Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism Review

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism is a turn-based strategy game. This game, like other versions of the Strategic Mind series, is about the events of World War II. Of course, even though the story is based on true historical events, it is not completely faithful to reality. However, especially since it is told from the point of view of the Red Army, the story is fresh in terms of atmosphere and provides information that has been rarely discussed.

Therefore, it’s an informative experience. However, the story is not such that we wait every moment to see what happens next. Like many other historical strategy games, usually, the story is not a strong issue. You are just supposed to partake in a string of historic battles like any other stereotypical world war game. So you should not buy this game just because of the story.

The gameplay is somewhat good. This means that the strategic depth of the game is appropriate and you will be challenged on higher levels of difficulty, but with proper thinking and choices, you can overcome the battles. The game has four degrees of difficulty and you can even customize them. The first two difficulty options will not involve many gray cells in your brain. But the other two are harder.

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism gradually provides you with many military units. You can upgrade these units as well as your commanders, and choose equipment and skills for them. Using the right units against enemy targets as well as managing resources such as fuel and ammo is critical. Of course, since the events of each stage are scripted and not much random, each failure usually leads to predicting enemy activities and success in the end. Overall, the game takes a long time to complete and it can justify its $30 price tag.

Although the gameplay has a good core, it has many flaws in its execution. The first is that the game’s tutorial system is lacking. In fact, unlike many games that have a slow start in the first few stages and tell you what to do, Strategic Mind is not like that. At the very beginning, you see a big map, and complex user interface, and numerous units to manage; which no explanation is given about them. After messing with your controller and the game menus, you will understand that if you click on certain units, explanations about them will be presented to you.

Of course, these explanations are not very practical. If you want to know what’s going on in the game, you have to read a series of long texts that are the size of a book! Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism is tough to interact with. Not only is the user interface buggy, but it also has shortcomings. For example, I played the game with a mouse and keyboard on Xbox, but there was no setting to view and change buttons.

This is an ugly game. It seems the developers had big ideas but with a low budget. That is, the game has about an hour of cutscenes, but they not only have poor animations but also have unbearable 3D models. On the other hand, the voice acting is awful, and obviously, professional voice artists were not employed. Also, these dialogues are never in sync while playing cutscenes. The appearances of the game during the gameplay are not great too. The potential of the UE4 engine has not been used. Although interesting features such as day and night cycles and changing weather are considered for the game, the maps are elementary and lack details.

Spectre of Communism cannot be easily recommended to anyone because despite having fine gameplay, several obstacles prevent the audience from being attracted to it. If you have already played one of the previous titles of this series and had fun with it, this game will also satisfy you. Otherwise, approach the game with caution!

The review code was provided by the publisher