Strategic Mind: The Pacific

Played for a few hours and my first impressions are positive. Seemed a fairly deep and enjoyable strategy experience, though missions are scripted, and its more of a figure out how to accomplish the objective than a freedom to come up with different strategies for each scenario. Seems that there is one way really to complete the given scenarios.

The Strategic Mind Pacific sucks because they have this battle Leyte Gulf and one of their primary objectives is that you can't lose more than 3 of MaCarthurs transports and it is very impossible and you can't even win that particular battle because you automatically lose that battle and there's no way that you can win that. Then when they have people do a YouTube videos on this game hardly none of them can speak English and not only that there's no Youtuber that will guide you how to win that particular battle. I don't even know why this game developer made an impossible objective where you know you are going to lose the Battle anyway.

Naval Units can't get reinforced.
So, when the ENTIRE JAPANESE NAVY gets thrown at you every single scenario, unlike the other Strategic Mind games where you can repair your units mid-scenario, it is impossible to play The Pacific without turning the enemy hit points WAY down.
I'm used to these games not being historically accurate, but this is nuts. The IJN did not have that many battleships and carriers.

Like many other OOB-WWII fans that looked forward to this game, myself as a Navy Veteran that worked for the DON for 45 years, this game fraught with balancing issues. Strategies aren't really in consideration when the enemy outnumbers you at least 4 to 1, and the wholly unrealistic time constraints make successful completion even at the entry level as absurd at best.

The cut scenes sound like they made in a third world county based upon the paraphrasing and accents. Some of the graphics are nice, but being forced into a water level view and back on each attack would sicken someone with motion issues. While double clicking helps this a bit you really have to be zoomed out to max and double click to abate the view switch.

Good idea, great gear changes and outfitting, but the hear of the game itself - the game play - is just to horrendously unbalanced. Difficult is one thing, but near impossible to meet the criteria is a different matter altogether.

I would pass on this one until it has option to be more balanced. Just for S&Gs I used a quality trainer and beefed up the forces but still that was inordinately way difficult - the AI cheats and haves moves that make absolutely no sense, much to their total advantage.

Most of the time I play platform games or first person shooters. But this time I decided to buy a game with a storyline. I can say that I definitely did not regret the money spent.

Strategy Game based on reality, on history, which happened many years ago. It let me become warlord and know more about the World history, because everything is so well worked out down to the smallest details.
Events taking place in the game are describing the Second World War, it is one of the reasons, why I decided to play this game – I want and I must know history not only of my country, but worldwide.
The next thing to tell about is graphic. I see that it also took a lot of time and attention to be done in such a way, because picture is realistic and colorful like in war films . All details: trees, bushes, grass – are shown great.
Talking about control – it is intuitive and convenient, comfortable for me. I quickly figured out the controls.
Game is strategic. It is certainly so, if you like this type of the games – you exactly have to test this game. It will not leave you indifferent, because it is one of the few strategic games, where you do everything in your way and using you strategics.
To conclude, game is very exciting, you can’t stop playing it and continue playing more and more. Personally I recommend this game for its plot, graphic, abilities and control, especially to people who like naval battles.

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.

I have played now into the Guadalcanal battle . The Battle of the Coral Sea saw some unusual activity including the Shokaku doing a suicide run into my fleet , completely destroying the transports of the invasion yet the game continued warning of the attack on Port Moresby and was fired as Commander in Chief for holding the port against no enemy and having completely destroyed all Japanese ships and aircraft. The Battle of Midway had Yamamoto's Main Body show up ahead of the carriers , lost most of my ships in that shocking change from history .

Anti-air is devastating in this game far more potent in the early game than it should have been . Tactics typically need a constant surface engagement with ALL of you ships including the aircraft carriers.

