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14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
 Give it a chance! Nov 28, 2003
This seems to be a game that people either love or hate. Is it as good as PTO II? Not even close. The main reason is the lack of ground forces. This takes away a LOT of strategy and options in the game. Also the music dosen't do much for the game like it did in PTO II. Also, the AI is seems to be much weaker than in PTO II, but it can still be a lot of fun if you're willing to look past these things.
The new menu allows you to build your warmachine and manage your resources much better than before. Also, the promotion of commanders is much clearer, and the fact that they can control individual ships is a lot better than having them control the entire fleet. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they fit better on one type of ship than another. Also, bringing Germany and Britain in as playable nations was a great idea. For you history buffs, there are bios on ALL commanders, ALL planes and ALL ships that tell you what they did in the war. There must be at least 50 techs that you can reasearch and a lot of planes and ship classes too. They even threw in planes and ships that never saw combat, but were planned. The Germans built 3 prototype fighters that looked earily similar to the stealth bomber. Build some of those and watch those P-51s drop like flies.
Some say this game is too easy. OK, an experienced palyer fighting with an ally can probably win the game in less than 8 months game time. But, if you want a REAL challenge, try winning the war fighting three nations. Every single decision you make MUST be the right one, or you WILL be crushed.
I bought this game aobut six months ago, and I still play it to the wee hours of the morning. I still think PTO II was the best game of the franchise by far, but I do not regret buying this game.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
 If you LOVE WWII naval combat... Aug 05, 2005
By Kalaloch214
"Eater of Migs"
Some reviews remind me of the phrase, "Those of you who think you know what you're talking about are annoying those of us who do" when it comes to PTO IV.
Pacific Theater of Operations IV follows in the line of Koei's underpublised but successful title series of World War Two combat at sea. If I was to be in solitary confinement for six months, and could have just one video game, PTO IV would be it.
Aside from the purely historical context of being able to take control of the navy of either Japan, German, Great Britain or the United States (and see how you and your ally would have performed), the game allows a player to select from a range of scenarios as well as the full campaing series.
But, the sheer depth and beauty of PTO IV that many novices miss is in the ability to design and create your own types of aircraft and warships; modify exisiting warships; and continually upgrade both based upon your research and development expedititures. With a bit of effort (and some note-taking) you can create truley devastating weapons systems.
Another note about PTO IV's value is it's high resale cost, and general difficulty to easily obtain.
The game does have some serious flaws; but recall it was the first venture of it's type on the PS2, and the title does read "Pacific Theater of Operations". Taking out an enemy region as a "target of opportunity" doesn't provide a player with any real advatage in rewards. Leaving warship construction up to the games' AI can be a very frustrating excercise...the United States begins cranking out escort carriers in record numbers. What some other players have experienced in a "dumb" AI having a superior fleet destroyed is reflective of several things programmed into the game design; ever hear of torpedoes being fired at night by other surface warships?
One of the truley nifty things about PTO IV is the ability to take on the world all on your alone; playing as Germany (in example) against Great Britain, Japan and the USA. For a definite challenge, do this while letting the AI delegate all other operations...shipbuilding, aircraft deployments and so forth. It's this function that replicates (in a simplified manner) all of the excessive yak and argument with other military elements experienced in PTO II.
PTO IV also allows for the "what-if" element, in that warships and aircraft that didn't see combat use during WWII can; eventually; be employed here. But I would STRONGLY advise tinkering, you might be surprised with the killing machines you can develop with just a little tweaking of various attributes.
Recall also that the Japanese designers always used metrics, so you may have some trouble initially with gun calibers; but "bigger is better" always works.
There will always be those who will endeavor to find some small item to nit-pick on a "game". PTO IV is a game with great depth, and game-realism (not real-life), and as such is outstanding value for the money. If the game were to carry greater complexity on a video-game console, you'd have to be a)without a significant other, b)without a job, c)without an external life, and d)have an inherent ability to pay your bills without ever leaving the house or using the phone.
