There are action games, and there are puzzle games. Action games make you deal with collecting resources, building units and throwing them against the enemy, and such. Puzzle games deal with finding out or guessing what goes where, or how to get to a given point, or how to make something do something. Commandos II is, like its predecessor, a unique blend of both types. First, it is a puzzle. You must study the tactical situation at the start of a mission and evaluate a strategy from it. Once you have defined a strategy, you start the action sequence and find out how badly things can go wrong.

Because Commandos II leaves very little room for error. Send a man too far into enemy territory and he'll never make it back. Omit to carefully check where the enemy is and you'll find out when your men are getting shot at from an unexpected direction. Be seen before you kill and the enemy will sound the alarm, bringing many troops crashing down on your men. Do not use stealth and you'll find that even a machine gun is not a guarantee of survival.

Commandos II requires that you plan your actions very carefully. When to use brute force is something to be analysed, not abused of. Whatever the situation, you will often find that simple stealth tricks often bring more results than dozens of explosions. Make it simple, make it silent. Do not try to rush the enemy with one man and a machine gun, you do not have an army nor can you replace the man who will die. And all your men are priceless assets. And do not think that you can do a frontal attack with three men, you cannot possibly manage them all simultaneously, whereas the computer has no problem acting out a dozen or two. Your men will be mowed down pretty quick.

The game engine itself allows for a great latitude of actions. Although your men cannot crouch, they can climb, walk, run, crawl, swim, drive, shoot, throw things, hold things, carry things, combine things and break things. They can look inside buildings, search dead bodies, tie up unconcious enemies and set traps. The most impressive ability of the game is to map the noise your men make and make it visible like ripples over land. That is a simple and yet very effective way of telling you how much noise your men are making and who can hear it.

The real strength of the game is to place you in an environment that really seems to be real. Most of the things you can do in life, you can do here. Added to that, your acts have logical consequences. The challenge of the game is to understand what the possible consequences will be.