There are loads of enormous flanking moves and penetrating spearheads on offer as you overrun the Russian’s initial positions, and just to mix things up, these are punctuated by smaller, puzzle-like maps based specifically around sieges or difficult terrain. Here, the mix of map and mission styles is almost perfect. Shifting its focus away from the mountains of Italy and the dense bocage of Normandy, it puts you in command of German forces during the early stages of their war against the Soviet Union, which means a lot of big moves on even bigger maps. Unity of Command II’s Barbarossa expansion fixes much of that simply by virtue of its setting. Trying to break a city open using suppression and flanking was a fun challenge, but it was also fairly straightforward, and thanks to the game’s mission design was taking up far too much of my time when I could have been doing stuff that was even more fun, like sending my tanks on big runs that could encircle and cut off enemy units from their supply lines, all the while juggling my own increasingly perilous logistics. As great as the game was, a problem that arose for me after repeated play - repeated enough that this only really emerged for me after my review was already done - was that the balance between those puzzle-like elements and more sweeping tactical manoeuvres was a little too lopsided, something that carried through to the game’s first two expansions as well.

Unity command 2 download