My introduction to tactics games was an irresponsible impulse buy when I was working at GameStop in college and had no desire to study for midterms. I picked up a used PSP copy of Final Fantasy Tactics: War of Lions, sunk countless hours into it, and started to explore the rest of the world of turn-based tactics games.

Since then, I’ve become a huge fan of genre, playing everything from the lightweight Wildermyth to XCOM ironman runs. In my experience, tactics games fall on either end of the spectrum. They’re either masterfully executed or a dull mess. Classified: France ’44  is the first tactics game I’ve encountered that doesn’t fall into either category. I certainly wouldn’t considered it a masterpiece, but I was surprised to find just how much I enjoyed it. 

As the title suggests, Classified: France ’44 is set in France in 1944. More specifically, it focuses on the last two months in the lead up to D-Day. You command a small team of elite special operators attempting to disrupt Nazi operations in occupied France and unify miscellaneous French factions against the fascists.

 

There are a few exceptions, but for the vast majority of missions, players will choose a squad of five operatives and deploy on either a Stealth, Assault, or Ambush mission that assists one of three factions that provide aid: Criminals, Radicals, and Gaullists. Mission objectives are pretty standard fare for the genre, primarily focusing on eliminating all enemies on the map, retrieving intel or a hostage, or disabling communications. The more I played, the more repetitive Classified: France ’44 felt within the confines of the mission. Thankfully, there’s a lot more to the full picture beyond the scope of the individual missions.

What draws me to the genre is typically the turn-based grid combat of each mission and the eventual gear and stat boosts your squad gets; typically turning each of them into a powerhouse by the end game. However, I found myself enjoying Classified‘s map far more than I have in other games. XCOM and XCOM: 2 both have fantastic overworld elements that force players to make difficult resource (usually time) decisions that have always left me feeling stressed in my race against time. With the countdown to D-day ever present in the map UI, that same sense of urgency is present in Classified, but never overbearing. Where XCOM alerts players of emergency alarms and flashing lights that a new crisis has emerged, the D-Day clock hovers there, reminding you that time is limited and pressuring players to think strategically about each and every decision. 

The map is divided into three providences associated with either of the games factions. As a reward for completing a mission, players select one of the three regions within the providence to provide additional and resources to, earning additional favor from the game’s three factions. Once support has been provided to all three factions in a providence, players earn valuable bonuses like morale, accuracy, and damage boosts to all recruited operatives. Which regions players choose to support has a direct impact on their squad’s abilities and a poor strategy on the broader warfront means far more challenging missions.

From this same map, players can choose where they want to move their squadron and which missions to deploy them on. When choosing which mission to engage with, a helpful pop-op menu will highlight which of the three mission types it is, its difficulty, a brief synopsis of the goal and a list of earned rewards upon completion. I found this incredibly helpful in my attempts to avoid Ambush missions. 

Selecting an assault mission means sending your squadron headfirst into an open battlefield. Going in with anything less than a full arsenal will send your soldiers home in worse shape than they left. On the other end of the spectrum are the stealth missions. Classified: France ’44 really surprised me with how much I enjoyed the stealth mechanics. I usually prefer stealth as a tool to get my sniper in place and start blasting like Danny DeVito, but I found I really preferred stealth in this one. 

Battlefields often have movement blocking obstacles like doors chain-link fence and France was no exception. To get passed chain-link or razor wire, any adjacent unit can spend AP to make a ton of noise and cut the wire. If you aren’t careful about your positioning and timing, nearby enemy units will hear and give away your position. When you’re successful, you can sneak through an entire battlemap, staying out of guard line of sight, and assassinate every one of your opponents without making a sound. Later stages of the game introduce special enemy units that are much harder to stealth kill, but saving them for last doesn’t spoil any of the fun. Maybe it’s the theme and the realism in Classified that made me this way, but I found myself being much more risk averse than in other tactics games.

That’s perhaps why I found myself avoiding ambush missions whenever possible. Ambushes are the middle ground between assault and stealth missions. The squad begins the battle in stealth giving them the advantage in the approach. But after a set number of stealth kills, an ambush automatically triggers, switching the mission to a full assault. The key difference is that when ambush triggers, all enemies on the map are surprised and don’t activate that round. Perhaps it’s my preference for the stealth missions or the fact that I always managed to trigger my ambushes at inopportune times, but I found that I enjoyed these missions far less than the other two, despite how similar they were mechanically. 

Classified: France ’44 uses an exclusively Action Point driven system to determine what a unit can do when they activate. Most tactics games have separate stats for movement vs actions, but Classified rolls it all up into one and I love it. One AP is spent for each space a unit moves. Planning to Overwatch? That’s three AP and you’ll have to carefully factor that into your every decision. Sprinting the full range of a unit’s motion means there won’t be any AP left to attack. Even that wire cutting I mentioned earlier costs AP. On one hand, it feels pretty limiting, especially for character with precise rifles that cost a hefty six AP to fire. On the other hand, it really pushes players to take their time before locking in their decisions.

As you can imagine, every unit has a health bar that kills them once it reaches zero. Classified: France also includes a morale bar, which is perhaps my favorite inclusion in the game. Enemies behind cover are better protected and less likely to be hit when your allies pull the trigger. But missing your target can still provide benefits. Near misses reduce the morale bar a bit while direct hits have a more significant impact to both health and morale.

Get a unit’s morale below fifty percent and they become suppressed, losing access to a chunk of their action points. Drop it down to zero and their morale is broken, preventing them from acting the nest turn. Morale restores itself a little bit each round so its effects will only be temporary, but it’s a fantastic backup plan when you get land a hit. The more of your units that fire at the same group of enemies, the more likely it is you’ll break their will and get a free opportunity to advance on their position. 

I loved the whole experience and while I still have a little ways to go before D-Day, my time with Classified: France ’44 could come to a complete end now and I’d be satisfied with my experience. That said, I ran into a lot of goofy visual moments. None of them broke the game, but they all very much broke the immersion. 

Characters in stealth are animated to move slower across the map. That’s definitely the norm and makes perfect sense. However, their feet moved faster than the rest of the character did, making it look like they were in a hurry while simultaneously moving at a crawling pace. The end result looked more like this than a spec ops assassin. 

When firing out of confined openings like windows or doors, sniper fire animations often got stuck and then resumed with the rifle firing backwards. While not intended, it was doubly funny when the bullet coming from the wooden rifle stock still killed my target. 

What Classified: France ’44 does well, it does very well. Everything else lands somewhere in the B- range. For that reason, it’s hard for me to give a strong recommendation for the general public like I would with something like Fire Emblem: Three Houses. But for those who enjoy tactics games or historic settings this is a winner, just maybe not at full price. 

 

Graphics: 8.0 Detailed and interactive environments are well designed, but are sometimes too cluttered to identify valuable interactive elements like mounted weapons.	Gameplay: 9.0 For the most part, Classified: France ’44 is pretty standard fare for tactics, but it’s done well. The morale mechanic is just enough for me to bump the score up.
Sound: 7.0 The score is present, but I couldn’t tell you much more than that as it wasn’t very memorable. I also encountered some minor audio balancing issues throughout.	Fun Factor: 8.0 An enjoyable experience that I’m happy I’ve given the time to, but I don’t picture myself going back to France.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Classified: France ’44 is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Classified: France ’44 was provided by the publisher.