Koei skipped out on creating PTO V for the PS2, and has competition with Konami for a similar game on the upcoming PS3. Few details have been released so far, but it looks like many of the gripes will be resolved...not all, but many.
The game has exceptionally high replay value, and is a definite keeper.
12 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Game would be totally awesome, if it wasnt broken. Feb 16, 2003
By Miltiades Douzopoulos
"happy with 360"
The game has awesome visuals, but the gameplay is broken. Submarines are ridiculously overpowerd - you can destroy the entire enemy navy with 1 submarine fleet I kid you not. It's horrible. Subs are always vulnerable after they fire because in ww2 a) they had to surface to fire accurately b) they could only remain submerged limited time and while they were submerged they were very slow thus easy picking for a destroyer with sonar. However this is totally discared in pto 4 and subs are just invincible killers until they expend all their torpedoes, and they have so many torps they can knock out 2 fleets filled with battleships or even 3 fleets filled with light cruisers and destroyers while taking no to very few losses. The anti-sub mines are relatively ineffective as usually all the destroyers are destroyed before they can even use them. Subs should be vulnerable to cannon fire after they launch torps until they re-submerge. Also there should be sub finding and hunting aircraft.Anyway, the game is totally broken game-balance/tactical wise. You have to refrain from using subs in fleets if u want any challenge at all. Also, the resources aspect of the game is broken. Fleets use no fuel while they remain in the regions, only when you move them. Most of the time however they remain in the regions because there are so few regions all you do is setup bottlenecks and keep yer ships there... no strategy at all. With fleets sitting there all your fuel does is accumulate and accumulate. Eventually it becomes irrelevant. All resources just become irrelevant and only really the cash resource matters. In terms of base defense, all you have are airfields. Also, quite ridiculously, airplanes can never attack at night no matter what. So there is no point in attacking during the day all you do is attack at night and you can wipe out regions easily. The regions themselves are so small yer ships can just sail all around them in several in-game hours and easily destroy all the airfields. The scale of distance is horrible. Aircraft carriers are pretty pointless also. You dont need a single aircraft carrier to win the game. All you do is destroy all the fleets with a sub fleet then move in yer battleships at night and wipe out the airfields. Either the people who made the game didnt understand ww2 history/naval warfare at all, didnt test the game at all, didnt have enough time, or just didnt give a damn.. or all of the above. I say this because the tactics is horrible and horribly unbalanced. They should have left shore batteries and marines in the game and aircraft should be able to reliably attack at night with air-surface radar. WW2 planes could attack at night.. their attacks just werent accurate. Also, for some reason no matter what region your in, it constantly rains. It rains prolly 15 hours out of 24 on average. It seems broken it is always raining lol. Anyway, the graphics of the game are excellent lol. I so much want to love the game, but the strategy and tactics is just completely broken. KOEI needs a new strategy map scheme rework and they need to balance subs, and also allow more control of your fleets in the tactical battles nad more tactics in the tactical battles. Aircraft should be able to attack at night with greatly reduced accuracy until they get radar. There should be coastal shore batteries and marines to defend the islands. Subs need balancing I say again they just ruin the game lol. As for the AI of the game - it is horrible. The AI never seems to add any aircraft to any of its airfields. Also, no AI country aside from Germany ever uses subs in fleets. Also the AI seems stupid for some reason and their ships weaker for some unknown reason. I always detroyed the AI fleets with ease even when they had superior battleships and fleets I dont know why. Anyway, to wrap up - the game is still fun to play if u restrict yourself artificially. The graphics are breathtakingly awesome sometimes especially if u every happen to fight a large carrier vs carrier + other fleet battles. BUT the strategy and tactics is completely broken - i mean its not bad its just BROKEN. If it was a PC game it would need an immediate patch. Anyway I guess its dumbed down enough for 6 yr olds to enjoy... but I woulda so loved some more in-depth and thinking gameplay with REAL ww2 tactical considerations combined with the awesome graphics woulda been truly awesome game -im very disappointed =/ I hope KOEI can build on this game base and rework it into something GREAT. It is VERY VERY close, but it needs reworking, rebalancing, and some re-building to be a game on the calibre of FFX for strategy gamers.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Not too bad Aug 05, 2003
