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[Quartz_Mace]

The other day, I found this game for 75% off on steam, called Silent Storm. After going through the old X-Coms, I was looking for a new tactical game when this caught my eye. After extensive and addictive fun, I soon found that this game boasted fully-destructible environments (from 2004 and still rivaling modern games), a nice espionage story, hilariously terrible voice acting, a large arsenal of authentic WWII weapons, including rifles, SMGs, heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, pistols, grenades, and even experimental weaponry, and many hours of quality entertainment.

In the game, you are the squad leader of a special operations unit during WWII. You can play either for the Allied powers or the Axis, each with their own readily-available weapons (although you can loot the other side's equipment) and commandos. You must contend both with the other powers' soldiers and a third independent shadow organization. You must uncover clues and capture informants to discover this threat's new technology and their dastardly plans for it. And let me say this tech certainly lives up to the hype, although it does take away a little fun if you aren't prepared for it.

After a search on the forum, I found that this game (and it's expansion which draws deeply from it's espionage roots) did not have their own thread, although some people have mentioned them in other threads. I've decided to remedy this due to how great these games are. Unfortuently, they were not very successful due to poor marketing at release, so I thought I'd spread the word.

Link to game on steam (also on gog if you prefer that): https://store.steampowered.com/app/254960/

If you don't want this tech spoiled for you , I'd just like to say don't do the Berger's Factory mission in Switzerland until you've encountered it. (You'll know it when you see it.) If you don't mind it getting spoiled, or know about it, read ahead.

Spoiler: Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't feel that Panzerkleins completely ruin the game as some people say, although they certainly do cause some issues. The main problem I found was that rockets, heavy grenades, and mines, which were meant to destroy actual panzers/tanks had no effect on them. Fortunately, the enemies beam weapons could easily kill them as could some Panzerklein weapons. I have just started Sentinels, so I don't know how much they were changed in that, so I'll wait until I finish that to talk about them there. I would also like to say that they were way too difficult to move with and too difficult to kill with conventional weapons, and that's not even mentioning the genre change they caused.

The Gold Edition on steam also includes the Sentinels expansion/sequel that requires the files from the first game to run. In the second game, you must pick up as a no-longer government-funded spy unit in post-war Europe and manage your own money and resources. Soldiers must be hired, and on some difficulties you even need to pay medical bills. You must eliminate what remains of the organization from the first game and the clues and interest system has been replaced with a much nicer objective system with assassinations, escorts, reclamation of objects, and good ol' eliminating all enemies. You also receive bonus objectives that might be impossible in the early game due to lack of resources and soldiers. The loot system was also made easier with a post mission loot management screen to make monetary gain easier.

Just thought I'd get this out to spread the word and discuss it with anyone else who has played this absolute gem of a game.

[Sonlirain]

I did and consider it one of the better TBS games out there. Theb ase game has one glaring flaw hoever (that got fixed in sentinels to some degree). Soldiers you take advance their skills far slower than "benched" soldiers at the base. This means that your main character and any soldiers you bonded with and played the entire game will be severly outleveled (For example medics and engineers will never advance in their class far enough to use the better medic/engineer items unless you set up a very deliberate training regime).

And then you have angry metal pants poping up around mid/late game that totally break the gameplay.

[Ozyton]

I'm 90% sure that tank pants were nerfed heavily in Sentinels, but it's been so long since I played that I could be wrong. I do remember the games being pretty difficult on their own, or maybe I'm just bad =p

Game is really fun and it's a travesty that there aren't more games like it.

There were two other WWII games in this vein I can think of. Soldiers at War from 1998 that featured a map editor, but I don't think it runs on modern machines anymore. I also can't remember much about how good the game was because I spent all my time trying to make levels in the level editor putting tank turrets on square blocks and giving everybody STG44's because I didn't know anything about WWII.

The other game was Avalon Hill's Squad Leader which I remember even less about, other than it had similar X-com type combat and was set in WWII.

[Virtz]

I really wish we could've gotten an X-Com on this engine. I recall there even being a mock-up of the geoscape teased at when it was new. Instead we got some mediocre to bad games, like Hammer & Sickle and Nightwatch.

To me, this is what modern turn-based tactical games should be doing. Becoming more complex and making use of modern computing power for gameplay.

