company of heroes 2: ardennes single player review

You're expected to make good use of your surroundings and make tactical decisions on the fly, or you will end up with your backside being handed to you repeatedly. On the battlefield it's pretty much Company of Heroes as you know and love it-intense, harrowing real-time strategy with an emphasis on small squads and tactics over tank rushes and superweapons. But all the same, you can operate a distinctly Stalinist approach to war and send unfathomable numbers of young men into the grinder. In short, you want to keep your troops alive as long as possible-the more combat they see, the better they are. War isn't sensible, though.Īs well as manually selected upgrades, units can gain ability through veterancy. Focusing on just one company's power is viable, but striking a balance is obviously the far more sensible option. Each has its own skill tree to upgrade as you choose-make the paratroopers cheaper to call in, or have your aerial bombardment arrive a bit faster, for example. The fact you're playing this wider game of cat-and-mouse on the meta-map before you've even jumped into the main game, while not a new idea, gives valuable context to battles, and creates a sense of ebb and flow across a vast conflict. You also have to keep in mind the limited manpower pool as you progress through the campaign.Frankly, that's fantastic and I'm delighted to see Relic-one of the few big-name developers still making real-time strategy games on a grand scale-upping the strategy quota rather than watering it down for the mass market. You will need any advantages you can get, as the conflicts get progressively more difficult over time.

Successfully completing missions builds the experience of your companies, and this unlocks upgrades for the troops to be used in future battles. Each mission comes with different objectives, so you have to consider which company will be better suited for each task. The game encourages you to not only think about the individual battles, but how your entire offensive will play out through the mission. The personalities of the commanders comes out in the game’s narrative, so you will feel compelled to keep them safe from one mission to the next.Īs in Company of Heroes 2, the missions are well designed and fun to explore. Support Company is run by a World War I survivor, Airborne is led by a soldier who lost his superior, and the Mechanised Infantry is controlled by an idealistic war veteran.

Back stories for each of the three commanders provide insight into their involvement in the war.

Company of heroes 2: ardennes single player review