Sometimes its hard to highlight units to move or attack . The surface guns have way too much range ( perhaps main guns have a range of two , all other just one) The power of attacks by aircraft should be increased or through the level up system . The movies between the scenarios could be dropped completely as they do little to enhance play ( the voices are not done well. A suggestion to use actual footage would enhance the product )

I come from a background of researching the Second World War , playing many games depicting the time period and tactics . From Tactical games including the double blind games of "Scratch one flatop and it sequel Midway " to "World in Flames " at the strategic level .

On the good side of things , this game reminds me of PTO for Nintendo , played the heck out of it for 100s of hours both sides . I think that this could be a better game giving players a choice on which areas to send their forces to , ( In PTO it was difficult to do a Pearl Harbor attack because the processor would move the fleet out then nail the carriers with a surface encounter ) . There are a myriad of options as units gain experience which help cover the shortfalls in game play.

In the end its a game trying to be "strategic " while being a tactical game . In time it could be improved to include decisions of how and where war would waged , the balance of what one can afford to lose and what the country can not do without . Buy it on sale , then try to help the developers change the game to become amazing , it has that potential .

I put 90 hours into the game. I guess you could say that I easily got my money's worth. However, many of those hours were spent in frustration. Which is why I am giving it a thumbs down. I have finished the US campaign but I have finally uninstalled during the 3rd Japanese campaign scenario.

The game has a solid hex-based strategy game engine. It's well done, sound and animations are very nice, apart from that it's standard like every other strategy game since Battle Isle in the early 90s. That's not a bad thing, because that system is well understood and works great. You feel at home right away. The last patch brought a new mouse control mode which has helped tremedously with the issuing of commands which could be a bit wonky before. So I'd say all in all it's really well done from on technical/programming side. Haven't encountered any crashes in 90 hours. There was one single time when the AI got stuck in an endless loop and I had to reload, which is no biggie due to auto save between turns.

I actually liked the story and the cutscenes, including the voice over, which some people have complained about. Personally I think it's well done.

Why a thumbs down?

I spent so much time replaying the same missions or part of the missions over and over again. Because it's simply impossible to win (or at least win with all or most of the secondary objectives finished), when you don't know what will happen next.

You absolutely need to know beforehand
- where the enemy will show up
- what kind of units the enemy has
- what the objective will be (often times you receive new objectives during a scenario, most of the time with a severe time limit)

The only way to do this is to play the mission, note what happens. then replay and place / move your own units so that you are perfectly prepared for what's coming. And even if you do that it's still not enough. The game penalizes you for losing units and even for units taking damage! Even worse, this penalty not only applies to your core units (those are the units you keep during the campaign, they gain experience and level up) but also to the scenario units that you get temporarily. So you cannot even "sacrifice" those and try to save your core units.

The penalty is calculated at the end of the scenario as negative prestige points. Which means you have less prestige points to spend on upgrades, equipment, new units. I don't like this concept at all. The computer AI doesn't have to bother with saving its units, it will always have a huge amount of experienced units in the next scenario, while you as a player can not afford to lose a single of your core units and you need every single prestige point you can possible get else the next scenarios are getting harder and harder. If you don't finish the secondary objectives you will lack prestige points. if you lose units you will lack prestige points. If your units get damaged you will lack prestige points. And let me assure you, it's impossible for your units not to get badly damaged. The AI always has a huge advantage in unit numbers.

In other words, the game forces you to play PERFECT. Which is why you have to reload and reload and reload. Sometimes an enemy unit reaches 0 strength and flees. Sometimes the same enemy unit reaches 0 strength and dies. Huge difference. There were several times when this made the difference between me being able to achieve a secondary goal or fail. So that means reloading and shooting at the enemy until the dice are in my favor and the unit dies. This is just one example.

There are a couple other things that I am not too happy about but I can live with them. E.g. the way carriers are being thrown into battle by the AI. Carriers are not designed for close naval battle. They need to be protected by escort ships and planes, the game actually tells you that! However the AI doesn't care and always throws them into battle just to inflict some additional damage to your units. While this is silly and actually makes it easier for the player to take out the AI carriers, at the same it's really bad for the player because it damages your ships, which in turn costs you prestige points. Simply put it makes no sense. This isn't game breaking or anything but I dont understand why they designed it like this.

