Post by Gerd von Rundstedt on Mar 15, 2024 18:50:15 GMT
Hey there, fellas. It’s Gerd von Rundstedt. Pleasure seeing you guys again. I haven’t been on that much, but from the looks of things, that doesn’t put me in the minority. Seems like the last thing posted was 6 hours ago from the time of writing. I want to talk about a game I love, one that means so much to me. I want to talk about a game that truly started a passion that lasted for years, one that I would say changed my life. I want to talk about Glory of Generals 3.
First of all, I don’t think it’s fair to start this without explaining why it is, completely without a doubt, the best EasyTech game ever created. The short answer is that it’s perfect. The long answer is longer. This is a game that is so fundamentally correct on a level I have never seen before or since. It is the culmination of all of ET’s wonderful, amazing disasters beforehand. It is experimental, yet that experimentality was the end result of trial and error in past installments brought together.
Take a look at the weakest part of it. Conquest and United Front (Antarctica doesn’t exist, I refuse to accept it). Both of them, from my all-knowing and all-correct perspective, sucked. Conquest was too unwieldy and basically impossible to figure out exactly where everything you owned was, the AI was laughable, you get the old WC3 style feel of you being the Allies and Hungary absolutely cripples the Soviet Union. United Front was a fine idea that fell on its face more times than I could count. It wasn’t fun, it didn’t have anything of value, it could be steamrolled by a Katyusha solo, as stoic showed. But even then, in both of these did creativity shine.
It honestly reminds me of the game’s predecessor in the series. GOG2 was an absolute disaster, quite literally impossible to 100%. But it also showed off so many amazing and fantastic mechanics, ones that I to this day wish were used more often. You cannot tell me with a straight face that the naval, oil, or especially aerial mechanics were not ingenious. That was this game. Even the worst parts of it fell on its face, got a nosebleed, and then painted a beautiful picture with that blood. And that’s just the worst parts of it.
For a significant step up, there’s Army Group. It evolved the somewhat simplistic, solely general driven combat of EW5 into something actually fun, something in which it actually felt like you were in command of this sort of army. The tactics book was engaging (even if we always spammed Forced March), the enemies and allies were both somewhat real, there was depth to it. This was one of the few games when giving money to your opponent mattered. It was one of the games where snowballing with Denmark, or Yugoslavia, or even one of the major powers actually felt real, and not like you were simply spamming paratroopers and getting spammed by paratroopers.
And the campaign, the shining city on the hill. Absolute perfection incarnate. The star system in this made sense, it worked. The mega-campaigns at the end of each “front” were so engaging (and perhaps enraging, I still remember Case Blue), and the buildup to them was fantastic. The variance in the end goals for each campaign seemingly lifted straight from GCR. There was no spamming, because you and the enemy each had limited forces. It was, dare I say, far more strategic than any other game they’ve made. It was easier than most, yeah, but that just makes it all the more exciting when HangryBird completes it with absurd personal restrictions. The campaign’s absurdly deep, heck, we didn’t even know the whole Crete thing until what, a year, year and a half after the game’s release? It’s historically accurate (for the most part, of course), it’s fun, it ramps up in difficulty, it is fantastic.
And somehow, they did it, I don’t quite know how, but they equalized the units, finally. Every single unit is useful, there are none that are blatantly superior (*cough* it’s infantry *cough*), all of them have to work in tandem for anything close to a perfect “vicotry”. SFs have a long way towards ensuring that, but I’m surprised that, even later game, stuff like mediums don’t become completely useless. It’s refreshing, to say the least.
Going beyond that, they have the final superiority on a number of miscellaneous points, listed here. The art is superior to any game before or since, it doesn’t have that unnerving realism of the titles before and after it. It looks like the art was actually art, which does have some humorous moments (Thanos Yamamoto), but it’s certainly a step up. The ET English is not as bad as it sometimes is, but so help me I will chuckle at every single awkward line. The Defense stat was done perfectly in this game, and is the only reason fortifications are in any way viable (the only game where they are), which is so so epic. But you didn’t come here for that, did you? No, no. You came for the big two. So let’s not waste any time, shall we?
Special Forces were completely genius, and absolutely defined the game’s place within the pantheon of ET. Expanding the meta beyond gens and tech was something some of their games had tried to do before, to limited success. This pulled it off. Now, for heavens sakes, we have discussions about things that aren’t generals! Every class (except mortars my beloved) are useful in a big way, some being straight game changers (the Elefant and KV-6 spring to mind). They expanded the discussions so much, and to be honest, just letting us argue about something other than generals (because we clearly have too much time on our hands) is awesome and immediately brings the game up by like, three points on a scale of one to ten.
