Nice interface, poor AI
Customer Rating: 




I've owned this game for several years, and the previous installment from Hasbro. The interface in the game is intuitive and vivid. It's a blast watching territories change colors as you march across your enemy's nation. Whoever designed this part of the game deserves kudos, and I'm sure they've gone on to bigger and better things.
It's a shame, then, that this brilliant interface goes to waste on such a poorly designed game. If you have cats or small children, you'll find this game useful for when you have friends over to play and do not want to set up the pieces. This game will help you speed through the game. And, since you all know the rules, you won't have to worry about anyone placing or moving units in ways that violate the rules.
If only the same could be said of the AI. Bugs plague this game, and the AI constantly does things it should not be able to do, such as land planes in territories it just captured. The sad part is, the AI cannot even take advantage of it's cheating ways. If you've played this game at least once against a decent human opponent, you'll crush the AI. If you're an advanced player, challenge yourself by removing all the units of one of your countries from the board, or adjusting the price of all the AI's units to 1 I.P.C. - not that it matters, the poor AI still purchases units as if the normal I.P.C. values applied, buying tons of infantry instead of deeply discounted power units. The only difference between Iron Blitz and Hasbro's first release of A&A is that I.B. includes the last patch Hasbro ever put out for this game, a few scenarios which are relatively un-fun (especially since the A.I. still plays the scenarios like it was playing standard A&A), and a pretty extensive mod tools, if you like playing around with the map, yourself.
I've not been able to get the online multiplayer connection to work consistently, so I can't report on the quality of this part of the game.
Hasbro stopped supporting this game as soon as they released it, as best I can tell. So don't expect any improvements.