Big disappointment, considering how good the first two games were! I'd rather take the old graphics but a full game than what feels like a rushed, amateurishly made game with one game-mode and 5 maps. I have not yet played any of the 3 campaigns, because I got tilted by how bad it was. So that is why I give it 2 and not 1, because there are more campaign missions, at least, than the amount of games you will want to play in the, bad, laggy multiplayer. It could have been okay if they would have marketed it as a game focusing on story and campaign, but it is way too short for that.
You could get SS4 for its campaign, as of now, if at a VERY discounted price, and hopefully with enough modding by the community it might turn out to become a decent game, if not everybody abandons it before...
I was simply looking for a fun WWII strategy game similar to Close Combat. This game is a perfect fit. It's close enough in realism (things have been scaled a little) and a blast to play. Plenty of options to set it up like you want, and I love the ability to issue command while paused.
For a good challenge try doing missions without reloads.
Ridiculously short vision ranges for all units (often smaller than their attack ranges) kill the whole experience for me. The game's approach to the recon element of the tactical gameplay is really bad. Your units can't see further than 20 feet ahead. You're forced either to rush through enemy lines and count for the best, or to slowly micromanage your infantry units to steadily recon each inch of the path for your tanks and support units. The aerial recon is extremely limited and only available in certain missions, and even then your recon planes will uncover extremely small patches of fow.
Single player missions are short, the enemy has barely any AI to speak of: it is unable to rotate its fortified at guns, which is best visible in the Barbarossa mission. The enemy is static, and only sometimes brings some reinforcements from outside of the map. Scripted mission objectives' enemies do not react to your actions. You may attack their HQ without the enemy's tanks that station few hundreds meters away even batting an eye.
Supplies management is extremely tedious, since your support units work on semi-automatic basis, and sometimes get lost in their activities, not fixing, not resupplying, nor refueling your vehicles.
Infrantry management is a micromanagement hell and its lack of overall usefulness when compared to vehicles is not worth the effort, really. When the game is already pretty straightforward and simplified, infantry should be already operated on a squad level altogether, not individual soldiers. You can't manage their equipment and their behavior other than hold fire / hit the ground anyway.
I tried to like the game. It looks nice in action, and has some good sfx, but it's not worth a recommendation due to its limits and bad gameplay design decisions.
Strategy, in which there is no strategy, is a casual shooter in the style of RTS. Orders are carried out with a delay, or are not carried out at all, the tasks are boring and linear, although there are sometimes complex, small maps for action, the scale of this strategy is not sufficient. The graphics are not bad, but in general it looks pathetic. Perhaps in the future developers will be able to fix something, but now my opinion is that the game is not worth its money.
I will start by saying that I have not played any of the previous games, in fact I know the franchise with this one. The thing is that this analysis is based exclusively on this game and I do not make any comparison with the previous games.
The game consists of 3 campaigns, well I prefer to see it as a single campaign from three different points of view, because each campaign consists of only 7 missions, you can play the Allied, the Russians and the Reich. The game has online mode and the classic skirmishes (very limited, only four maps in this moment, five, if you preordered the game). The game allows you to customize the interface and every indicator you can see on the screen what I think is pretty cool.
Visually the game is a delight, the visual style achieved with Unity (very in the line of Pillars of Eternity) makes the scenarios look beautiful while transmitting that sadness of the situation, and it have a certain tonality of that time, like old. The level of detail is amazing, the particles after an explosion, the bodies, the marks of wheels on the ground, the vegetation that sinks when being trampled, the lights of the vehicles at night, the rain... I really would like a higher zoom level, both, to zoom in and out, especially to zoom in. The climate is dynamic and can change during operations. In the same way a mission can begin at night and end with the dazzling sun. (I saw this in a walkthrough, I'm not go that further on the campaign of course).
The sound effects are great too and you can select the language of the troops, being able to establish the native for each army And sas a "typical" soundtrack, beautiful and epic.
The game only has two difficulties (easy and normal) maybe later you can unlock one more. Due to different doctrines and challenges the game presents replayability.
As a curiosity, when you overcome a mission, you will unlock real recordings about that mission.
Much of the game's strategy is similar to that seen in recent games such as Company of Heroes 2, there are a number of commanders (three per faction) that allows you to select different advantages over the course of operations.
During the game,the good positioning of the troops, look for cover, and wait for the exact moment to attack are necesary. Prepare ambushes is is vital, and the possibility of hiding your troops in the woods is simply awesome. The different units have some abilities, like granades, open the hatch for greater vision in the tanks, build bridges...
The game is more slow than CoH2 for example, where in the end everything becomes chaotic and too fast (although not a bad thing). Here you must meditate well every time, and for this, there is the tactical pause (optional), for those who want that everything be precise and exact.
I recommend the game, the best RTS of World War II since CoH2, but it stays a little far.
