For players used to harder-core war games, or who can handle the game having a broader focus than the typical Command & Conquer or Halo Wars, it can be a great buy. For the average gamer, though, it's awfully hard to recommend the game, despite all its depth.
Theatre of War 3: Korea brings a welcome change of scenery to the
series, but the boring strategic mode is a poor replacement for the
traditional single-player campaign.
Not as bad as everyone thinks. If your a fan of the series which I am, this offers a number of challenges. First it crashes a bit, second the AI could use a tune up but the game in general is decent. The campaign is enjoyable with a number of new craft and units. All in all I'm happy
This isn't a bad buy for a long time Battlefront fan like myself, and the added features such as helicopters is more than welcome, but honestly how did they manage to introduce bugs that weren't even in Theatre of War 2, considering this game is basically just Theatre of War 2? Sometimes the units would curl up against each other in a corner when you tell them to move, and you have to figure out how to get them moving again by trial and error, while other times the path finding works exactly like it should. Why the wonkiness? I can understand if you guys can't be bothered to make TOW2 better, but how did you manage to make it worse?
The lack of documentation has been a problem in the series, but this is a new low. What in hell is "Historical units set"? What are the numbers on the top left hand side corner of the campaign screen?
Oh, another thing: now when you click a solder, you automatically select the whole squad, and you have to double click the solder to select him only. This little change makes infantry movement so much harder. I could name other annoying little changes from TOW2 that make no sense, but I'd rather not.
And mortars. Player controlled mortars are wildly inaccurate. It's not uncommon for a mortar to empty all 84 rounds without killing anything. Enemy mortars, however, can wipe out entire platoons with a few rounds. This makes infantry squads useless whenever the enemy has a mortar position. Either make enemy mortars as inaccurate as player controlled ones, or get rid of these pieces of junk altogether.
Infantry behaviour is exactly the same as in TOW2. They still throw grenades at friendly units, take minutes to figure out how to shoot an enemy 5 metres away. Good thing enemy soldiers can now surrender, making trench warfare slightly less frustrating.
While 1C Company should be congratulated for being ambitious enough to put forth the effort to recreate in minute detail, one of the most pivotal events of the Cold War, they should perhaps be admonished for not being ambitious enough.
Yes, it's got loads of realistically recreated tanks, choppers, planes and all sorts of stuff like that. That's all fine and dandy. But it's easy to get that stuff right. What they fail at is creating a 'fun' game for all the nice tanks to be used in. Realism is fine when there's some gameplay oomph to back it up. Not here and, judging by the fact each Theatre of War game is pretty much making the same mistakes, not ever.
After Theatre of War 3: Korea crashed for the last time, I realized it'd only succeeded in whetting my appetite for a good Korean War real-time strategy game. [July 2011, p.69]
Dedication to an overlooked conflict cannot make up for being a bad game. Suitable only for those who have a deep interest in Korean War-era small squad combat. Anybody else should dig up an old copy of "Close Combat" or "Combat Mission" or "Firefight" or something.
Don't buy ANYTHING from Battlefront. They (Steve) have gotten a little too big for their britches and think they are the cats meow when it comes to gaming. They have the worst customer service interaction of any company I have ever dealt with and Steve is a LIAR. He said he would eat a web page if anyone could prove that any company supports their games for FREE beyond 6 to 8 years. It was proven and he just started banning people. Plus they have an intrusive DRM scheme as well to activate your games and they charge you for patches now at $5 a pop for CMBB and CMAK. Buy it if you must but at least wait for the bargain bin $5 which will surely come.
One of the worst purchases I have ever made in my entire life . . . I've bought a fair amount of not so awesome games but this one just tops the list! The game is constantly crashing and the frame rate is so bad. My PC surpasses the recommended system requirements on steam I tried playing it on medium graphics and the game still lags like crazy . . . And the worst thing is the graphics arenâ
Wow, I joined metacritic just so I could write a review on how disappointing this game was. After it crashed for the n-th time, I figured I would vote with a note.
Don't go near this game!
SummaryTheatre of War 3 Korea begins where World War II ended. Replay the events of the first hot war of the Cold War era – the Korean War, also known as the Forgotten War! The players are involved in two campaigns, both set in 1950: the North Korean campaign spans June 25 - August 20 and the American campaign from September 15 - October 8.