Field of Glory II Complete Edition

The store page sets one expectation with the word Complete, and on the metric I care about in a wargame catalog, the army list count, it keeps its promise. Where the expectation drifts is what newcomers hear in that word. Complete sounds like the fuller, more sophisticated version of the game. It is not. The rules engine is the one the standard edition already ships with. Same cohesion checks, same morale spiral, same combat resolution, same AI. What the bundle adds is surface area rather than depth: more armies, more centuries, more matchups the generator can throw at you. That is a real thing to buy. It is just not the thing the word Complete implies. Context on the base game, briefly, because that is the part you have to like first. Released in 2017 and sitting at 84 on Metacritic with 83 percent of 1,239 Steam reviews positive, this is turn-based ancient warfare where the interesting decisions are almost never about raw damage. Cohesion and morale carry the model. Units degrade in steps, they get shaken, they break, and a formation that loses its flank will unravel well before anything visible kills it. Learning it means learning matchups: which troop type wants open ground, which one collapses when charged in the side, when a reserve line is worth holding back. It is a tactics game with a wargamer's accounting, and it plays cleanly rather than fussily. So what does the bundle actually put in the box compared to standard? Expansion content, all of it, and expansion content in this engine means army lists, the scenarios that use them, and the unit types and terrain those armies need. The base release anchors on the Roman Republic era. The packs push the timeline and the map outward in both directions, which changes two systems in particular. The random battle generator gets a much larger pool to draw from, so the hundredth skirmish stops looking like the tenth. And asynchronous multiplayer gets a wider legal army pool, which matters because your opponent's options are gated by what the two of you own between you. If you plan to play strangers online long term, owning everything removes an argument before it starts. Run the shelf-filler test on it: soundtracks, wallpaper packs, art books, the padding that makes bundle counts look bigger than they are. I do not see that here. What is bundled are content packs that feed the same systems you are already playing, which is the version of this deal worth paying for. That said, plenty of people should take the standard edition instead. If you have never played a Slitherine tactics title, the base content holds more scenarios and generated skirmishes than most players finish, and stacking a pile of extra army lists onto a screen you cannot read yet is not a favour to yourself. The packs remain available individually later, and nothing about this bundle is a closing window. Here is the counterargument to my own warning, though. A giant army list count is not the intimidating thing it looks like, provided you approach it the way a wargamer does rather than the way a completionist does. Pick one army. Learn its three or four core troop types until you know what they do without reading the tooltip. Then run generated battles against random opponents and let the extra content work as variety on the other side of the field rather than homework on yours. Used that way, this package is a machine for producing unfamiliar problems against a rule set you already understand, and that is what keeps a tactics game alive long past the scripted battles. Buy it for the breadth. Do not buy it expecting a different game.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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