This game encompasses World War 2 in the Pacific and a big chunk of the CBI theatres. The learning curve is steep, maybe even impassible. A manual of over 100 pages starts to develop the ideas you will need in order to play this game. Every detail is within your grasp as the commander of either the Japanese or Allied forces. You can command individual aircraft to fly missions, you may not actually use this as a flight sim, there are some details you can't do.
You issue orders to several hundred airbases, a few hundred ships, and many army formations. The scale of the game would be considered grand strategy, but you aren't the national command authority, you don't get to set policy or assign research. You are the commander of the military forces covering a little less than half the world.
The game is a turned based strategy game. Each turn represents one week, and during that week you are in charge. You can take the game at the most micro-management level and command individual ships and airplanes, or there are options to turn some of the details over to the computer, it depends on the amount of time you want to put into your gaming experience.
This
game seems to be the penultimate experience in gaming WW2 in the Pacific. For years I drug it out and tried it and finally the old computer it was loaded on died and I thought it was gone forever and I would never be tempted again, but here I found it again and had to download it and try one more time.
If you can bring yourself to master this game it could possibly be the finest game on the Pacific War ever made, but it is not for the faint of heart. The graphics are bare-boned, but more than adequate for the scale. The details you can bury yourself in are epic and the game can be all consuming. Once mastered, I think it would be infinitely replayable and enjoyable. One day I hope to master it and find out.