Being a history junkie and someone who loved PTO2, I was really looking forward to this game when I heard about it. Starting off, I love the fact you can change a nation's side from Axis to Allies. I do wish there were a couple more nations to choose from, such as the Soviet Union, Australia, Netherlands or Italy (which granted their units are added as part of Germany's). I also long for some ground forces. Yes the Pacific theater was naval oriented, but without Marine units or Army units, base takeover would have been impossible in the war (in PTO2 there were ground forces but you could not control them). I'd like to see ground forces with at least some control over them. Also, I would like to be able to give commands to each individual ship, such as in PTO2. During the war, a fleet would have a general objective but each ship could have their own targets. As for graphics, the battle scenes are all right. Nothing to write home about. The actual images of the ships and aircraft are superb. The historical information on each ship class and aircraft and commander is a wonderful addition. Overall, this game would get a grade of B- or C+.
17 of 23 found the following review helpful:
PTO I,II were excellent Jan 17, 2003
By Miltiades
Im sure PTO IV is great also. You basically command the entire naval forces of either Allies - US or Axis - Japan in the Pacific Theater in WWII. You can fight all the historic battles like Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal etc. and see if you can change history if you like. You can chose production lines of ships, planes of various fight/bomber/torpedo etc planes, tanks, transports, submarines; you can build airfields at partical ports like Iwo Jima, Tinian, Truk, Marshal Islands, etc. Your technology ability changes with time and you can build better versions of ships/planes and armaments like tanks, better guns for your infantry to increase their ability etc. The options you have are very in-depth. You can set minefields in port harbors.. many options. There are meeting you have to decide how many troops to draft, how to deal with other countries, military goals for the month etc. and the meeting are fun like a card game (this is from my xperience of past PTOs). The full-campaign game is great as basically you get started BEFORE Japan declares war on the US. So if you want you can wait to declare war in 1940 instead of 39 etc and you can chose completely different path as u dont have to attack Pearl Harbor at all (altho it is still good to do since most of the US fleet is there unprepared in the beginning and if u dont sink it the USA will start pumping out so many ships/carriers/planes etc u will crap yer pants). Then you play out the entire WWII... you can even occupty eastern China and in the end if u can get there playing Japan, you can occupy the USA mainland itself.. marching yer troops into Chicago etc.. ;) I dont know I always like playing the underdog in games as I like to try to change history, so I usually always play Japan in PTO ;) Besides their ships have cool names. The battles are awesome you can launch large carrier strikes on enemy fleets and the ships have different armor side ratings and other sub ratings like anti-air guns, anti-ship guns, engine, speed etc. For example if you score a direct hit on the ship anti-air guns u can destroy the guns and make the ships more vulnerable, if you damage a ship significantly it will catch fires and u have to extinguish them or the ship can sink. Its a really fun simulation and if played against smart opponent/AI can be challening and great startegic fun. You can launch large-scale amphibious assaults incorporating battleships, cruisers, destroyers,various types of light cruisers/heavy cruisers, carriers, landing craft, submarines, fight/bomber support... its fun watching your battleships pound base defenses into dust with their mighty 17" + guns...... ;) Anyway I dont think a whole lot of people have even heard of the PTO series as I dont recall them ever being advertised to any extent, but I have played them since the first and I can say if you like detailed, in-depth WWII strategic/tactical sim that covers the war mainly between Japan and US in the Pacific you will love this game (and I read you can play other sides in version IV like Germany, England etc). Well I havent actually played part IV yet, but it being for PS2 and building on the others it can only be better than the ones ive played. Id recommend it if u have the slightest interest in ww2 history and strategic and tactical sims.
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