The name, West Front easily describes the game's scope. As a strategy game, it's turn based, and played out on a 2D hexagonal grid, despite the 3D terrain representations. And at the other extreme, because West Front is abstract and turn-based, it lacks the visceral punch and panicky immediacy of the Close Combat series. The battlefield can be viewed in 2D, 3D, zoomed in, or zoomed out. Close-up of an infantry unit on the main map.
Meticulous detail is still the order of the day.
Vehicles and unit types also abound. There are some annoyances. And in some of the more complex scenarios, with huge dobs of units on each side, a single turn can just go on and on and on. It's especially numbing if on the opening turn your side doesn't move first, since you are forced to sit through a long grandiose attack by the other side on your positions, with the map shifting randomly about as unit after unit attacks, never giving you a chance to get the overall picture, and not even feeling involved, since you didn't even get to set up your own units in prepared positions to begin with. This is not a good way to go about making the player care about what is about to happen.