Strategic Mind: The Pacific

God, what a cool turn-based strategy about the war between Japan and the United States ... Everything is perfect in it, fine detail that fully reveals the notes of the war of that time and makes you feel on your own skin what it is like to be a general and control your fleet and aircraft. These battles immerse you in all 101 percent, every step is important and can affect the outcome of the battle, which is very important in this genre of the game, I am very pleased with my purchase and I think that this is the best turn-based war strategy that has been released in recent years.

As a former heavy war gamer from the 80s I've been looking for a game like War in the Pacific, but not so in depth I'm spending 30 minutes inputting how many shovels I need in a division. I'm still searching for a game that scratches that itch, but isn't as deep as WiTP.
What this game is:
Essentially a naval version of panzer corps. Some of the concepts are a little obscure, but to be fair I haven't delved into the instruction manual to find out if it's explained better. Its a turn based game with some RPG fleet/unit development aspects.
Do I like it? The first thing I consider is price versus content (play, interface, fun factor). I bought this game on sale for $22 and some change. I enjoy it so far, I've only played for 5 hours, but likely will get more than 100 out of it. I can definitely recommend it if you like similar games produced by Slitherine. It was worth it to me, but certainly not a must have, more like a pleasant surprise.
Is it historically accurate: No, it has a basis in history in the scenarios I've played, but it doesn't have matching order of battles for the fights nor the variety of different ships in different classes available that match the service dates of those classes. It does have different types that come into service, but they aren't historically accurate timelines and the ship class variety isn't there. It's a light "war" of game, which is fine.
Things that bug me about it:
- The money and effort they put into the cut scenes and voice acting could've have been redirected to the game and game play. They are not good and provide little if any benefit to the feel of the game. The voice acting is horrible, I've heard worse but I'm hoping they have an option to not hear it but still hear the sound effects. At 5 hours of play, I've heard all I can take.
- I'm surprised there isn't a scenario editor/creator. Similar games have that as a default, so perhaps I got spoiled by developers that put those in.
- I'd like to see a better more exciting fight sequence more akin to War in the Pacific which isn't amazing but you're seeing dozens of aircraft making runs on ships. What the game has is fine, but there's no reason to have an action sequence zoom for that to see what it offers.
- The UI is fine, but i wish it had more options on the game play, for things like a fast move option, if i click the location and confirm it, I'd rather not see a ship or plane slowly move from start to end at a leisurely pace (my PC has a gen 9 i7 chips...so its capable of running the animations faster).
- My biggest gripe with the game play is how air defense works for ships. In the game aircraft attack and air defense fire overlaps and fires against the attack, which is fine. What is laughable is ships and ground units can move to the vicinity of aircraft and fire on them with their weaponry. It's just nitpicking from me and likely was decided upon due to the turn based style of the game, but having ships race to fire their anti-air weapons at aircraft bugs me. Although panzer corps has the same game play feature with its self propelled AA guns.
There are some things I'm still trying to figure out like what is the max number of units I can have in my HQ, but I'll do something unheard of and read the manual.
If you got money and like turn based world war 2 navy games, give it a go.