And lastly, the name of the game itself, the generals (Edit: I did not mean that literally but I’m glad it worked out). Before I talk about how awesome they are, there’s something to be said for what they are not. They are not absolutely overpowered “the only unit you’re actually paying attention to” monsters. There’s something to be said about that, in which you still have to use your non-general units to a significant extent. As far as I can tell, that hasn’t been replicated at all. I’d also like to mention how awesome it is that they’re divided, how only some are available for each theater, I swear this game’s left json had more thought put into it than the entirety of EW7.
But like, the generals’ designs within the game are all so good? We still haven’t figured out who is the most annoying of the Monty, Rokko, and Vatutin stans (It’s the Rokko ones and I will die on this hill). And the fact that we are somehow still having that conversation years later is brilliant game design. I absolutely adore it. We are still debating the viability of Guderian, of Yamashita, of Yamamoto, of Badoglio, of so many of these generals the question is still up in the air! That makes for fantastic discussion, certainly more than WC4, where if you didn’t have Guderian, you weren’t worth nothing. In these more recent games, generals are just meaningless, so it doesn’t even matter. This, EW5, and GCR are the only ones to maintain the arguments to this day (note how they are also the three best games). The generals have personality, with a clear playstyle for each of them that stacks up surprisingly well with historicity. All in all, it’s so great.
And it seems strange and somewhat tragic to point out now, but this was a game before all the loot boxes, the battle passes, the rotation generals. This was back when ET made games for the phone and not mobile games like they do today. This was when they were ET and not EA. There is no gachapon like EW7 or GCS, there is nothing left up to chance, really. They retroactively made it worse by adding in all of the IAPs, but that still has no bearing on the quality that we have currently. And, at least if they continue on the path they’re going on now, I don’t know if I’ll continue to play ET. And that would be a darn shame.
Because I love ET. I love these boards. I’m sure you’d believe me if I told you that this was my first real access to the internet. I was a goofy kid who was horrendously cringeworthy. Gosh, looking back on some of my posts is physically painful. But I’m grateful for them. After all, without them, I never would have met you guys, I never would have been able to proceed with my idiotic arguments about MacArthur clearing Guderian in WC4, I wouldn’t be able to get my stupid Ushijima crusade going, I wouldn’t be able to help get the RPs started up again, I wouldn’t be able to become someone who actually shifted the GOG3 meta. Without my old, terribly cringy 13 year old self, I wouldn’t be able to see all of you guys and the massive accomplishments you fellas have made.
You’d be surprised at how much of a lasting impression all of you fellas made on me. Heck, I don’t think even I recognized it for a good while. But that impression stuck like a brand on cattle. It allowed me to develop through trial and error my very personality, establishing exactly what I wanted to portray about myself and what I’d prefer not to be a part of me, something that I use for self-reflection even today. It was just a safe place to interact with others, and one that I’m so glad I took advantage of.
GOG3 is a great game. But it being a great game isn’t the reason I love it so much. I love it so much because it was what propelled me to actually start talking on these here boards. I love it so much because it allowed me to connect with individuals in a time I was personally starved for connection. It got me in touch with a whole slew of people that even today, even after it’s been months, even years since it died completely, I would call my friend, even a best friend. These boards are something special, something that cannot be replaced. Such an odd snapshot of culture, frozen within one moment.
I’m still well-connected with a number of folks I met on here, even long after this place died. I used to check this site daily, did you know that? That soon passed after it got less active. The official ET Discord server blew up, there’s no reason for a site like this anymore, is there? “Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck.” And the counts waned and waned until it is only met by a few holdouts, ones who may realize that it is dead, but refuse to accept it. Those too stubborn to die at all, those who persist when it doesn’t matter at all. And who knows? I like to think the boards deserve that tenacity, but I left with the rest of them, didn’t I? Maybe that was a mistake. Because maybe, just maybe, there can be life back into the boards.
This was a community, in which we honestly did know each others' names, everyone could just relax and discuss the latest mobile game from a company nobody else knew about. It was like we were holding a secret, one that we could only talk about with each other. It was like we were special. Like there was something that we had all to ourselves. Who knows, maybe that’s just the viewpoint of a child long gone. But nonetheless, I still feel it to a degree, a deep yearning for the days of the past, a nostalgia embedded deep within the boards. And maybe it’s irrational, sure, but after receiving so much from the boards, I can’t help but want to give back a little.
