Ageod's To End All Wars Review

I don't really know what's going on, I'm completely overwhelmed and thousands of my men are getting killed because I sent them into 'no man's land' with no ammunition – I'll say this for To End All Wars, it can be a pretty realistic demonstration of the chaotic mess that was First World War combat.

Booting up the game you've got a few different options. Here is your first move – play the damned tutorial. Try to jump into a full game and you'll be met with the entire map of Europe and a vast array of different units you'll have no idea what to do with. Learning To End All Wars is a slow, often frustrating experience, and it will be a while before you're ready to play the full campaign scenario, which covers the full conflict from 1914 to 1918.

Ageod's ageing engine is nice enough to look at, but it is beginning to show its age

You begin the Grand Campaign as one of three main military powers; the Western Entente lead by Britain and France, the Central Powers lead by the mighty German army, or the Eastern Entente spearheaded by Russia. You can choose to begin just as the first shots are fired, with your armies stationed on your borders and a full declaration of war signed, or you can choose a historical campaign that lets you decide how the war plays out. For example, you could choose to play a far more cautious Germany, using diplomacy to keep the British onside while you push into Russia, or an aggressive, reckless France, marching into Belgium to form a line against the Axis powers, and winding up Britain in the process.



You don't have quite as many options as in something like EUIV – this is still a game largely focused on military strategy, and doesn't allow you quite the same level of political sleight of hand. Instead you can choose from several battle plans that decide where your initial forces are deployed. The aforementioned French push into Belgium damages your diplomatic relations with Britain, who are protecting their Belgian allies, but positions French troops defensively across Belgium, forming a pre-emptive Western front. Of course, you don't know what the Germans will decide to do – you may have just invaded your neighbour for no reason.

It's not the end of the world if you've irritated your British chums. There is a diplomacy option. A slightly odd, clunky diplomacy option. Rather than taking up its own screen, there's a diplomacy 'box' located in the upper Northwest of the game map. You can drag and drop diplomats on relevant nations to try and coerce them into joining your war effort, or at the very least leaving you alone to prosecute it. And... that's about it. After that it's just a matter of waiting to see if your diplomatic dice rolls manage to convince the target. It's a little bare-bones. I understand that developers Ageod want the focus here to be on the combat, but I think a more fleshed-out diplomatic system would have given all the strategic manoeuvring and horrible loss of life just a bit more depth.

Because the strategy holds up. You've got a ludicrous amount of options for movement and engagement, from setting up forward recon patrols with your zeppelin airships, to forced marches which get your troops to the line quickly at the cost of stamina and morale. Large armies can be split into expeditionary troop formations, then sent into enemy territory to disrupt and capture key areas. You can also, of course, choose to dig in and stubbornly hold on to whatever land you have, trying to outlast your enemies in a war of attrition. Many options, and given the large map of Europe and the major nations' colonies, plenty of changing battlefields for you to master.

Railroads are the arteries of your nation, providing rapid, invaluable access to the frontlines

Armies are split into various regiments and divisions, which can be dragged and dropped to form army stacks. These can then be shuffled around the map in whatever manner you choose to aid in defence or bolster an assault. You can't simply throw units at a problem though; armies need commanders to function, and ammunition and medical supplies to be effective in combat. Each offensive requires the construction of a solid foundation of supplies and support. New units can be slowly recruited, but it's a slow process getting them readied and shipped to the front.

Battles play out largely automatically, decided by a bewildering array of modifiers ranging from terrain and fortification to morale and general combat skill. You can set out basic instructions for each phase of battle beforehand, but otherwise the action is very hands-off. Afterwards you'll get an overview of each battle, with losses, kills, ammo spent and so on. It's not that involving, but this is a game focused on the grand scale rather than the nitty-gritty of warfare. It's more about the grand plan and the strategic level offensive than affecting the battle on the ground.

Each turn takes place over a fifteen day period, so you set all your plans in motion and then wait for the AI opposition to make their move. Unfortunately turns can take a hell of a long time to resolve, which can make the medium to latter stages of the game a frustratingly slow experience. It's not uncommon to have to wait a minute or two for each turn resolution. Sure, there's a lot of numbers to crunch, but the sheer amount of time you spend tapping your fingers and staring at a loading screen is a problem.

Given the massive scale of the conflict, it's perhaps not surprising that turns take an age to process

The interface is a bit of a mess, too. A lot of the key options and commands are hidden away behind tiny buttons or multiple, impenetrable menus. I played the generally decent tutorial, which taught me how to move troops around on a basic level, but still had absolutely no idea what to do when I first set out in the game. It took a lot of trawling through tooltips and countless wild, generally ill-advised guesses before I was even vaguely confident in my strategic command abilities. It's always going to be an issue with strategy games of this complexity of course, but To End All Wars seems to take particular delight in being as impenetrable as possible.



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