Or if you really like SC2. Or if you are achievement hunting in SC2. The maps here are NOT required to get 100% achievement in SC2, but they add some variety to the 24 hours you have to play. You also get more units and more technology, which didn't drastically change my play style for UEF. On sale it costs almost nothing. If you enjoy SC2 skirmish mode even moderately, it's worth it.
I played many giants of D&D CRPG: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights. But I never really figured out how those games adopted the tabletop D&D rules. Blackguards has a pretty short in-game tutorial, all text, that explains clearly how the game adopted the rules of The Dark Eye tabletop RPG. Blackguards gave me an appreciation of the tabletop RPG that much more popular CRPGs did not. The other plus that stood out to me is the quality of the voice acting. My whole party, including my PC, sounded so in character, if a little over the top. There are plenty of opportunities for the voice acting to shine. There are quite a bit of light humor spread throughout the game. A lot of players complain about the simulated dice rolls in the game. I got into Blackguards late, so maybe the problem was patched out. But I did not have a single stretch of bad dice rolls that caused me to restart a fight. The worse stretch I can remember was missing three hits with 90-95% hit probability, but it did not matter in the end. This is not a strategy or tactics game. Two things matter the most to the turn based combat: party composition and map mechanics. Each of your party members start with some talents or spells that hint at what they might be good at, I expanded in those directions and had no problems at the normal difficulty level. My PC was a mage that mostly dealt damage with his crossbow, but I think a melee build would have been viable. Having at least two mages by the end will make your life easier. Many of the battles have a bit of a puzzle feel, with map mechanics that you need to exploit to make it easier. Most you can win by brute force if you party is right. One tip on something that irritated me: any character that can only deal magic and piercing damage (maybe slashing too; I didn't have any slashing damage) is useless against crystals that heal enemies. They are present in some battles.
I played Supreme Commander first, and it was rough. I couldn't wrap my head around the scope of that game. Supreme Commander 2 (SC2) is much more accessible. Battles can get massive, given the 500 unit cap and inexhaustible resources, but it can also end in 15 minutes against normal AI in skirmish. Since there is no multiplayer in the GOG version, I recommend playing the campaigns first, especially if you are hunting achievements. Skirmishes play very differently from campaign. Campaign gives you a chance to turtle against the hard AI, which is always handicapped by the mission setup. You are introduced to units and technologies gradually. You are exposed to different situations that call for different tactics. It's a fairly diverse experience. Skirmishes are all about fast, no nonsense battles. You have to put what you learned in the campaign to good and efficient use. In this sense, SC2 is the antithesis of SC for a lot of players. I can win against normal AI on any map (1v1 or fair team) at ratio of >10:1, but that ratio decreases to <1:1 when I let AI go to end game. The AI keeps expanding and doesn't stop. What keeps skirmish fun is the map design. Most maps allow fast and furious battles but many larger ones also have asymmetric starting positions. If you choose random starting position, you might end up at a spot that favors land or air or naval armies for that match. You might also end up surrounded by enemy AI. The unknown is very exciting. That brings me to strategy. Because SC2's progression depends heavily on research into five (four for Aeon) distinct trees, this game emphasizes heavily on specialization. Straight to air (or straight to sea) is no joke in SC2. At the same time, there is enough depth in the tech tree and breadth in unit roster to keep each specialization viable and fun against other specializations. At end game it matters less. Mid game is where the fun is at. -1 star for no mp. If you get it on sale, 5 stars. If not, maybe 3.
You may not like it. I don't. I find the game mechanics too cumbersome generally and too exacting at times. But I think it is a great game. As others have explained in detail, the level of interactivity is like no other RTS game I have seen. Were you ever frustrated by the inability to drop weapons from a squad in COH? In MOW, you can unload the ammo from one soldier's gun (and drop the gun like in a role-playing game). Most FPS don't even allow that. Still, having to worry about ammo and fuel when I control several dozen soldiers and a dozen tanks is too cumbersome for me. It is not because the AI is so bad I have to micromanage everything. Here is my favorite example. The vehicles in this game can be damaged (damaged tread means you can't move, damaged barrel means you can't shoot, etc.) They can be repaired by a soldier using a repair kit. The static guns, say the 8.8 cm Flak, do not come with a repair kit. The first time one of my 88 got damaged, I clicked on the auto repair button to see what would happen. For a tank, a crew member would jump out, get the repair kit from the tank, and proceed to repair the damage. For the 88, one gun crew jumped out, walked over to a tank that was close by, picked up the repair kit from it, walked back and proceeded to repair the gun. I wish he knew to put the repair kit back when he was done, but you get the point. The AI is not consistently good, infantry doesn't always know to use their anti tank grenades even when the tank is next to them, for example, but the game has its moments. MOW is like War and Peace. Even if you are an avid RTS gamer, it may not be for you, as it is not for me, but you owe it to yourself to expose yourself to it. Just to know what is possible and that it is out there. Even if you only play a little bit, at only a few bucks now (and sometimes on sale), MOW is worth buying. And saving, since we are talking about GOG.
Whether you like Men of War or not, if you think it's a good game, you should get this expansion. I got this on sale, and played 2 minutes of the campaign. I don't intend to play any more, but the intro video alone is worth it. I don't think I have ever seen more historic WW2 footage in a game, let alone in one intro video. This is a game made with love, a love for Mother Russia.
The fact that Sony forced CH/IF to release a censhorship patch after the game's JP release was a huge deal for many Playstation users, and directly affected not just many player's purchasing decision of MS2 but in fact affected the game's release on PS4 in NA. Many of professional reviews of MS2 discuss the minigame that was censored. So, this subject is very much germane to a review of the PC port of the game, so as not to create the wrong impression of what the game contains. I am going to remove this review after this information becomes well established on this store page. I am not going to criticize Ghostlight directly. Maybe they do not have permission from IF/CH to release the uncensored version. Maybe Sony has a say in the usage of high quality PS4 minigame assets. We just don't know yet.