I’m going to restart GOG3. I’m going to play through it one last time, for old time’s sake. Certainly not at the same level I used to. It could take months upon months, even years for me to complete it. But I will. And I’ll document it here. Who knows, maybe we can get this old factory running, maybe not at full capacity again, but somewhere better than this. So shall we? Have a nice conversation, just talk for a bit. Like I know that we’re able to do, like we were able to do in the past. And with that, I bid you a brief farewell, but to quote general MacArthur, “I shall return.”
First of all, I don’t think it’s fair to start this without explaining why it is, completely without a doubt, the best EasyTech game ever created. The short answer is that it’s perfect. The long answer is longer. This is a game that is so fundamentally correct on a level I have never seen before or since. It is the culmination of all of ET’s wonderful, amazing disasters beforehand. It is experimental, yet that experimentality was the end result of trial and error in past installments brought together.
Take a look at the weakest part of it. Conquest and United Front (Antarctica doesn’t exist, I refuse to accept it). Both of them, from my all-knowing and all-correct perspective, sucked. Conquest was too unwieldy and basically impossible to figure out exactly where everything you owned was, the AI was laughable, you get the old WC3 style feel of you being the Allies and Hungary absolutely cripples the Soviet Union. United Front was a fine idea that fell on its face more times than I could count. It wasn’t fun, it didn’t have anything of value, it could be steamrolled by a Katyusha solo, as stoic showed. But even then, in both of these did creativity shine.
It honestly reminds me of the game’s predecessor in the series. GOG2 was an absolute disaster, quite literally impossible to 100%. But it also showed off so many amazing and fantastic mechanics, ones that I to this day wish were used more often. You cannot tell me with a straight face that the naval, oil, or especially aerial mechanics were not ingenious. That was this game. Even the worst parts of it fell on its face, got a nosebleed, and then painted a beautiful picture with that blood. And that’s just the worst parts of it.
For a significant step up, there’s Army Group. It evolved the somewhat simplistic, solely general driven combat of EW5 into something actually fun, something in which it actually felt like you were in command of this sort of army. The tactics book was engaging (even if we always spammed Forced March), the enemies and allies were both somewhat real, there was depth to it. This was one of the few games when giving money to your opponent mattered. It was one of the games where snowballing with Denmark, or Yugoslavia, or even one of the major powers actually felt real, and not like you were simply spamming paratroopers and getting spammed by paratroopers.
And the campaign, the shining city on the hill. Absolute perfection incarnate. The star system in this made sense, it worked. The mega-campaigns at the end of each “front” were so engaging (and perhaps enraging, I still remember Case Blue), and the buildup to them was fantastic. The variance in the end goals for each campaign seemingly lifted straight from GCR. There was no spamming, because you and the enemy each had limited forces. It was, dare I say, far more strategic than any other game they’ve made. It was easier than most, yeah, but that just makes it all the more exciting when HangryBird completes it with absurd personal restrictions. The campaign’s absurdly deep, heck, we didn’t even know the whole Crete thing until what, a year, year and a half after the game’s release? It’s historically accurate (for the most part, of course), it’s fun, it ramps up in difficulty, it is fantastic.
And somehow, they did it, I don’t quite know how, but they equalized the units, finally. Every single unit is useful, there are none that are blatantly superior (*cough* it’s infantry *cough*), all of them have to work in tandem for anything close to a perfect “vicotry”. SFs have a long way towards ensuring that, but I’m surprised that, even later game, stuff like mediums don’t become completely useless. It’s refreshing, to say the least.
Going beyond that, they have the final superiority on a number of miscellaneous points, listed here. The art is superior to any game before or since, it doesn’t have that unnerving realism of the titles before and after it. It looks like the art was actually art, which does have some humorous moments (Thanos Yamamoto), but it’s certainly a step up. The ET English is not as bad as it sometimes is, but so help me I will chuckle at every single awkward line. The Defense stat was done perfectly in this game, and is the only reason fortifications are in any way viable (the only game where they are), which is so so epic. But you didn’t come here for that, did you? No, no. You came for the big two. So let’s not waste any time, shall we?
Special Forces were completely genius, and absolutely defined the game’s place within the pantheon of ET. Expanding the meta beyond gens and tech was something some of their games had tried to do before, to limited success. This pulled it off. Now, for heavens sakes, we have discussions about things that aren’t generals! Every class (except mortars my beloved) are useful in a big way, some being straight game changers (the Elefant and KV-6 spring to mind). They expanded the discussions so much, and to be honest, just letting us argue about something other than generals (because we clearly have too much time on our hands) is awesome and immediately brings the game up by like, three points on a scale of one to ten.
