Take control of your own country in World War II, manage your resources and build your army to defeat your foes.

Use various units, from tanks, planes, naval ships, and spies to strategically conquer enemy territories.

Forge alliances with other players and create a coalition feared throughout the world.

Bytro Labs know how to make MMORTS games, and are well-known for creating Supremacy 1914, which is a browser strategy game set in World War I. Call of War 1942 relatively plays the same, although it is set in the more modern World War II and offers a little more than its previous title. It is a tactical RTS game, and your goal is to manage and gather your country’s resources, build structures, form a strong army, and conquer neighboring territories.

For players who have played Supremacy 1914, it will be easy to adapt to Call of War 1942. New players will find it hard to learn even the basics of the game. It has a lot of depth, and the lack of an in-game tutorial doesn’t help. Newbies have to go to their forums, watch tutorial videos, and read up tips in order to learn the game. This isn’t exactly the best way to support the community, and you’ll certainly have to get over a gigantic learning curve.

Anyway, starting off and joining a game is easy. All you have to do is register for an account (you can do so via Facebook), fix up your profile, and you can join a game right away. Basically, there are individual game worlds which can accommodate a varying number of players, depending on the host’s settings. Of course, you can play on a number of worlds, if you can manage it.

After joining a game, you can then select a country you want to play as, although you could be assigned randomly. There are 10 provinces in each country, along with a preset number of troops and units available at your disposal. Here comes the hard part: micromanaging your territories. You need to build various structures, research various technologies, and recruit troops. In Supremacy 1914, you can’t recruit foot soldiers manually (but you can create mechanized units) since they spring up automatically as long as you have the required buildings. In Call of War 1942 though, you need to do everything on your own. The micromanagement aspect may be enjoyable to many, but could be complicated and rather tedious for new players.

There are now varying units you can produce, from militiamen, infantry, to anti-air units, to light cruisers, and large battleships. Supremacy 1914 lacked variety, and thankfully, Bytro labs managed to address this. The presentation aspects of Call of War 1942 is limited only to the visuals. Of course, there is no audio, and the graphics are just sprites scattered throughout the world map. However, you have to commend the intuitive user interface which makes managing your provinces easier. Moreover, the sprites and the icons used to depict units are well-made and discernible.

Other elements of the game include spying on enemy territory, sabotaging their economy, and intercepting their messages to other players. Speaking of messages, you can form alliances with other players to take down rival countries. The roleplaying aspect is extremely fun, and is only limited by your imagination. Battles are limited by sprites clashing together in the map and it requires to active participation from the player. However, the beauty isn’t making troops clash together, but with how you time their advance, reinforce, and maneuver them.

There are simply a lot of things you can do in Call of War 1942, making it an outstanding browser-based MMORTS. However, it’s not for everybody, due to it being rather difficult to grasp and that there are just so many things you need to learn in order to succeed in-game. Nevertheless, if you want a great real-time MMORTS, this game is for you.