Second Front

This game is RNG heavy beyond all reasonable belief. I have tanks firing at stationary targets for multiple turns in open terrain with neither moving and proceed to miss EVERY. SINGLE. SHOT. Without fail, it was incredible to watch. I have had machine guns, mortars, anti tank guns, and tanks themselves have a 4% chance of weapons malfunction and then proceed to malfunction in the DOZENS.

There was a Soviet Scenario where I was tasked with taking a railway station I had 6 light tanks at my disposal with 4 of them being unable to fire their primary cannon due to malfunction and the remaining two which did have functional cannons could not hit a single target for the life of them even when point black to the enemy. Then as this was happening enemy light auto cannons 20mm AA guns would then have a 50% chance of being able to reload and keep firing in the same turn proceeded to have 8 successful rolls killing 3 of my tanks in a single turn. Absolutely incredible.

I have no problem with games being difficult by nature, but what I do have a problem with is games artificially inflating difficult through no fault of your own. Bad tactics and you lose? Thats fine. A flanking attack didn't work out due to poor positioning? Thats fine. Having a tank be point blank to a target out in the open and then have it miss for up to 4+ turns in a row? Thats ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. This is not a difficult game because its hard to learn or even master, this is a difficult game because RNG can and will ♥♥♥♥ you at every turn for any reason or no reason at all regardless of your failures or successes as a tactician.

(After 50+ hours of play, check the bottom for further enlightenment....)

Welcome to Advanced Squad Leader on the PC.
If you, like me, have played ASL for far too many hours, this is the game for you. It's like slipping into a comfy chair that has moulded to you over the years. While there are slight differences between SF and ASL, they are fairly negligible and you'll soon be sending squads out to do their job.

If you haven't played ASL, then reconcile yourself to the fact that there is a learning curve. And also accept the fact that occasionally the RNG gods will slap you around due to no fault of yours.
Nothing like watching an enemy AT-gun keep getting reloads, and shattering your well-planned attack. :)

Finally, this is an old-school board-game ported to a PC. Don't expect shiny graphics (although they are decent enough), and don't expect RTS base-building.
It's pure hex'n'counter.

Pros:
- Absolutely massive amount of content, and with the Workshop getting into gear there'll only be more.
- Decent AI. Occasionally it does something daft, and if you have a firm grasp on basic tactics you'll win more than you lose. But you can't just overrun it like other games.... *cough* John Tiller *cough*
- Slick interface. Everything just works, and is easily understood.

Cons:
- I'm not wild about the art-style. But that's simply personal preference.
- No multiplayer. I haven't been following the development, so I have no idea if it's planned, but I certainly hope so. While playing the AI is fun, this game is just begging for a MP mode.

Overall: 9/10.
This is "Tigers on the hunt" done right.
If they add multiplayer, it'll be a 10/10 and I may never leave the house again.

EDIT Start:
So...... I still heartily recommend this game. It's the first tactical game in a long while that has a good AI.
But.........
It does have its flaws. The most glaring one being that 'breakthrough' scenarios where you have to exit X number of VPs doesn't really work.
You're supposed to exit VPs as quickly as possible, swatting aside blocking forces. Only, there are no turn restrictions, so you can advance at a crawl and simply murder anything in your way, one squad at a time.

Furthermore, I suspect the RNG is a little....wonky.
Since the game doesn't supply you with the actual dice-rolls, I can only base it on my ASL experience, so take this with a grain of the proverbial salt.
I'm reasonably sure that the average of dice-rolls is what it should be. But you seem to get extreme results far more often than what the odds are.
Guns and support-weapons breaking down at a frightening rate, multiple casualty-reductions from a single light mortar attack, one 20mm AA gun murdering an entire platoon.....
It's not that any of the above are, in and of themselves, uncommon. Like most ASL players I have a fondly remembered history of odd things happening.
But in SF it seems to happen with alarming regularity.

For anyone who might be familiar with the turn based Advanced Squad Leader board games, Second Front is essentially a digital computer game with a nearly identical ruleset (one massive exception, see last two paragraphs).

For the most part, the game is good. I'm not a fan of the cartoon aesthetic styled graphics, but I understand that realistic modeling of the vast amount of units might have been a lot more work.

Lots of other reviews cite biased dice/RNG in the favor of the AI. Sometimes the RNG can feel a bit unfair, but I assure you, it is not. I even went and analyzed a complete recording of one of my playthroughs of the "Gazala Skirmish" scenario, where there are 2 37mm Pak 35/36 AT guns that cause a lot of trouble. They cause trouble because of their relatively high rate of fire, which is simulated as a 50% of getting another shot every time they take a shot. People would report as many as 9 or 10 free shots and an average of 4 free shots per turn.

Upon analysis, I found that these guns actually had an average of 1 free shot per turn, which is quite reasonable. My analysis data is in the games discussion forums.

There are unfortunately, quite a lot of bugs, including game breakers. A bug I've experienced multiple times now is where the AI gets stuck on its turn and just loops. The game never continues, and I have to forcibly close the game and restart it. I have reported it, as have other people, even with a video. Hopefully it gets fixed. But there are quite a number of smaller bugs in the game.
EDIT (4/30/2025): The developer released a hotfix yesterday that's supposed to fix this exact bug. Hopefully it should be fixed! Yay!

Some think that the RNG is bugged sometimes, and unfortunately this is very hard to test and verify.

The game does have a lot of features that it lacks, a big one being multiplayer, and the majority of these features have been requested already; however, the real problem I have is not with the game itself, even with the bugs and lack of key features, but the developer's (Jo Bader) attitude towards customers. I'll just leave you with one quote from the game's discussion forums.

[quote=Russkly;830448205345867297]

Thanks, Jo.

Look forward to it.

Could you also update us on the status of the roadmap published last year, please?

the Roadmap is the Roadmap. and when I have fun to work on the game then I do it.
I don't care about your demands, suggestions or whatever you think you have the right to ask for. clear enough? [/quote]

EDIT (3/12/2025): Another point to note, the developer only implements features "when I have fun to work on the game". So that big roadmap?? Forget it. The development pace here is abysmally slow. He recently just released a patch after NEARLY A FULL YEAR of no updates, and what does the patch do? Adds TNT against vehicle targets. In the discussion forums, he mentioned an update coming somewhere around Christmas 2024... Well that didn't happen.

In addition, I've recently come to the realization that the Advanced Squad Leader ruleset, as implemented here, has fundamental flaws that completely destroy the purpose of being a WW2 combat simulation. I've come to this conclusion because this game has allowed me to play enough "ASL" fluidly to bring these issues to light. One chief problem is that cumulative fire is either all or nothing with effect. There may be a single sniper up in that tower, and you may shoot at him with nearly a full platoon's worth of men, but because nobody scored a hit, then he isn't even the slightest bit affected and continues to fire at full effect. I'm not sure if this is because the accuracy probability falls off too quickly at range, or because the rules are too dependent on the total firepower for each individual attack, or because there is no tracking and accumulation of such things as "stress". The opposite effect happens too frequently as well, where a sniper can make your entire squad panic and flee (break) from across the map, all because fire has no granularity.

I suppose something is to be said of the lack of "firegroups" in Second Front, which Advanced Squad Leader does have, but the developer decided that people can't grasp the concept so he won't implement it (more of that developer snobbery). "Firegroups" in ASL allow you to combine adjacent units' firepower into one big fire combat roll against a target. This allows you to increase the odds of a hit with multiple units at once versus using each of those units individually. I do see it as a key component to the rules that I think was there to help fight the lack of granularity, and it should be implemented