Numen: Contest of Heroes is a game that sits at about 50% recommended on steam. I beat it years ago and really enjoyed myself, but I knew it was a unique fit for me. I only say “bad” so that we have common ground, but I value that experience.
What are “bad” games you enjoy?
The Close Combat series up through maybe Close Combat III really wasn’t incredibly-well balanced. Like, if you’re playing on defense, a lot of the game basically consists of having a badly-outnumbered force, setting up an ambush with as much of your force as possible, opening up all at once when the other side is badly exposed and doing as much damage as possible. Then watch the game, and maybe once things have mostly died down, one moves a few units to reinforce.
In III, retreating as far as possible without losing an operation to get a ton of reinforcements, then pushing back through, is advantageous.
A lot of the game is about sticking heavy tanks on hills with good lines of sight.
I mean, there are just ways to play the game that the AI does not deal with well.
But I still had an absolute blast playing it.
The AI for Wargame: Red Dragon is pretty disappointing, and I generally don’t like playing games multiplayer, but I like the game enough that I was willing to just play against the AI. There were major improvements by Eugen in Steel Division 2 — it’s a far better game to play single-player. So…as a single-player game, I’d say that W:RD is a pretty bad game, but…I still really enjoyed playing it single-player.
Those all sound like legit realistic tactics though
Well, to some extent.
For the “fighting on a hill” thing, they didn’t implement hull-down, which would be kind of an important factor in the real world. And a lot of the drawbacks to heavy tanks, like logistics issues, didn’t really apply. So in practice, just place heavy tanks on hills (since you don’t have to do much to maneuver them there, set them to attack, and ignore them for most of the game until the fighting dies down. It’s…not super engaging.
For the ambushes, you get to pre-position your forces, knowing pretty exactly where the enemy forces are, and both sides basically transport a substantial mass into place at one time. Kinda like teleporting two sides together into close proximity, and the computer not sending out reconnaissance units to feel out the other side, just starting a rush over open ground.