieg series, as well as many other gems. Thus, you can be certain that their products respect a certain quality threshold, even if not every release is worth a playthrough, since they might run out of ideas every once in a while.

Frontline: Fields of Thunder is part of a new strategy series developed by the strategy geniuses at Nival, although one can easily see that it is basically Blitzkrieg in a fresh set of clothes. The mechanics are almost the same, the scenarios follow the same formula and even the graphics are incredibly similar. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is as good as Blitzkrieg, despite all the similarities.

The biggest selling points of this release is the battle of Kursk, which is probably one of the most well-known moments from the second World War. A massive numbers of troops confronted on the battlefield during this battle and it certainly left a lot of dead bodies behind. You have the possibility to change history and redefine the outcome of the entire battle, if you play your cards right and manage to defeat the A.I., which is no easy task.

In case you are not familiar with the genre, the gameplay is in real-time and you have to make due with a handful of units in every scenario, given the fact that you cannot build a base, mine resources or train additional troops at will. This makes the combat that much more difficult, since you really have to minimize losses and make sure that you make it to the end of the mission with enough units to defend yourself against unexpected attacks.

The difficulty level can sometimes be a bit too much, however, especially if you are a newcomer and RTS games are not your strong suit. However, things get easier once you figure out how to make use of the intuitive interface, although the scenarios can always find a way to ruin your fun and cause an early quickload. It’s all part of the fun, on the other hand, as long as this happens to be your flavor of fun.

Overall, Frontline: Fields of Thunder is a worthy successor to the Blitzkrieg franchise, albeit a bit too repetitive and unpolished to be in the same league with it. If it’s strategy you want, however, the game at hand would be more than happy to deliver it for you at an impressive scale.