I just finished my first campaign - while it no doubt drags out for a while by the last stretch of the journey (with no real challenge if you have played well early-game and stocked up) I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience.

Combat reminds me a lot of Company of Heroes, but with the ability to pause. I think I described it as the Company of Heroes 3 that we wanted but didn't get. The only slightly odd system is the stealth, but honestly it's not a big issue for me. It was more fun going in guns blazing instead. Very few missions actually require you to stealth at all. Cover makes sense and it is almost always possible to find cover for your soldiers quickly, with the exceptions of being caught in an open area - which should spell doom for you either way.

The train management part is unique. I've seen comparisons to xcom's spaceship, which I just don't find accurate at all. You set out on your journey eastwards on the train, and as you go along, you can visit Points of Interest (PoI) along the tracks. This will be your primary source of resource gathering early-game, and each soldier has specific traits that might yield more resources if you send that specific soldier to that point of interest. Although sometimes, this can go horribly wrong, and your soldiers might get mauled, fall in to a frozen lake or get mentally scarred from the brutal atrocities committed to innocent villages - it is a unique experience that I have yet to see a comparison to, and it was a fun experience to manage.
My only critique is the game kind of "overloads" you with resources by the end. It's supposed to get harder and harder, and you're meant to scavenge and really struggle for resources - but that was never really the case. I finished my journey with well over 2k fuel left and almost 700 food, because I expected the game to actually ramp up the difficulty. Instead, I arrived at the final destination with a ton of unusable resources. The storyline kind of hints at your "struggling soldiers" that are underfed because they're being rationed, have low morale and are all fatigued - when in reality, after the first few chapters, neither food nor morale nor exhaustion is really an issue anymore. The consumables don't really have a "negative" to them (some have % chances of overdose or addiction, but they are so low that they are irrelevant most of the time) and consumables just removes part of the fun - which is why I decided to not use any consumables for the entire rest of the game from Chapter 4. And I still managed it.

The last part is the story. There will be a few spoilers in this paragraph, so if you want to avoid spoilers, skip to the last paragraph. Still with me? Okay, you were warned. The story mostly makes sense, although I did wish the story would have given an explanation as to why you are travelling to Vladivostok rather than going west and just fighting through to your home country. They might have mentioned it in the beginning, but I did not catch it, and even if said reason was "there are enemies", your squad of 10 units will beat far worse odds than that. The final battle left me feeling very disappointed though. You're instructed to go through the city, perform a few side missions, then take the fort and hold it down. Awesome, the defense missions are fun. Only this mission proved more annoying than fun to me. First of all, you need to run to save a delegation of the White Army that will help you in your assault of the fort. They are being attacked by a tank, and so you have to run to their aid. But then, the entire AI delegation rushes forward in to a no-mans-land with no cover and gets obliterated by the tank, instead of waiting for my Field Gun to be in range. This failed the side mission. I didn't want to restart to get 100% so I just went on with it. Later in the mission, you're instructed to hold down the citadel of the fort with the heavy weapons you have - only after the first assault, your positions are continuously battered by enemy artillery, destroying all your heavy weapons and constantly making you have to pause to move your troops. I feel like this final battle could be made better by removing artillery from both sides. If you completed an earlier mission, a plane will destroy their pieces, but not before all your own pieces are destroyed, making you rely on raw infantry power against large blobs of enemies, vehicles and even a tank. After the timer runs out, the combat scene ends quite abruptly. No celebrating, no cheers, no fanfare or anything. It just ends and goes in to the finale cutscene. This left me very disappointed. It was meant to be this big epic battle, and it just ends like that? No pushing the reds out? No using the big naval guns on the fort wall that was teased in the beginning of the mission? Oh... Well that was disappointing..

The game is by no means hard. I do have quite a few hours in other RTS games, but I feel like this is a game that can be enjoyed by a large audience. For hardcore RTS fans, this will not really pose a challenge, and it can become a bit repetitive. But it has a great narrative and great mechanics. A must-try for RTS and management gamers.