Summary: On the one hand the game is well done. It's a solid strategy game. On the other hand it can be really frustrating because you are forced to achieve perfect victories. Which means constant reloading and trying again.

One of the lowest quality games i've ever played. WWII era game with a good selection of naval, air and ground units but with a pathetic rock-paper-scissors combat system. Unit A is good against B and vulnerable to C. This leaves you with only one option, one play style. Very little historical unit accuracy. Sadly many game studios are now following a trend to dumb down their games.
When i first learned of Strategic Mind: The Pacific i had great hopes of it coming close to one of my old favorites, Pacific Theater Operations. Building your own ships and bases. Material and supply management. A grand campaign. By comparison The Pacific is a joke.
Scripting and turn limits. If game studios were run by gamers these things would never happen. We gamers want more options not less, we hate being told: this is the way you are going to play our game. Our way or the highway is unexceptable. In The Pacific it takes time to repair ground units, takes more than one turn to embark units to invade the next island but if you don't go right away you may run out of turns and loose. If you loose you just go on to the next mission, right? Nope, in this game if you fail you are fired and welcome to the main menu. To be fair, the game auto saves every turn and you can just reload and try again.
Poorly written scripts. An American Admiral would never describe Japan as "The Glorious Empire of Japan" right after Pearl harbor. Why couldn't you find a Japanese person to do the voice overs for the Japanese campaign? Why did you use an American for the Japanese voice overs and a Australian for the American campaign? "Take it! Take it, bitch!" Did you hire a vulgar 13 yo boy to write your unit scripts? All of these things and many more are examples of a game studio that doesn't care about us or the quality of their products.

First of all let's get the good stuff about this game out of the way first. Visuals are very nice indeed, and graphics are very smooth and pretty to watch. The game is pretty easy to understand if you've been playing hex games all the way back to Panzer General for DOS. Being a seasoned WWII strategy gamer I was hoping for something along the same scale. If you too are looking for something with depth and good tactical planning this isn't it. I can give the video cut scenes a pass as they rarely sync with the sound and they play no part in the game itself at all. Hex based games like this are like Chess, meaning plan plan plan. Always having to see three or four moves ahead. Slitherine games like Panzer Corps or Order of Battle are great choices for this as well as MANY others. As I said, this game it smooth and doesn't crash much but moving units into position and trying to task them in the same spot as other units is a pain and listening to the tutorial descriptions even when you turn it off is also annoying. If you don't care about the historical realism of strategy war gaming then by all means buy it. It will be entertaining for you. Take it from an old wargame geek, don't buy it if you need more out of a strategy war game than visuals... :)

I have a rule of saying that if a game is fun, the other things are just the icing. Bad visuals? Corny sounds? Bad controls (note: non-real-time games only)? They can be overlooked.

I have found the game that is the exception to my own rule.


So, to get this out of the way first: This game is a turn-based-strategy game, with a point-buy system for your units, persistent-army mechanic, Hex-grid battlefield, and a basic system of "supply" for ammo, fuel, and repair to damaged units on a turn-by-turn basis.

To all these parts, it works fine. Not highly-polished, and certainly not genre-redefining, but acceptable enough to work for the purpose of "playing", and progressing through the story.



And that's it. That's all I have to say positively about this title.

The cutscenes are, quite frankly, a joke. Terribly animated, horribly voiced, and with a nice dash of "whitewashing" history (especially on the Japanese side) of making it look like you and your forces are all perfectly noble people with ethics that would be well set to a hero in a children's cartoon, while not only are your enemies portrayed as terrible people, but so is the Army of your respective nation (since you play as the Navy in this game). Sure, YOU are a shining example of humanity. It's that nasty Army that is doing all of the terrible things.

And that's just the non-gameplay part.

