Turn-based tactical games, such as XCOM, used to be a niche genre for hardcore PC gamers. That was until XCOM Enemy Unknown was released in 2012 and made their style of turn-based grid-style tactical games a legitimate mainstream success. Since then the genre has exploded in the U.S. and has been increasingly watered down as more and more games have been made for the general audience. (Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle probably being the biggest success.) Around the same time this was happening, World War II based games had reached their saturation point and started to fall back in popularity after Call of Duty began to get away from the setting. 

Now we’re getting the first significant attempt at mixing the two in Classified France ‘44. While there has been an extensive number of strategy games set during the second World War there has not been many in this style. The question remains then of whether you should spend the money and time. Well, let me tell you, it depends on how you feel about the genre. But then I’m getting ahead of myself.

Opus One

Many depictions of the D-Day invasion have been presented in video games. Both Call of Duty and the now dormant Medal of Honor franchise have used that decisive battle as the opening level in their campaigns before. In Classified France ‘44, however, it is just the inverse. From the start of the game, there is a timer counting down the number of days until the invasion. You play as a small multinational group of Spec Ops soldiers and spies set out to soften and manipulate the Nazi situation in France ahead of D-Day. Every time you complete a mission, the timer ticks forward a couple of days. It’s a unique and frankly deeply appreciated device that both keeps the tension up and also helps you track how many more missions you can fit in. 

The basic gameplay loop is when you start at a map with several missions you can take in various regions of France. Every time you succeed, you can help give some of that region back to one of three local groups that are helping you oppose the Nazis. Then you can slide over to the team manager section of the menu, and based on XP earned, you can unlock abilities on each character’s skill tree. You can also customize their appearance and weapons depending on what nation they’re from and what you’ve unlocked. I didn’t find any of the characters themselves as all that memorable nor particularly unique from each other except in their special abilities. Each of the (eventually) eight characters is assigned a class that gives them additional tools in missions and means they use different weapon types. Trench guns, Tommy guns, Long Rifles, and so on.

In between missions, you can also select characters to send off for specific things on their own, like advanced training to get a large block of XP for them or simply to heal from debuffs they’ve taken on from the previous mission.

I didn’t find the story to be particularly interesting or original. But between the three factions you’re trying to convince to support the allied invasion and the various customization and mild team management I found that the game had more depth than I initially thought and was pleasantly surprised. But now let’s get into the actual combat and missions.

Jumping at the Woodside

There are three types of missions that pop up on the map: Stealth, Ambush, and Assault. In Stealth, you’re attempting to get in and complete objectives without being seen. Ambush starts off stealthy for a few turns and then becomes an outright battle, while Assault starts off already in the thick of it with no stealth, period. Of the three, I found I appreciated the Assault the most. Trying to be sneaky in a turn-based scenario never stopped feeling awkward, and I found myself having to save spam to prevent an enemy from taking a turn I didn’t expect and discovering one of my characters. Granted, as the mission progresses save spamming is less necessary as you start to learn all of their patrol patterns.

Like most tactics games, everything is on a grid system with various cover objects to hide behind. Also, like most tactics games, some of these covers offer half protection while others offer full protection. Initially, I found the maps hard to read. The squares are smaller than most tactics games I’ve played, and the color palette being muted didn’t help, but the game makes extensive use of HUD indicators and colored icons on the map to show what type of cover or stealth each square provides. The character clothing customization also helped to identify which unit was which. 

Like most games in the genre, each attack has a percentage chance of connecting and dealing damage. Something that Classified France ‘44 (a name that never gets less clunky to say) has different is a unit morale system. Even if you miss or an enemy unit misses one of yours, there is a second meter that is drained. This meter controls how much you can move and how many action points you can use. If it drops all the way to zero, that unit isn’t able to take any action at all. They have to wait for it to be raised. There is a character class that raises your unit’s morale, but after a couple of turns, it will start to recover on its own. 

I found that this solved one of the greatest frustrations people have with tactics games, and that is how annoying it can be when you keep losing the dice rolls against the same enemy. Some games have solved this with cover degradation, which this game does not have, but I found that this system made it feel like I was always making progress even if I wasn’t doing any damage. The unit I’m firing at may not be dying, but I’ve reduced its morale enough that it can’t move or fire back.

The depth of strategy varies, but I found that repetition was key. As the game went on, most missions led me to realize about halfway through that I had made a miscalculation about which four characters to bring in or where to have them move in the first few turns. I ended up restarting a lot, but I didn’t mind it as the maps are all small, and the missions, if you have a clear idea of what you need to do, are not overly long. 

Foggy Day

Classified isn’t a perfect game. You can tell that it is made with a smaller budget. Given this, there is a little bit of clunkiness and jank with the controls, and on a couple of occasions when I attempted to load a quicksave (thankfully easy to both create and load from the pause menu), the game just hard crashed me back to the system home screen. It wasn’t something I ever found rage-inducing, but it was definitely annoying. I never had any serious issues like file corruption or having to restart a whole mission due to the frequent auto-saves. But it is definitely a game in the single or double A space. Whether or not that’s a big deal for you is a matter of taste, but it only somewhat affected my enjoyment. 

Verdict

Classified France ‘44 is a midrange yet ambitious attempt at a once-popular genre (one that’s not easy to recommend to players. Unless you’re looking at a little variety in your gaming diet, or you really love tactics games, then you might want to think twice before enlisting. 

Score: 7.5/10

Pros:

• Fun, if not graphically robust, missions.
• Interesting mechanics.
• Satisfying tactical gameplay
• Good Use of the setting in mechanics.

Cons:

• Uninteresting story and characters.
• Glitches and clunky controls.
• Bland graphics customization options.