And lastly, the name of the game itself, the generals (Edit: I did not mean that literally but I’m glad it worked out). Before I talk about how awesome they are, there’s something to be said for what they are not. They are not absolutely overpowered “the only unit you’re actually paying attention to” monsters. There’s something to be said about that, in which you still have to use your non-general units to a significant extent. As far as I can tell, that hasn’t been replicated at all. I’d also like to mention how awesome it is that they’re divided, how only some are available for each theater, I swear this game’s left json had more thought put into it than the entirety of EW7.
But like, the generals’ designs within the game are all so good? We still haven’t figured out who is the most annoying of the Monty, Rokko, and Vatutin stans (It’s the Rokko ones and I will die on this hill). And the fact that we are somehow still having that conversation years later is brilliant game design. I absolutely adore it. We are still debating the viability of Guderian, of Yamashita, of Yamamoto, of Badoglio, of so many of these generals the question is still up in the air! That makes for fantastic discussion, certainly more than WC4, where if you didn’t have Guderian, you weren’t worth nothing. In these more recent games, generals are just meaningless, so it doesn’t even matter. This, EW5, and GCR are the only ones to maintain the arguments to this day (note how they are also the three best games). The generals have personality, with a clear playstyle for each of them that stacks up surprisingly well with historicity. All in all, it’s so great.
And it seems strange and somewhat tragic to point out now, but this was a game before all the loot boxes, the battle passes, the rotation generals. This was back when ET made games for the phone and not mobile games like they do today. This was when they were ET and not EA. There is no gachapon like EW7 or GCS, there is nothing left up to chance, really. They retroactively made it worse by adding in all of the IAPs, but that still has no bearing on the quality that we have currently. And, at least if they continue on the path they’re going on now, I don’t know if I’ll continue to play ET. And that would be a darn shame.
Because I love ET. I love these boards. I’m sure you’d believe me if I told you that this was my first real access to the internet. I was a goofy kid who was horrendously cringeworthy. Gosh, looking back on some of my posts is physically painful. But I’m grateful for them. After all, without them, I never would have met you guys, I never would have been able to proceed with my idiotic arguments about MacArthur clearing Guderian in WC4, I wouldn’t be able to get my stupid Ushijima crusade going, I wouldn’t be able to help get the RPs started up again, I wouldn’t be able to become someone who actually shifted the GOG3 meta. Without my old, terribly cringy 13 year old self, I wouldn’t be able to see all of you guys and the massive accomplishments you fellas have made.
You’d be surprised at how much of a lasting impression all of you fellas made on me. Heck, I don’t think even I recognized it for a good while. But that impression stuck like a brand on cattle. It allowed me to develop through trial and error my very personality, establishing exactly what I wanted to portray about myself and what I’d prefer not to be a part of me, something that I use for self-reflection even today. It was just a safe place to interact with others, and one that I’m so glad I took advantage of.
GOG3 is a great game. But it being a great game isn’t the reason I love it so much. I love it so much because it was what propelled me to actually start talking on these here boards. I love it so much because it allowed me to connect with individuals in a time I was personally starved for connection. It got me in touch with a whole slew of people that even today, even after it’s been months, even years since it died completely, I would call my friend, even a best friend. These boards are something special, something that cannot be replaced. Such an odd snapshot of culture, frozen within one moment.
I’m still well-connected with a number of folks I met on here, even long after this place died. I used to check this site daily, did you know that? That soon passed after it got less active. The official ET Discord server blew up, there’s no reason for a site like this anymore, is there? “Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck.” And the counts waned and waned until it is only met by a few holdouts, ones who may realize that it is dead, but refuse to accept it. Those too stubborn to die at all, those who persist when it doesn’t matter at all. And who knows? I like to think the boards deserve that tenacity, but I left with the rest of them, didn’t I? Maybe that was a mistake. Because maybe, just maybe, there can be life back into the boards.
This was a community, in which we honestly did know each others' names, everyone could just relax and discuss the latest mobile game from a company nobody else knew about. It was like we were holding a secret, one that we could only talk about with each other. It was like we were special. Like there was something that we had all to ourselves. Who knows, maybe that’s just the viewpoint of a child long gone. But nonetheless, I still feel it to a degree, a deep yearning for the days of the past, a nostalgia embedded deep within the boards. And maybe it’s irrational, sure, but after receiving so much from the boards, I can’t help but want to give back a little.
I’m going to restart GOG3. I’m going to play through it one last time, for old time’s sake. Certainly not at the same level I used to. It could take months upon months, even years for me to complete it. But I will. And I’ll document it here. Who knows, maybe we can get this old factory running, maybe not at full capacity again, but somewhere better than this. So shall we? Have a nice conversation, just talk for a bit. Like I know that we’re able to do, like we were able to do in the past. And with that, I bid you a brief farewell, but to quote general MacArthur, “I shall return.”