This game suffers HARD from "Fire Emblem Syndrome". Due to your units gaining experience and persisting from battle to battle, you are highly incentivized to never lose a unit. If you do, the game just gets harder and harder. The issue is, the way this game was designed, it wants to provide a challenge for someone who has, in fact, never suffered a loss, meaning that you are basically expected to "perfect" every map; not just because you don't want to lose anyone, but because the points you use to buy and strengthen troops come from all of the objectives being met, not just the bare victory condition.

But to do THAT, you have to basically have precognitive knowledge of every mission. AND precognitive knowledge of future mission, because if you don't buy the right units for the next mission, you're pretty screwed...

... and I am talking from the 2nd-to-LOWEST difficulty setting here. I can understand if a high-difficulty in a game is designed to push a player to perfect-action-play, but the 2nd-to-lowest?

There is one mission where, if you don't know EXACTLY what the enemy is going to do, AND have the necessary surface ships to stop them, they will win on Turn 1... from a position where NONE of their forces are even visible on the pre-deployment map. At least, one mission where I had it happen to me. Maybe I was just good enough to avoid it the other times.



Another big problem is the historical accuracy thing. I get that having perfect historical accuracy in a game that lets you play as the Japanese is, by definition, not going to be accurate towards the end (at least, not unless you want the "win" condition to be getting nuked). But as an example, during the IRL Battle of Midway, both sides carriers attacked each other, with huge chunks of planes being lost on both sides, and the surface ships never got within visual range (heck, most of the Japanese ships weren't even close enough to each other to provide AA support). In this game, losing units is a recipe for losing later scenarios, so you have to figure out a way to kill all of the carriers, planes, occupy Midway, occupy Alaska, and lose nothing... against an enemy fleet that likely outnumbers yours at this point.

Examples like this are everywhere... In the American battle of the Philippines, the USA by this point had trashed most of japan's forces, and Japan put together everything they had left in a final push, 1/2 through the middle of the island chain, half through the south, with a small under-planed carrier group way up north trying to act as bait to draw off USA forces and leave the transports unguarded.

IRL, the USA took the bait, and one of the two Japanese forces ran into nothing more than destroyers and escort carriers (the famous Battle of Samar), and the other group ran smack into a HUGE force of american ships that blew the snot out of them.

Now, in this game, obviously the player isn't going to get suckered into falling for the trap... so, to make things interesting, the player's forces get to run into a Japanese fleet that is about the size of their entire navy from the south, then one that is about the size of their entire navy from the middle, THEN the carriers show up north with a sizable escort of their own, and definitely not showing any lack of aircraft, and whatever is left of your forces get to deal with it. Did I mention that you have to, for the best result, be conducting landings in multiple locations, fight off all 3 of these forces, AND lose nothing while doing it?


A problem exacerbated by the game not understanding the difference between "giving a unit a command to do something at at a location" and "wanting to select a unit at said location and give it it's own order in a single click". Hope you save the game after, like, every single move.


So... ok, the campaign balance is... I think the technical term is "wack". While it wouldn't excuse this, at least the game can be fun in multiplayer, or various 1-off skirmish battles, right?

As of my writing this, there is no multiplayer or skirmish battles.




In summary, the base game engine is acceptable, but nothing else. Not the cutscenes, not the features, not the history, not the balance... this game REALLY needed to sit in user testing for a few more months before it went live. And I don't see any hope over the horizon of these things getting fixed.

If they ever do, I'll consider redoing this review.

