Courtesy of Graviteam I received an author's copy of "Front Roads - Kharkov 1943". Even though it is the Russian version of the game, I had no problems getting into the game.
Some pictures of the sleeve and the DVD can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rainer.rohde/FrontRoadsKharkov1943#Needless to say, I don't get much of the game's written content as it is all in Cyrillic, but with Graviteam's track record on their previous title "Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942", I know that their in-game references to historical events are as close to reality as it gets.
The menu itself is structured nicely, with little text bubbles that pop up when accessing the various menu items for the first time. These bubbles seem to contain contextual help as to what those menu items do. Sometimes I wish I could understand Russian texts. The overall presentation of the game and its content feels very polished.
The initial tactical map allows you to move your units around in a round-based war-game like manner, with the time of the day changing throughout the rounds. Once you maneuvered any of your units onto an enemy occupied map-spot, a hot-zone icon appears and lets you select this battle to be fought in real-time 3D. First, you get a chance to reposition your units within the friendly map grid; once you are happy with your setup, you can launch into the real-time portion of the game.
Battles can take place during day or night times, which I think adds a lot to the gameplay. Night battles are especially exciting, as the tracer-fire is truly a sight to behold.
The actual 3D portion is very smooth. The camera controls are intuitive and very scalable - from a birds-eye view overlooking the battlefield to a right-in-your-face eye-level with the troops view. The details for a RTS game are stunning. If you liked the level of detail in 'Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942', you will not be disappointed, as all vehicles have 3D crews and personnel; SFX and sounds are top notch as well. Talking about SFX - I was quite impressed when one of my troops cleared a trench with his flamethrower!
You can select individual units by left-clicking on them, or drag the cursor around multiple units to choose them. Orders are given from the on-screen menu on the right; tactical display options (various informational overlays) can be chosen from the menu on the left; you can toggle various map views from the top left menu, as well as select units based on their tactical symbol from the menu in the top right. The game can be paused at any time; there are two levels of time acceleration (2x and 4x).
This is all I gathered so far from messing around with the Russian version of the game for a few hours. By all means, this is not a qualified report or an attempt at a review; instead, this is merely my own experience based on the limited access I have to a game whose language is foreign to me.
I am not a big RTS fan, even though I own 'Theatre of War' and one of the 'Combat Mission' games, yet I found that Kharkov 1943 is easy to get into. It doesn't have too much micro-management, either. The game has great graphics, convincing physics, and very smooth gameplay. I didn't have any real issues with the AI, even though my vehicles sometimes got stuck in trenches and wouldn't budge.
There have been already some patches for the game, with the latest introducing a Russian flame tank to the mix of vehicles.
I like the game - I really do.
That said, I am currently working with Graviteam to find a Western publisher for this very promising title. So, there is hope that we will see a localized version of the game in the future. I've been a fan of Graviteam since 'Steel Fury', and I can't wait to see 'Front Roads - Kharkov 1943' on the shelves as well!
Now I am going back to play some more...
Cheers,
Rainer
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How the heck do you get to the 3d battlefield?
That's a long time. 
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