Darkest Hour is a third-party update of the original HOI2 which includes a World War 1 scenario and some others aide, and an engine update, stuff like that. Regarding HOI2 itself though, there's probably games with more depth out there if you aren't looking for just a wargame. I play it with it with the alternate history kaiserreich mod, which has political events and choices. I don't have much in the way of performance issues with HOI2 versus HOI4, and Darkest Hour is supposed to be even better in this regard, I believe.
Worth getting on sale, though you could just as well get Darkest Hour, which is based on it. However, it is just a war game. I enjoyed it for what it was when it came out, but I'd suggest playing it with the alternate history mod kaiserreich, which adds more in the way of political events and choices. Otherwise there is probably something with more depth or complexity out there, if you don't just want a wargame. On the plus side, it won't give you the performance issues late HOI titles will.
I would say that Planetfall probably has the quality of other AOW games, which I would personally consider high. Regarding any comment on the AI, if one doesn't find enough challenge this is likely to be fixed, as it was in AOW3. So, being my favorite series, I'd like to give it four stars, but it's not what I would have hoped for. The AOW series has always been wargame-leaning, though AOW2 and AOW3 had city building options. Probably not the most complex gameplay, but I enjoy them as classics which have good stories and campaign with a hard mode. Planetfal and is primarily geared toward people who want to do tactical combat, which I don't care about. The tech tree is dombinated by weapons and tactical operations which I don't care about. Maybe I could, but the global strategy element and city options you would expect of a 4X empire building game of the sci-fi genre are not there to a degree that will provide much strategy. The city options are at any very basic, and the empire you build has little depth. On the plus side, I think the music is good and the factions have flavour, though to be honest I can't really feel the difference between them in terms of gameplay since I don't do tactical combat. I like that the map consists of provinces, versus past AOW games in which stuff is mostly just strewn about.
The main game stands well on it's own, but I was very pleased with this expansion. It's couple new races and class aside (which is fully fleshed out), I enjoyed the campaign, which even as a veteran challenged me on hardmode, and gave it replayability. The AI doesn't turtle much as it did for the original game on first release, and takes the offensive. The campaign is three scenarios, but they are large and last a good amount of time. Of course, introducing the Tigrans of the far south by having them invade to terraform the far north for theological reasons is a little silly, but I would rank the game/campaign as a classic, and compare it's flavor more to the classic original than the initial AOW3 (not that i didn't like AOW2, I did). I also liked the main character. Apart from initial load time I had no performance issues or significant heating on my dying six year old "bargain" laptop (fortunately I'll be getting a new one).
My reeviw is really a review of the campaign since I don't bother to play these games online anymore. Online are just hack and slash anyway. This one is too easy even on higher difficulty. I wish they hadn't done that, I don't know why they couldn't give it a harder mode. But I think parts of the campaign had enough RPG value and options, that I liked, that I gave it four stars. I'd have taken parts of this to remake the original campaign. It's certainly worth a single play. But beyond that, I don't feel that the class system has more RPG value in the campaign, and I'd actually go back to the original if I felt like playing different classes, where it has more impact because of fewer companions - expect for support classes. So, after having played half the game again a second time, and finding little replay value, I don't feel any need to buy the complete edition, or play the game again.
But the price is reasonable on sale.
I would buy this if it could be turned into a remake of Moo2
Players sing the praises of the stand-alone expansion, but I found TWT's campaign worthwhile, with a more serious story and a more challenging campaign on it's hard mode (or even normal difficulty, depending how new you are to the genre). You might get this one first if you don't plan to jump immediately to multilayer, but would prefer a campaign. Facing off against a number of tyrant-wizards with heated battles in alternatively blasted or lush landscapes is a fair bit better than innumerable talk about the injustice of halfling slavery and semi-sublte references to Christianity. The game is as epic as it's cover portrays it to be. AOW1 also has a good campaign, but a worse AI that it makes up for with hordes of units on hard mode, but arguably the best story.
