Panzer Corps 2 is going to look quite familiar to fans of the historical tank genre. Rather than control over an individual tank, you take on the role of a commander who's responsible for a section of the World War II front line. You need to manage your artillery, soldiers and tanks to overcome the enemy forces. Fans of the genre will find a lot of polish here.

The game does a good job of being fairly accessible. Even without playing through the tutorial, the basic interface was clean enough that I could quickly figure out everything I wanted. I had trouble reading some of the units, but thankfully, there's a second view that resembles a tabletop board game and makes it simpler for the brain to register. The missions provide voiced story briefings that clearly emphasize what you need to do to achieve victory.

Panzer Corps 2 has over twice the number of missions as the original game, including historical missions and fictional missions. Historical missions let you take on actual battles, but you can use your skills to change the outcome. Fictional battles never existed, such as a rush of Allied forces against Berlin that requires you to survive for 40 turns. There's even a built-in scenario creator that offers flexibility to create any battle you want.

The title has a variety of new features that are designed to add more realism and tactics to the combat. You can convert one powerful unit into weaker, more flexible units. This is important, as it also allows you to encircle an enemy fortification to drastically reduce their ability to resupply and reinforce their units. You can even capture enemy units and turn them against their soldiers, adding extra damage for little effort.

While tanks are quite literally in the name of the game, that isn't to say it's the only option you have. Bombers and fighters are tremendously useful tools with severe limits. You can launch a bomber in a tremendous radius from its airfield, which it will automatically return to at the end of its turn. Unfortunately, the radius is limited by where your airfields are located, so it's important to capture more airfields or position carriers that are closer to enemy fortifications.

You also gain the ability to customize both your commanding officer and soldiers. Your commanding officer can be given perks and weaknesses, such as getting troops cheaper but also being unlucky enough that your damage never increases. Each weakness allows you to take an additional perk that offers a lot of flexibility in builds. Soldiers can become hero units, which gain abilities and special skills (such as never dying in battle if they're not at 1 HP), which can be significant in turning the tide of the war.

Panzer Corps 2 also features an absurdly amount of customization. You can enable or disable time limits, customize how punishing the "undo action" option is, enable various difficulty modifiers, and tweak the game to your liking. If you want a punishing tank game that gives you no room for options, you can do that. If you want a bunch of overpowered hero units that can steamroll over enemies, you can also do that. It's a nice feature that offers a lot of flexibility.

Panzer Corps 2 looks like it will be the kind of tank game that fans of the genre will enjoy. It's easy to pick up and play, and it's massively customizable. You can have everything from standard fights to bizarre alternate reality mash-ups with superpowered uber-soldiers. The graphics are a bit basic, but the core gameplay gets the job done. Hopefully it all holds together when the final version of Panzer Corps 2 releases on Mar. 19 for PC.