I'm sure it's been said in other places but the thing that bothers me the most about this game, despite the nice graphics and sound, despite the rendering of historical ships, subs and aircraft, despite the lovely textures on the islands with lush vegetation and weather depictions, is, ships, as a rule, don't have the frigging ability to hunt down aircraft and deliver crippling attacks. I can't count how many times I've had a strike package of SBDs, Avengers and Wildcats reduced to half of their strength based on a couple of DDs and a cruiser! Utterly ridiculous. WW2 in the Pacific was all about the advent of force projection through aircraft carriers but this game has the aircraft reduced to a supporting role. I have played and replayed the 2nd scenario, The Battle of Midway as the Americans and was amazed that I, a man of 54, was capable of so much incredulous anger at a video game. So as it stands, I would not recommend this game for anyone who loves the Pacific theatre in WW2 IF they are looking for some realism in game play. Until a realism patch is released that takes away some of the more cartoon-like behaviour of ships, particularly DDs, I will move on to other titles in my collection.

panzer general at sea fun and often frustrating -in a good way- trying to work out the perfect strategies as both american and japanese admirals

This game is amazing. I love strategy games and this game really challenges your ability to synchronize all units toward your objectives. I can't believe the negative reviews that some people are giving this game. I've played only two missions so far and am thoroughly enjoying it. This game is not for people who want an easy AI to steam roll on your march to victory. The AI is very good, and it makes you pay for even slight mistakes. I'm still just learning how to best coordinate activities for best effect among the units. I can already see, that once I get through this whole campaign, I'll want to replay the whole thing on higher level, just to see if I can beat it. My complements to the developers, they have done a masterful job of creating a challenging game. I"m not saying that everything about this game is polished, but it's got great bones already. I'm sure the developers will continue to refine it. If you love challenging strategy, then buy this game! You won't regret it.

Very well done game. Same vein as Panzer General and Order of Battle. Challenging, fun, and deep.

My only con would be the voice acting but it's actually so bad that it's funny, so maybe that's a pro.

Pros: Great game based on WWII Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and following campaign by USA. Naval, Air, and land units all needed and advance in capabilities as prestige is earned through successfully fighting through the various scenarios. I spent years playing PTO 2, 3, 4 and have finally found a worthy successor to that series! Obviously, players can choose Japanese campaign but I'm still mostly on the USA side and have only played Japanese campaign on first scenario.
Cons: The ability to save game as would be a big help. choose your own name with significance rather than assigned name. 2nd would be fix the bug that does not allow holes to be repaired in the hole of the ship. 3rd would be to allow a skirmish or single battle mode to hone your skills without signing on for the total campaign.

I wanted to like this game, so I was willing to overlook a few things. The abysmal voice acting, the cheesy dialogue, the stiff and unnecessary cut scenes. The useless tutorial. But the play balance is definitely screwed. You really don't have the forces to pull off the objectives that keep piling on in the time given. I'm busy holding off 4 Jap carriers and escorts off Midway, with 4 plane groups while the computer has... about 8 or more? A surface group of BBs show up so I'm trying to hold them off too. Then a previously invisible invasion force sneaks in south of the place and invades. Game over. Sank 3 Jap carriers at the Battle of Coral Sea with no losses? Doesn't matter. Lexington is not available for Midway, the Japs are still full force; the campaign is really bogus, a series of pre-set battles. where you pay for the losses incurred in previous battles, but not the computer. There are serious balance issues in this game so I'm putting it aside for now.

I really wanted to like this game. I really liked the graphics initially and my initial impression on game play wasn't that it wasn't bad. But then I realized you get the same graphic if you bomb or torpedo a ship. I mean shouldn't you use the time you spent making useless swimming sharks to make different graphics for each?

As far as game play goes, your planes die quickly and inflict the same or less damage as a destroyer. And Japanese planes seem to have nearly unlimited fuel. I destroyed all of the Japanese carriers in Midway and five turns later his planes are still attacking my ships and troops. But if I go more than three turns without landing I seem to run out of gas. Worst of all the AI turns take forever.

I was even willing to overlook that there isn't a tutorial and to a lesser extent that leveling up didn't seem to do anything.(I keep getting already researched for everything I tried to select) And I figured its ok that I can only play set mission I mean this is early access after all, but it concerns me that this is the case when the game is leaving early access in a week.

And while the game is less buggy then most, I still go an Unreal error and the Midway mission keeps hanging.

