I wasn’t sure how World War One: la Grande Guerre 1914–1918 is going to turn out. I’ve played some mediocre games: some bad, some good. But this game has me more confused and annoyed than any in a long time. I’ve tried to understand the rule set and can only shake my head at the confusion.

As a video board game, the graphics are quite adequate but nothing outstanding. The playing pieces are typical representations of period soldiers. The information screens overlay the game board when displayed. Sounds pretty typical of most war games, but reality sets in when World War One tries to cover countries on a massive scale.

Beginning with the three tutorials, I stolidly went through the motions of learning the game’s tactics. First, let’s talk about the map. We’re talking about huge. At the default scale, you can only see a small part. You need to zoom out so that most everything will be displayed. Second, the map is divided into areas instead of hexes, with each country’s provinces so named during 1914. You need to be a geography wizard to know what some of these countries are.

Getting to the tutorial was painful considering the verbosity of the boxes explaining each detail and movement. As I read the steps, I then attempted to follow the instructions. Try moving a piece when the instructions are overlaid on the area you’re trying to move to or looking for the correct area to place the piece. Each piece is a representation of a grand army made of divisions. By clicking or hovering over that army, you get an idea of its make-up, the general in charge of headquarters and the divisions making up the army. The divisions are made of infantry, artillery and cavalry.

Movement should be easy, but it’s not in this case. To move a piece, you must click and drag it to the area in question. The problem is one of sometimes grabbing the piece and nothing happening. Did I move the wrong piece? Nope, just moved it to the wrong area. Let’s try that again. Between nimble manipulation around the instructions and locating the areas in question, it can be done. Turns are one month with phases per month. Each phase has you doing something, whether it’s military, diplomatic, reinforcing, events, redeployment and siege tests. I’m not going to describe each phase because they are too lengthy and, as far as I’m concerned, too confusing.

Overall, the mechanics of World War One left me cold. Some of the phases could have been condensed, in my opinion, and some could have been eliminated. The manual is thick and verbose with passages that could have been made clearer. Understandably when making a complex game, you need comprehensive rules, but they also need to be clearly understood.

When pieces aren’t able to move and phases keep you from completing a turn because you missed something, then annoying doesn’t begin to explain how you feel. For the few who want to try World War One, please have the patience to go along with it, because I couldn’t.