Here's the TL;DR recommendation I just sperg'd out onto Steam:
The CoH series is by far one of the most underrated RTS game franchises ever made, and my favorite by far. And unlike cheap, polished, and shitty FPS titles like COD that turn the meaning of realism into a pure shit-like facade (and come up with virtually nothing innovative whatsoever in terms of gameplay; YOU WANNA FIGHT ABOUT IT) both games in the Company of Heroes franchise are in many ways works of RTS innovative genius. I suppose I shouldn't be juxtaposing war franchises of two almost entirely different genres, but Call of Duty, for all of its overly-generic and high budget corporate we-don't-give-a-fuck-about-what-you-think-because-we-make-money-off-of-this philosophy, is literally nothing compared to games like CoH2, where an extensive amount of time (and effort) on a comparatively smaller budget produced a game that is just impossible not to appreciate if you enjoy ultra-realistic RTS games. And I mean ultra-realistic in the sense that some of even the finest and most minute IRL factors that affect tactical maneuvering, technology gaps, terrain, cover, and even mixed-unit and combined arms doctrines, are taken into account and make an enormous difference in any battle's outcome.
The AI still tends to often be unbalanced, as it was in CoH1--it's typically either too easy to defeat or virtually impossible not to get tactically crushed by--but in CoH2 in particular a greater amount of emphasis has been placed on player-to-player cooperation and player-versus-player, rather than AI, action, and this game comes with an unprecedented shitton of new multiplayer campaigns and game modes. Another vast improvement CoH2 has over its predecessor is a vastly less glitchy, and also even more realistic physics engine: possibly every law of physics governing the difference between two different types of tanks going head to head and trying to destroy one another is taken into account, and only games like World of Tanks go into greater detail over the physics of compartmentalized and regional damage than CoH2 does. But where WoT focuses exclusively, of course, on the physics governing its namesakes interacting in various environments, CoH2 more or less runs an entire carbon copy of the IRL universe within its own engine, leaving hardly any stones unturned, and it makes a clearly visible and tactical difference in gameplay. The literal only things I can think of that happen in the real world that don't also happen in CoH2 are vehicle motors freezing over in deep winter, and the ever-present problem that all factions frequently faced throughout the Second World War involving tank guns occasionally jamming or misfiring and HMG barrels overheating and becoming unusable.
Best part is that CoH2 is constantly being developed and having new features, units, and doctrines added to it almost on a monthly basis, derived overwhelmingly from community feedback. Games by other developers such as Valve also *sometimes* do this, but Relic really far outpaces them and most other developers in both the quality and the pace of their own involvement in improving and adding features in all areas of the game. When people experiment with new units, doctrines, maps, and other aspects of gameplay and present them to Relic, if they're good enough they pretty much always make it into the official game in some form. Contrast this with Valve, whose master plan for improving their gaming communities these days exclusively involves making their fanbases piss waterfalls of money for them in return for stupid hats.
Relic barely survived THQ's falling off the face of the earth last year, but even with what little they had left to work with in the end they managed to produce something that is really, really fucking impressive in my eyes.
TL;DR 9.8/10, this game kicks the ass of every FPS and nearly every RTS you have ever played, and in virtually no way falls short of what Relic intended it to be.
The AI still tends to often be unbalanced, as it was in CoH1--it's typically either too easy to defeat or virtually impossible not to get tactically crushed by--but in CoH2 in particular a greater amount of emphasis has been placed on player-to-player cooperation and player-versus-player, rather than AI, action, and this game comes with an unprecedented shitton of new multiplayer campaigns and game modes. Another vast improvement CoH2 has over its predecessor is a vastly less glitchy, and also even more realistic physics engine: possibly every law of physics governing the difference between two different types of tanks going head to head and trying to destroy one another is taken into account, and only games like World of Tanks go into greater detail over the physics of compartmentalized and regional damage than CoH2 does. But where WoT focuses exclusively, of course, on the physics governing its namesakes interacting in various environments, CoH2 more or less runs an entire carbon copy of the IRL universe within its own engine, leaving hardly any stones unturned, and it makes a clearly visible and tactical difference in gameplay. The literal only things I can think of that happen in the real world that don't also happen in CoH2 are vehicle motors freezing over in deep winter, and the ever-present problem that all factions frequently faced throughout the Second World War involving tank guns occasionally jamming or misfiring and HMG barrels overheating and becoming unusable.
Best part is that CoH2 is constantly being developed and having new features, units, and doctrines added to it almost on a monthly basis, derived overwhelmingly from community feedback. Games by other developers such as Valve also *sometimes* do this, but Relic really far outpaces them and most other developers in both the quality and the pace of their own involvement in improving and adding features in all areas of the game. When people experiment with new units, doctrines, maps, and other aspects of gameplay and present them to Relic, if they're good enough they pretty much always make it into the official game in some form. Contrast this with Valve, whose master plan for improving their gaming communities these days exclusively involves making their fanbases piss waterfalls of money for them in return for stupid hats.
Relic barely survived THQ's falling off the face of the earth last year, but even with what little they had left to work with in the end they managed to produce something that is really, really fucking impressive in my eyes.
TL;DR 9.8/10, this game kicks the ass of every FPS and nearly every RTS you have ever played, and in virtually no way falls short of what Relic intended it to be.
