Classified: France '44 review

What is it? An XCOM-like tactics game set in the days leading up to the D-Day landings in 1944.
Release date March 5, 2024
Expect to pay $35/£35
Developer Absolutely Games
Publisher Team17
Reviewed on RTX 3070, AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck TBA
Link Official site

For me, the best battles in turn-based tactics games are the ones where the momentum can shift on one perfectly (or disastrously) executed turn; those pivotal moments where you harness the abilities that you maybe forgot even existed when things were going smoothly, but suddenly justify their existence in one audacious sequence of manoeuvres that imbue the orderly grid-based combat with the cinematic splendour of backs-to-the-wall movies like The Dirty Dozen or Saving Private Ryan.

Here's a case in point in Absolutely Games' World War 2 XCOM-like Classified: France '44. My merry band of spec-ops resistance fighter archetypes—the French woman with a beret, the bourbon-loving American, the 'chin up, cheerio' Brit, you get the picture—have just planted several demolition charges on a German U-Boat, and are now pinned down by the Gestapo reinforcements arriving on the scene. One of our own is down, while another two have had their morale shattered under a fusillade of gunfire, and are due to miss their turns trembling helplessly in the «broken» state.

My solitary available soldier that turn, our all-American hero Cassidy, issues a rallying cry, which recovers enough morale for my two broken fighters to get back into the fight. One of those, Lili 'Wolf' Pierry, shouts to our fallen ally to «Quit Messing About,» which revives him from across the battlefield, before she leaps over a barrier and unleashes a volatile shotgun blast that downs not only a German officer, but the medic standing next to him. Next, our freshly revived soldier Alami uses his limited AP to set up overwatch with his machine gun, bolstered by a skill that means his overwatch doesn't break after shooting just one enemy. Come the Nazis'