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PTO I,II were excellent

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 22
Date: January 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

This game is a must

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: January 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

My friend in Japan has this game and he says it is awsome. I had PTO I & PTO II on the SNES. They were great games then, but I can't wait to see it on PS2.

In PTO IV you can comand the fleets of either Japan, US. England, or Germany. PTO IV takes place over the entire globe, instead of just the Pacific as in PTO I & II. You can change alliences in the game, so you can have Germany & England vs Japan & the US. If you like WWII strategy games, then this is a must buy.

not as in depth as the first

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: February 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

just bought this game 2 days ago and ihave probably logged in about 8 hours total.i started playing as the US and i have already pushed japan all the way back to iwo jima.its a pretty simple game in comparison to the first in the series.the real time battle scenes are cool and the graphics are great but i think battleships would probably hold up alot better in real life. they sink in record time due to enemy bombers and torpedo planes.also when you reinforce your base with airplanes (thats all they need no more soldiers or fuel!) they automatically appear wherever you want them so its possible to take okinawa and immediately make it virtually impregnable.overall i liked it although i will leave my snes hooked up for when i want to actually have to think about what i want to do.it seems like this game is more geared toward your 15 year old kid than anyone else.it does have great shots of the ships and aircraft of the war, all rotateable so you can view it from any angle.im to jaded on pc games now i think.i give it an 4star for instant playability and good visuals.

Game would be totally awesome, if it wasnt broken.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

NEEDS WORK

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The graphics on this game are awesome but as far as the game play is concerned it's not very good you can't take your fleets anywhere you want and it only takes you about six hours to wipe out a country. They sould have kept the game more like PTO2 but with the better graphics they must not have tested this game because thier is too many flaws in the game i mean all you have to do is attack at night and take over the base seeing they can't attack at night. I was hopeing they was going to leave it so you could control the marines and the army but with no marines at all you don't even have shore batteries to protect your base at night i still hope they keep the series going but with better game play all of us PTO fans have got to try too keep the series going but try to help them fix the problem. I think they were just in a hurry to get the game out because it had been a long span between PTO2 i know every body has there own ideas on how to fix this game but i would like them to go back to every day moves instead of weekly moves sure they tried to shorten the time to play the game. So in closeing i hope they come out with a PTO5 but with the problems fixed so contact koei and let them know how they can fix the game to make it more fun to play.

Not So Good!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: March 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I must say that this game disappointed me and I am a fan of the series since the first game. What's frustrating about this game?:
1. YOU CAN'T CONTROL GROUND FORCES
2. YOU CAN'T ATTACK INDIVIDUAL NAVAL BASES
3. THE METHOD OF ASSIGNING FLAG OFFICERS TO FLEETS IS [BAD]
4. YOU HAVE VERY LIMITED CONTROL
In one case I assigned FADM Ernest J. King to a ship. I mean this guy was an important person, just as ADM Nimitz yet I can assign him to a little destroyer all the same. Now isn't that just a little ridiculous? So I can pick Germany, and Great Britian now big deal. You have no control over ground forces and that was basically the bulk of German forces right there. This game suffers from the developers trying to do too many things at one time and it basically destroyed this game. Koei ought to be ashamed! THIS GAME BITES!

Ethan allen 95 can't review

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: April 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm not going to make this a total rant, I just need to rant Ethan Allen a little bit then I can get on with the review. First off, the entire point of the game is naval combat, only naval combat. SO WHAT IN THE HELL WOULD POSSESS YOU TO SAY WHY AREN'T THERE GROUND FORCES. Instead of exploiting problems like the easyness and poor macro management he goes on to rant and flame his ignorance on a good game. NO KOEI SHOULD NOT BE ASHAMED.

This game is really fun in the beginning, like all simulations it gets boring a while on. When you start out you should try a campaign without the advanced options, familiarze yourself with combat and officer deployment, your first campaign should hold your interest, then you can go and do a full roundabout of the game, which in it's whole is much better, but flawed. The real time battles are fun but also slow, the macromanagement is easy and complex yet lacks the right stuff, this game basically neutrals itself out on all levels. Basically simulation fans should get this game, fans of the series, and even new comers, but be forewarned, you need to mix things up a bit in order to keep it fun.

Average

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

As a big fan of Koei games, and a stratigic game player, I thought PTO 4 would be right up my alley. I played the first one back when it was on the SNES, so I expected it to be similar. It wasn't. But sometimes, that's a good thing. However, in this case, it wasn't.

Some of its cooler features are that you can set it up so you can make any side Axis or Allies. For example, you can set it up so Britain and Germany are Axis, and the U.S. and Japan are Allies. Plus, it accurately describes many of the vehicles used in the Pacific Theater operations.

The downside to this game is that they had the potential to use better graphics, since the PS2 is well capable of doing so, but they don't look as nice as I'd expected. The battles themselves are what I don't like; real-time strategy is something Koei has been doing a lot of recently, and it's bugging me. These strategy games are much better suited to be turn-based instead of live action. Plus, the A.I. of your vessle fleets is really bad, and the combat isn't animated very well.

I'm not even sure dedicated WWII game fans would like this one. Definitely rent it before you buy.

Not too bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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+.

pushing graphics, forgeting game play.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was really blown away by the graphics in the newest version of the P.T.O. series. My first run through the game was alot of fun. Although the game is too EASY!!! I also think the depth of the previous games was not even close to being matched. To take control of a base or region in this game all you must do is destroy 1-3 air fields. NO GROUND TROOPS!!!!! So rent it for a weekend or better yet go hook up your SNES and play P.T.O. II.

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