I just finished my first campaign - while it no doubt drags out for a while by the last stretch of the journey (with no real challenge if you have played well early-game and stocked up) I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. Combat reminds me a lot of Company of Heroes, but with the ability to pause. I think I described it as the Company of Heroes 3 that we wanted but didn't get. The only slightly odd system is the stealth, but honestly it's not a big issue for me. It was more fun going in guns blazing instead. Very few missions actually require you to stealth at all. Cover makes sense and it is almost always possible to find cover for your soldiers quickly, with the exceptions of being caught in an open area - which should spell doom for you either way. The train management part is unique. I've seen comparisons to xcom's spaceship, which I just don't find accurate at all. You set out on your journey eastwards on the train, and as you go along, you can visit Points of Interest (PoI) along the tracks. This will be your primary source of resource gathering early-game, and each soldier has specific traits that might yield more resources if you send that specific soldier to that point of interest. Although sometimes, this can go horribly wrong, and your soldiers might get mauled, fall in to a frozen lake or get mentally scarred from the brutal atrocities committed to innocent villages - it is a unique experience that I have yet to see a comparison to, and it was a fun experience to manage. My only critique is the game kind of "overloads" you with resources by the end. It's supposed to get harder and harder, and you're meant to scavenge and really struggle for resources - but that was never really the case. I finished my journey with well over 2k fuel left and almost 700 food, because I expected the game to actually ramp up the difficulty. Instead, I arrived at the final destination with a ton of unusable resources. The storyline kind of hints at your "struggling soldiers" that are underfed because they're being rationed, have low morale and are all fatigued - when in reality, after the first few chapters, neither food nor morale nor exhaustion is really an issue anymore. The consumables don't really have a "negative" to them (some have % chances of overdose or addiction, but they are so low that they are irrelevant most of the time) and consumables just removes part of the fun - which is why I decided to not use any consumables for the entire rest of the game from Chapter 4. And I still managed it. The last part is the story. There will be a few spoilers in this paragraph, so if you want to avoid spoilers, skip to the last paragraph. Still with me? Okay, you were warned. The story mostly makes sense, although I did wish the story would have given an explanation as to why you are travelling to Vladivostok rather than going west and just fighting through to your home country. They might have mentioned it in the beginning, but I did not catch it, and even if said reason was "there are enemies", your squad of 10 units will beat far worse odds than that. The final battle left me feeling very disappointed though. You're instructed to go through the city, perform a few side missions, then take the fort and hold it down. Awesome, the defense missions are fun. Only this mission proved more annoying than fun to me. First of all, you need to run to save a delegation of the White Army that will help you in your assault of the fort. They are being attacked by a tank, and so you have to run to their aid. But then, the entire AI delegation rushes forward in to a no-mans-land with no cover and gets obliterated by the tank, instead of waiting for my Field Gun to be in range. This failed the side mission. I didn't want to restart to get 100% so I just went on with it. Later in the mission, you're instructed to hold down the citadel of the fort with the heavy weapons you have - only after the first assault, your positions are continuously battered by enemy artillery, destroying all your heavy weapons and constantly making you have to pause to move your troops. I feel like this final battle could be made better by removing artillery from both sides. If you completed an earlier mission, a plane will destroy their pieces, but not before all your own pieces are destroyed, making you rely on raw infantry power against large blobs of enemies, vehicles and even a tank. After the timer runs out, the combat scene ends quite abruptly. No celebrating, no cheers, no fanfare or anything. It just ends and goes in to the finale cutscene. This left me very disappointed. It was meant to be this big epic battle, and it just ends like that? No pushing the reds out? No using the big naval guns on the fort wall that was teased in the beginning of the mission? Oh... Well that was disappointing.. The game is by no means hard. I do have quite a few hours in other RTS games, but I feel like this is a game that can be enjoyed by a large audience. For hardcore RTS fans, this will not really pose a challenge, and it can become a bit repetitive. But it has a great narrative and great mechanics. A must-try for RTS and management gamers.