This is a pretty good turn-based-strategy game and i definitely recommend it.
However, the devs are not entirely right with their focus on historical accuracy in their game description.
Sure, most of the depicted events really happened, and some missions have nice touches, such as the battle of Midway also depicts the Japanese landings on the Alaskan islands, which allows for interesting strategic decisions of distributing your forces between the main fleet group that will do the fighting, and a landing group. But really, don't expect perfect accuracy in troop composition, unit stats, general motives - and you will be fine. Just take that as a game that tries to entertain someone who likes some good strategy and came to have fun. I mean, come on - you can win at Midway as Japan!
Now, as for actual review:
Graphics: For a wargame, this one looks pretty damn good, with some nice attention to detail: your ship's guns turn to face the target you are hovering your cursor over, dirt comes from under the tank's tracks, bombs dropped from your planes gloriously expload, and even the palm trees you find on all those islands actually move with the wind. The unit models themselves are gorgeous too and you can actually zoom in enough to see the all the details. Animated briefings between the missions are a nice touch as well. 8/10
Sounds and music: Not much music compositions to accompany your missions, but the ones that are there are pretty decent. Nothing extraordinary, but they do their job. As for the sounds, those are actually good, with tank's engine starting roaring once you choose it. Helps immersion as it should.
Now, one of the defining features of this game is the unit's voice acting. Yeah, just like in an RTS, your units will be saying lines when you order them around - the lines themselves are really corny and over the top, but this is fine - it reminded me of the Red Alert series, which i love very much, and some of the lines are actually hilarious. 7/10
Gameplay: The game tries to do many of the things differently than usual - and mostly succeeds, even though learning the game is pretty difficult because of the lack of a proper tutorial - i had to watch youtube videos for that (Thank you, Night Phoenix, very helpful videos and nice gameplay). The ships consist of different parts which you can damage to hamper them, with most incoming damage being randomly distributed between them, but to destroy the ship, you need th destroy the "hull" module, which may not get any damage at all, even though the shot dealt damage to all the other modules, like cannons, AA-guns or engine. That is where the strategy comes, as there are different ways to attack the ship: will you attack the battleship it with torpedoes to directly deal damage to hull from destroyers, risking to face its full wrath once its turn comes? Bomb it with incendiaries to deal a lot damage to its modules, so it will get considerably weaker? Target its engine with subs, so it will stay away from the fight and be forced to use emergency repair? Use heavier ships to draw its counter-fire and them swarm it with your screening fleet? There are lots and lots of possibilities for dealing with naval units.
The anti-air units have a large interception range and will shoot at any air unit that enters their range, once per turn, which makes them a must-have in defense, while making you to think carefully where you send your own planes.
Your carrier units use their own fuel and ammo to resupply planes and have to return to your owned supply zones to restock.
You can actually damage infrastructure like cities and ports - if you shell the enemy port too much, you might not be able to immediately restock your fuel once you take it and wait till it repairs!
You have global abilities which you can use until you have strategic points, which restock a set amount per turn, so you can do fun stuff like calling in recon planes, making your artillery make 2 shots this turn, call in an off-map airstrike...
You can spend the resources you earn during missions not only to buy new units, but to upgrade existing ones: each unit has its own inventory which can be fitted with additional equipment, like flamethrowers for infantry or a limited stock of armor-piercing shells for your ships, or mine detectors, or better torpedoes, or aerial cameras... With your units also getting persk, if they level up during missions. This has a downside, that you are mostly prohibited from losing units on higher difficulities, but it is bearable. Besides the new ideas, the basics are solid and work as you expect them to, if you have played wargames before. One final thing i should note are the detailed damage calculations you can view any time you are thinking of making an attack without opening any additional menus, which is definitely a feature many similar games lack. 9/10
So, in short: While offering nothing mindblowing, there is a lot of things that this game does right, like great unit models, corny unit lines and cheesy dialogues between the missions,innovations in mechanics that work fine and make sense, secondary objectives for additional challenge and reward, deep unit customization. It lacks the grand scale of other popular wargame titles like Order of Battle or Panzer Corps, but the things it does, it does right, even if the campaign is a bit short and there is no multiplayer or skirmish mode. 8/10 and definitely recommended for wargame fans, just don't take its historical background overly serisously.

Its a quite complex hex based unit shuffler with quite stylised combat. It reminds me of the old Battle Isle games.
The game itself is quite fun. But it's not without flaws.
First off the voice acting is literally the worst I have ever heard in any game, EVER. Why on earth did they even bother? it's shocking. And it really distracts from the game.
Second is, no multiplayer, and its very scripted. I can't see a lot of replayability as a result though the campaign is fun so far (if you ignore the voice acting...).
But on balance I would recommend it.

Recommended with some reservations: Also good points. Overall it is a good game but has a few serious flaws and a few weaknesses.
-> Voice acting is poor for the Allies. Japanese naval staff sounds like USA naval staff, which is OK.
-> A lot of the units of the USA say stupid things and sound somewhat British(?).
-> Game crashes when I do scout missions using COMMAND missions option and spot hidden land target
-> Game crashes if save file count gets high (more than say 4 saves).
-> Aircraft stop mid-air if shot at and lose turn. I can see these for ground units, but air units should just take extra damage if "ambushed" and not stop in mid-air.
-> Destroyers can't move AND do sonar search? This makes no sense.
Good points:
-> Good graphics overall.
-> Models look good.
-> Story and cut scenes good.
-> Core units keep gained experience, leaders, and equipment.

Great game !
I suggest you watch the 20 minutes video. No need to watch it all but 5-10 minutes gives you a very good Idea of what the game looks like. If you like it you'll like the game.
This game is at the very least 100 hours play time for the U.S and Japanese campaign.

It isn't easy. You have to work at it to get good. I'll spend a lot of time playing it. If you aren't ready for a challenge, skip this game. If you are....The Undo update was really necessary, it's easy to misclick and do something you really had no intention of doing.