Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far

CC2 is a great tactical game with an interesting operational level campaign. Unfortunately I just could not make this GOG version work properly on my Win10 PC. While individual battles work well, campaign causes CTD after the first successful tactical battle. Since autosave only works after leaving the debriefing screen, this bug essentially makes campaigns unplayable. It is shame since while CC2 lacks the area movement campaign game later installments in the series added to the CC experience, I think this particular episode was one of the hallmarks of CC games. While later games added some necessary graphical enhancements and additional options to the tactical and operational levels, CC2 hit the sweet spot of small-scale tactical combat with infantry and support elements in a limited area and timeframe - which is exactly where the moral-based real-time combat system shines. The game aged rather well. The UI is fine for the amount of units involved in battles, 2D battlefield graphics are still fine (it would do with a proper LOS tool, though), audio is excellent and adds a lot to the overall experience. It is amazing how well some low-res sprites of bodies on the ground and the screams of soldiers - along with the great moral system - convey the horrors of war. It is just a shame that compatibility issues make this experience unavailable on most modern systems. 8,5/10 for the game in case you are lucky enough to somehow avoid CTDs.

Smooth gameplay, great replay value for less than $6.

I picked this up as a kid at random from a computer game store at the mall in the late 90s because I thought the box art looked cool. Little did I know I had just stumbled across one of the absolute finest military tactical/strategy games ever made. The Close Combat series was originally intended to be a computer game version of the acclaimed 1980s tabletop wargame Advanced Squad Leader but they ended up changing the name while retaining many of the systems and design philosophies of the board game. The graphics weren't great even by 1997 standards but the game has aged surprisingly well and I've been coming back to it every couple of years for over 2 decades now. This is set in Operation Market Garden (the failed Allied campaign to invade Nazi-controlled Holland and parts of Germany in autumn 1944) and comes with a lot of great historical and documentary materials as context for the campaign missions. This is a deceptively complex and difficult strategy game and you grow to care about your individual units and soldiers as they engage enemies in brutal hand to hand combat clearing buildings or lie pinned and cowering in a field surrounded by the corpses of their fallen squadmates. This is a steal at $5 for anyone interested in WW2 history or military tactical and strategy games in general.

*This is more of a copy/paste disclaimer than a gameplay review* First off, the Close Combat series in general is tremendous. While often flawed, it offers a pretty unique RTS type experience that requires a bit more planning and thought than your average RTS, I grew up on A Bridge Too Far and The Russian Front. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent crawling guys through smoke and mortar fire towards bridges and hedgelines, or how many millions of rounds my dudes have expended suppressing machine guns. I am a fan, through and through. And honestly? I'm going to tell you straight up not to buy this. Close Combat of this era is *fun*, but mostly, it's nostalgic. When you really start looking at it, the old games, while unique and "good", aren't actually all that well made - the AI is awful (which shows very quickly if you play the intended-to-be-mostly-static-defense germans and expect the AI to figure out how to assault you as the allies), the pathfind is mediocre, and, while the rest of the game is still pretty playable, the UI hasn't survived well, as may be evident from the map scroll speed. So, my advice? Go buy one of the modern remakes of the old games - they've all been redone at this point, are the same price here on GoG, and just work better. You'll note that a lot of self-proclaimed fanboys hate the newer games and remakes - this is because they've committed the cardinal sin of not reading the manual and learning the hotkeys - a lot of people complain about the "lacking" UI, for example, without ever realizing it's clearly stated in the instructions how to customize it and make it identical to the UI from the 1990s games. There's no reason to get this except for nostalgia, and even then, I found the remakes fit the bill. The remake of this specific one is called Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem. All the great bits of CC2 are still there, but a ton of good new updates are too!

Don't working for windows 10.....crashed After my first battle of the Grand Campaign!!!!