REVIEW | Classified: France ’44

“On to Victory. What will your D-Day look like?”

Classified: France ’44 is a new turn-based strategy game, set in World War II during the desperate months leading up to the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. Take charge of a special-ops team of Allied commandos and French resistance fighters. Deal with competing factions to build the resistance network and strike at German targets deep in occupied territory. However, the more chaos you cause, the more you’ll draw the merciless attention of the Gestapo secret police. Featuring lots of exciting missions inspired by the exploits of the Allies and the French, the game expands on turn-based tactical concepts, bringing authentic World War II combat to life. The campaign allows for multiple playthroughs that are different each time. Build your team. An authentic and characterful mix of heroes will be yours to choose from, each with their own personal story to tell. Train, customise, and equip them with your ever-growing arsenal of skills and weapons. Raise the morale of your team by spending time around the campfire and learning about their lives as they fight across the war-ravaged fields of occupied France.

Things I liked!

• Map | I was impressed with the game map in the war room, where you can plan future attacks, see current objectives, and handle tasks such as treating injuries, repairing regions, aiding factions, and providing training. You can also view each character’s loadout and unlock skills as you level up each character. Alternatively, head to the base camp, where you can listen to war stories—this is great for boosting morale within your squad. Additionally, you’ll be able to track how many days are left until D-Day arrives. Classified: France ’44 features different endings, and each playthrough is influenced by the choices you make—ensuring that no two playthroughs will be the same. With over 45 missions supplied to your team by the French forces, you’ll need to carefully choose which missions align with your strategy to strengthen the resistance and support your ultimate goals.

Neither good nor bad

• Presentation | The presentation does a good job of setting the scene of a war-ravaged France, with the Allied forces and their comrades trying to defeat the Germans. Each character has a good story to tell, and I enjoyed learning about their backgrounds. Unfortunately, this is let down by the very poor cutscenes that you see before each mission. These cutscenes are often exactly the same as those from a previous mission—just a few soldiers walking along a blacked-out background.

• Gameplay | I found the Classified: France ’44 was pretty good at showing the mechanics and teaching you the controls in the early missions that you do. Classified: France ’44 includes short tutorial, which helps ease players into the experience. With so many options, it can feel quite daunting at times, but I found it pretty easy to pick up and play. Characters in your team have a morale metre, and when they are in battle and being shot at, this goes down—even if they are not wounded. I have not experienced this before in a video game, and it definitely adds to the gameplay. If a character’s morale falls too low, then they skip their turn as they are too afraid to move for fear of being shot. As you play each game, you control four members of your unit, and each character takes their turn before it’s the enemy’s turn.

Things I disliked!

• Graphics | The art style used in Classified: France ’44 is unattractive and feels outdated. As I played through the story campaign, it never seemed to improve. The game features a top-down view, allowing you to move the map area around and zoom in and out. During battles, there are occasions where you fire your equipped weapon, such as a rifle and the game camera would pan behind your character, showing you shooting at your target in third person. However, I thought this looked very rough around the edges and could have been much better.

• Difficulty | Classified: France ’44 has numerous difficulty spikes that significantly diminished my overall enjoyment of the game. For instance, you might have completed all objectives during a mission, but as you begin to retreat your  soldiers to the extraction point on the map, suddenly enemy soldiers seem to appear from nowhere, outnumbering you. By this point, you’re usually very low on ammo and health, and they overrun you. In such situations, you have to either click ‘restart mission’ or load a previous save if you have one available.
  
  
• Sound | Enemy soldiers exhibit a limited vocabulary, and hearing the same voices repeatedly as you wait for them to take their turn can indeed become grating. Additionally, German soldiers sometimes speak in clear English by mistake when you shoot at them, which can cause concern that you may have wounded your own men.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 14 hours
How long to beat the story? 40 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 4/30
How long to achieve 1000G | 80 + hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Xcom 2 and Aliens: Dark Descent