[BurnedToast]

Yeah, it's really too bad. The engine is amazing, really just... amazing. Even 12 years later(!) nothing has even come close to matching it.

But the actual game is dumb. Disjointed, poorly presented story (I never had any idea wtf was going on, it also felt all out of order), poor leveling mechanics (is running laps around the level or shooting a dozen magazines into the air to train skills every time you level *fun*?), incredibly poor balance (stealth/snipers > all), and.... of course the plot twist halfway through which takes out most of the tactical planning and lets you just stomp around mowing people down with ease.

I eventually quit out of sheer boredom. I wanted to like the game so much but it's just not good.

[Virtz]

Snipers are only really good if you've got a lot of distance between you and the enemy. And there's a couple occasions where the scenario starts you off surrounded by enemies. The leveling system I did fine with without abusing it at all. Although the Panzerkleins really did ruin the need for tactical planning.

Personally, I'd take the most broken, unbalanced game over the most balanced esport-bait if the former was the more emergent, feature-rich and complex.

[Quartz_Mace]

Snipers are only really good if you've got a lot of distance between you and the enemy. And there's a couple occasions where the scenario starts you off surrounded by enemies. The leveling system I did fine with without abusing it at all. Although the Panzerkleins really did ruin the need for tactical planning.

Personally, I'd take the most broken, unbalanced game over the most balanced esport-bait if the former was the more emergent, feature-rich and complex.

I feel that the panzerkleins didn't completely ruin tactics, although they put a huge damper on them. In order to kill one, you needed either a special weapon obtained from the enemy, or your own Panzerklein with a weapon that could hurt another. If you didn't have that, your only option was to find a bottleneck and shoot it in the head multiple times with high-powered rifles until the pilot died, or make in run out of ammo and then do the same. This actually got me using some tactics that I had never considered, like using a cardiac stimulant on my soldier with the highest health and making them burn all the enemies ammo, or getting in a Panzerklein with no ammo to releive a machine gun Panzerklein of it's ammo. They didn't kill the game, but they did restrict it. Fortunately, they're only used by the enemy on 4 story missions.

Also, I agree that stealth snipers weren't always the best. A machine gun soldier with a good machine gun, lots of familiarity, and a lot of skill could do a full burst with 25% chance of hitting at nearly max range. That's incredibly lethal. They could also do a short burst with 15% less AP cost and one more bullet, which is often the difference between life and death. Although the skill trees on some classes are unbalanced in that some abilities are useless while others are overpowered.

[BurnedToast]

Snipers are only really good if you've got a lot of distance between you and the enemy. And there's a couple occasions where the scenario starts you off surrounded by enemies. The leveling system I did fine with without abusing it at all. Although the Panzerkleins really did ruin the need for tactical planning.

Personally, I'd take the most broken, unbalanced game over the most balanced esport-bait if the former was the more emergent, feature-rich and complex.

Snipers couldn't do everything, no. Which is where the other overpowered stealth guys I mentioned (scouts? I think) came in. I remember I did one mission in a factory (or something like that) and everyone else camped the spawn, while my scout ran around with a silenced smg of some sort and murdered literally everyone on the map.

Yeah, soldiers with machine guns were ok too, but it didn't matter when your stealth guy could sneak up to within a few feet of the enemy and unload on everyone with a 90%+ hitrate and zero chance to be shot because stealth = magical invisibility.

As far as balanced vs emergent goes, to a degree I would agree with you but after a certain point it's just like.... there's no real emergent features or complexity when one or two tactics completely dominate everything in the game and you never really need to adapt or change your strategy. There has to be some kind of balance or it's just a hollow experience. Oh sure you can run around, for example, laying booby traps but it's not really an option because explosives skill is almost impossible to train, explosives are in incredibly short supply, and they do minimal damage even if you get the enemy to set them off correctly.

[Virtz]

I misspoke a bit with the Panzerkleins. They ruined the planning when you got your hands on your own. Cause then you're just a team of tanks that rip and kill, and the enemies didn't really seem to know what to do about it. The first few times you encounter enemies having them, it does provide a challenge, but once you got your own, I recall the game getting easy.

Snipers are only really good if you've got a lot of distance between you and the enemy. And there's a couple occasions where the scenario starts you off surrounded by enemies. The leveling system I did fine with without abusing it at all. Although the Panzerkleins really did ruin the need for tactical planning.

