When going through the game catalog, I happen to find the game Soldiers: Heroes of World War II and I was interested. As I have never heard of this game, I thought it might be a good idea to ask for opinions here as there are members who might have played this game before.
I was wondering if anyone who has played this game and how does it compare with relic's Company of Heroes which is based on a similar setting?

It's way different.
So in Company of Heroes, as you might already know, there's base buliding, tech research, resource capturing, and unit production.
In SHWWII there's none of that. It's more unit management. You control individual solders to secure a vehicle, or man a fixed gun emplacement. Solders have a small inventory where they hold all their weapons & ammo, medical packs, and grenades. No infinite ammo here. Vehicles themselves can also hold items for storage, but don't take 'em out for joy rides, 'cuz they need to be refueled when the gas runs out. I haven't gotten too far yet, but I'm quite impressed.
While there are some bugs here and there, a clunky interface with a number of "hotkeys," annoying character voices, and pretty drab vehicle textures .... the game is pretty fun. It is harder, since your solders can die a lot easier in this game.

Thank for the answer!
Seems an interesting game. I'll probably try this out after finishing out both Fallouts and Freespace.

Okay, I was a little skeptical, but am now interested. I thought the inclusion of the all the RTS-cliche basebuilding crap in Company of Heroes was just stupid and incredibly out of place. If you wanna have a reinforcement system, fine, just use something like what World in Conflict had and have troops come in from off screen!

Its defiently worth playing. The whole idea that you are a hero. Facing shocking odds in some cases. But its the little touches that make it two situations that I rememeder
1. you are in a armoured car and the frount right wheel is shot off. the car will dig into the ground and start to turn. While the wheel bounced off and hit the german that fired the panzershrek.
2. The paint coming off the side of walls when you fired the tank based machine guns at infantry in cover.
LIttle touches that make you want to play on..dispite the difficaulty.
Its so difficault that in some cases you HAVE to take control of the men as the AI is functional..but not 100%. Since you rarely have more than 5 men on a mission ( it takes a few to get a tank working correctly) its not a big problem

Soldiers: Heroes of World War II is a great co-op game too! No competitive multiplayer though, but it's really fun hacking through the campaign missions with 3 other friends!

This game is waaaaayyyyy better than CoH in my opinion. It is difficult when you start but once yo get used to it it is really really awesome. I recommend this game to everyone. When I played CoH the detail just seemed lacking compared to this. In this game you can use anything as cover and infantry are really useful. It's not just about unit rushes. Proper strategy my friends! Everything has it's place and it is about swinging battles in your favor against all the odds. It's not joking when it says "Heros" but you will feel amazing after beating any of the levels on this game.

Actually, competitive multiplayer was added in a patch.

Soldiers is the most innovative RTS in last 5 years. In fact, is an hybrid between an RTS and a Real Time Tactical game.
Now, 5 years later, a COH expansion will include a direct fire control like unique Direct Control feature by soldiers. Flagrant copy, but is a recognition on how good is that system.
At the beggining, Soldiers is too difficult, when you learn how to manage the game it turns in the best game expirience.

Soldiers is quite possibly the best WWII RTS game ever... and I say that being a middle aged gamer who's played many games through the years... The detail of what you can do to accomplish your goals in Soldiers is remarkable.
Here's one of my fav scenarios... A small US tank against a bigger and better armed German tank. You can take manual control of your smaller tank (can manually control any of your units)... Drive the tank behind cover of a building or something... As the German tank nears, you pull forward and manually aim at the German tank's tread. With a successful hit, you paralyze the German tank as it's tread lies flat on the ground. Using the cover again, you pull forward and shoot at the German tank several times. If you don't destroy it outright with armor pierching shells, you can switch to high explosive shells and it will burst into flames. The German crew will evacuate. Using the machine gun on your smaller tank, you quickly annihilate the German crew. Then, you have one of your guys in your tank hop out, grab a repair kit, and go over to the German tank and repair it. Then the rest of your units from your tank can hop out and take over the German tank. Use a few oil barrels from around the town to refuel your new tank, or ciphen (sp?) the remaining fuel from your smaller US tank into the German tank and you have a new tank capable of a great deal of destruction.
In most games, driving a jeep over a mine would destroy you... In Soldiers, it may destroy you... it may destroy a wheel or two on your jeep and cripple it until repaired... The level of detail in everything is great.
Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't tried this one out yet

I love the detail! I've been a die-hard CoH player until I found this series. Soldiers is an excellent game and well worth it. This just adds so many more dimensions to the game in the way of unit management. It makes combat much more interesting than a series of clicks - it actually means something to have preperation time in advance. Being able to individually control and equip your soldiers brings a whole new dimension to the tactics and strategies one can apply. Really an excellent game.
In addition to all the things said here, having a coop mode makes it even better! There is a severe lack of good coop games, and this fills in one hole rather nicely! They added versus and other forms of MP in the patch. I can also happily report that when trying it coop with another user it had no problems over the internet directly connecting to an IP address. It has no lobby system though and one must go through gamespy/all-seeing-eye to get a game going. I'll be sticking to LAN games and direct IP games presuming there's people willing to play.

I saw an ad for Soldiers years ago in PC Magazine and was too broke at the time to spill, but the strategy sale made me spring on Soldiers. I haven't had the chance to play it yet but I'm excited from what I hear.
Anyway, I'm a huge COH fan. The multiplayer is really good (and they just fixed the at gun bug so I can start playing as allies again), and I've found myself playing hundreds of games online. The direct fire they added in ToV is pretty weak. It works, but isn't fully useful, and can't be used in most multiplayer games (the ones that aren't the new game mode).
I'll be sure to play some soldiers soon when I get the chance, maybe at work today....