So if the developers are listening here are my suggestions:
1.Keep the game in early access while you work through issue and add more content. I know you promised to deliver quickly and its annoying for players when a game is in early access forever but you have work to do in my opinion.

2. Make adding a tutorial and fixing the level up mechanism number two on the priority list right behind improving AI turn performance.

3. Make aircraft attack graphics and re-balancing third on the list. Either make the aircraft harder to kill of give us more of them. Otherwise as a player I would just build a fleet of battleships and cruisers to win every time which is the exact opposite of historically accurate.

4. Either give the player control of the Allies forces or have the Allies AI make smarter and more helpful choices. I have had the game send the allied ships running away when a little assistance could finish off the Japanese fleet and I have had it make reckless attacks that cost it ships when I had the Japanese pinned with my ships and just need a turn or two to finish them off.

So in a nutshell, I might recommend this as an early access game with more fixes coming soon. But I would not recommend this as a full release game since I doubt all of the issues have been address.

UPDATE: So now the game is in full release and I wanted to update my feedback. While I enjoy several elements of the game and have played quite a bitI am still not sure I would give more than a half hearted recommendation.

The issue of planes inflicting the same damage everytime has improved. But still occurs far to much in my opinion and not just for planes. More misses mixed with occasional higher damage would seem more realistic. When I know pretty certainly that my attack with a destroyer main gun will almost certainly result in 1 HP everytime then something is off. Or that my destroyer will inflict 2 HP every time I depth charge a sub.

Subs seem to be the only aspect that is more random and realistic.(frustrating when you don't get any HP's but great when you sink an older carrier or nearly sink a cruiser with one shot)

In general game play is predictable, after playing a couple of times I know exactly where and when the enemy will appear.

And while the early access version seemed to be fairly bug free for early access I can't say the same thing about the full release. It actually seems more buggy then many early access games. The game has hung several times during the AI turn.

Occasionally, I can get it to move forward by clicking my mouse but as often as not the game will crash when it hangs.

And the cut scenes are interesting when they work right, which is far less often then not. The only ones that seem to work fairly consistently is when it is just showing movement and no attack or attacks between ships. When it is infantry or planes attacking ground units I am more likely to end up seeing a cut scene of the sky or random buildings\plants.

Also while I love the use of terrain, the developers haven't quite figured out how to make it work. I have had units drop to the bottom of the map after I sent them up a hill. And the flying vehicles and trees while funny look bad. As does having my having infantry sticking half out of the ground when the terrain isn't level.

Not really something for the hardcore. Refighting Historical battles in order is not really a strategy game. Winning the battles is more about mastering game mechanics as opposed to actual strategy. Ships can move almost as far as planes can during a turn. The AI has the carriers charging in to engage in gun battles and I found it quite easy to defeat once mechanics were mastered. The map scale has ships shooting at each other from 200 miles and it does not zoom out far enough making it difficult to keep track of units. The units themselves are very detailed but the gameplay is just not something the hardcore grognard is going to appriciate. To far down in the weeds to be a strategy game. To much statistical abstraction to be a tactical game. The turns seem to be about 8 hours long and thats too long of a command cycle for the level of command depicted in the game. 2 hour turns would probably work better. Graphics are pretty good when you zoom the view in down to water level but the action is just to unrealistic and repetitive to be taken seriously. It was actually fun for a couple of hours but there were just to many eyerolling moments. I can not recommend and will most likely be requesting a refund.

The game is very beautiful, the elaboration of details in everything, I have long wanted to see something like that, another game by this developer panzer strategy is interesting in some ways, but there is more development. Finally - repair, aircraft control, a variety of attacks and support have been introduced, I wish the developers further development and prosperity

Just started playing and so far so good. No issues and I like the way the game is laid out. It runs smoothly. I have only been playing for 30 minutes but its a first review on it. SO far the AI is pretty good. First battle it kicked my butt, but I am still learning the game. The price is right as well.