Personally, I'd take the most broken, unbalanced game over the most balanced esport-bait if the former was the more emergent, feature-rich and complex.

Snipers couldn't do everything, no. Which is where the other overpowered stealth guys I mentioned (scouts? I think) came in. I remember I did one mission in a factory (or something like that) and everyone else camped the spawn, while my scout ran around with a silenced smg of some sort and murdered literally everyone on the map.

Yeah, soldiers with machine guns were ok too, but it didn't matter when your stealth guy could sneak up to within a few feet of the enemy and unload on everyone with a 90%+ hitrate and zero chance to be shot because stealth = magical invisibility.

As far as balanced vs emergent goes, to a degree I would agree with you but after a certain point it's just like.... there's no real emergent features or complexity when one or two tactics completely dominate everything in the game and you never really need to adapt or change your strategy. There has to be some kind of balance or it's just a hollow experience. Oh sure you can run around, for example, laying booby traps but it's not really an option because explosives skill is almost impossible to train, explosives are in incredibly short supply, and they do minimal damage even if you get the enemy to set them off correctly.

Huh. Never knew stealth guys were that OP. I mostly used them to give extended line of sight to other units. The way they seemed to be made for melee weapons made them seem not great in that regard.

There's still more base complexity in SS than in certain recent titles, I'd say. If there's a hole in the wall through which you have a line of fire towards the enemy, then that hole is not just purely decorative and a bullet can pass through it to hit the enemy. It's possible to hit someone in the head, arm or leg with different results, and you don't have to specifically aim at them to hit them. A bullet can go through multiple enemies, ricochet off a wall, or even go through a wall. A grenade explosion is not just a preset area that automatically causes 2 HPs of damage, but is instead an explosion accompanied by pieces of shrapnel that have to hit something to cause damage. Panzerkleins have visors through which a shot can pass uninhibited by armour, while shots to the armour will most likely ricochet off harmlessly.

It's little details like this that elevate it in my eyes over games that take gamey, streamlined shortcuts more suitable to a boardgame.

[Fikes]

My biggest problem with the game when I played it years ago was that every actor on the map insisted on using up all of their action points and that chapters off screen moved as the same speed ad ones you could see. It made for very, very long enemy turns.

[Sonlirain]

Panzerpants were ok before they introduced hammers version f pants armed with lasers. From that point on all you used was lasers that were supereffective against everything.

Meanwhile it would be far bette if the game stayed at the "tier 1" panzerkleins armed with their guns and rocket launchers. Maybe give you a mission or two with enemies who lack effective ways of PK elimination to let you feel some power and then just start giving enemy units rocket launchers  and AT rifles to force you into doing combined arms.

Then you have scouts with cloaking fields that become rampaging ghosts when you find a silenced weapon for them... but of course you have to forcibly train stealth with them.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Very good game, loved how everything was destructible. Footsteps up on the second floor? Rip through the floor with a roaring MG42. Enemy reinforcements eyeing you through the whole in the floor after you've traversed upstairs? Toss a grenade down. Brilliant, brilliant game.

Though I ended up using a mod to "fix" the panzerkleins (replaced them with heavy weapon squads IIRC) and another to "fix" the leveling system (can't remember how exactly).

[Moogie]

Anyone even mildly interested in this game simply MUST watch Jefmajor's Let's Plays of both SS and SS:Sentinels. Just over 60 episodes each, and worth every fricken' minute!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwPLKud0rP4&list=PL630D182A3DC13616
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-iKd1cQ2M&list=PL95BE3A64F8BAC319

[Mephisto]

Spoiler: Let me just leave this here. (click to show/hide)

Explosives are fun. I took this about four years ago.

By the way, don't make yourself an engineer unless you're okay with the possibility of going boom.

Backstory for that screenshot: I was trying to stealth into the building using explosives. Placed a mine, realized they apparently get set off by enemies as this one shows no indication of going boom. Threw a HE grenade, which made a hole big enough to crawl through. Sent myself through, only to be confronted with a locked door. Began knifing said door to shreds, when the mine thought to itself "Oh shit, that door's an enemy", blew out half of the house, and dropped me into the basement.