Well, if you're like me, the announcement of a Company of Heroes sequel, set on the Eastern Front, should have made you explode with delight.
It's a great game, and I kind of love that its mechanics are the same as those of its predecessor. With the bonus mechanics like True Sight, snow and ice as a part of the battle, the works.
However, I've been playing the first few missions, and I'm beginning to see what some reviewers have been saying - the Campaign feels a little sluggish. It's by no means bad, but you're kind of breezing along, watching it try to tell you a story without much connection, and the missions are just you producing units. Not much in the way of tactical thinking, for the most part.
Then I bumped the difficulty up a notch, to General (Hard). It honestly changes the Campaign. It becomes the experience that I feel the designers wanted you to have. I'll try to explain what I mean.
In the third mission, the cutscene mentions how the task faced at Mtensk (the mission location) was nearly impossible. That the sacrifices there were enormous, but perhaps won the day. On Normal, this didn't really resonate. When I was meant to be losing ground, I basically had enough men around that I could defend whatever I liked, going through the motions until the end. If you lose too many units, no problem, you have plenty of resources spare.
On General, it became this desperate, strung-out defense of a village. Positioning of my AT-guns and machine-gun teams was vital, and I never had enough men to keep everywhere safe. When a Guards unit was hurt, I absolutely couldn't replace it, I had to fold in Conscripts (what the game wants you to do). When I was pushed back to defend the HQ, I fought a desperate action to get the heavy guns out alive. I had to sacrifice Conscripts to hold up the enemy, but I bought enough time to rescue the AT guns.
Later, during the counter-attack with the tanks, I couldn't just swarm and take the victory. I used more Conscripts to hold up the German tanks while my T34s crushed the bunkers. The whole mission was unbelievably tense. I felt constantly on the verge of defeat, like I was hanging on by a hair's breadth.
And I felt what the cutscene wanted me to feel; the horrors of ordering men to their death to do what was necessary. It sounds silly, but in the heat of the action, the game does a lot to make you feel the humanity of what's happening. Instead of just taking everything with Guards, I had to reserve the Guards to concentrate them, while squads of Conscripts would die just to get a Molotov thrown, or to recover an MG. And I'd see them rolling in the snow, clutching their wounds and screaming, slowly dying off while I fought a war larger than any of them.
TLDR: If you play Company of Heroes 2, put the difficulty up to Hard. You won't regret it, but you may feel some serious guilt about the war you're fighting.
It's a great game, and I kind of love that its mechanics are the same as those of its predecessor. With the bonus mechanics like True Sight, snow and ice as a part of the battle, the works.
However, I've been playing the first few missions, and I'm beginning to see what some reviewers have been saying - the Campaign feels a little sluggish. It's by no means bad, but you're kind of breezing along, watching it try to tell you a story without much connection, and the missions are just you producing units. Not much in the way of tactical thinking, for the most part.
Then I bumped the difficulty up a notch, to General (Hard). It honestly changes the Campaign. It becomes the experience that I feel the designers wanted you to have. I'll try to explain what I mean.
In the third mission, the cutscene mentions how the task faced at Mtensk (the mission location) was nearly impossible. That the sacrifices there were enormous, but perhaps won the day. On Normal, this didn't really resonate. When I was meant to be losing ground, I basically had enough men around that I could defend whatever I liked, going through the motions until the end. If you lose too many units, no problem, you have plenty of resources spare.
On General, it became this desperate, strung-out defense of a village. Positioning of my AT-guns and machine-gun teams was vital, and I never had enough men to keep everywhere safe. When a Guards unit was hurt, I absolutely couldn't replace it, I had to fold in Conscripts (what the game wants you to do). When I was pushed back to defend the HQ, I fought a desperate action to get the heavy guns out alive. I had to sacrifice Conscripts to hold up the enemy, but I bought enough time to rescue the AT guns.
Later, during the counter-attack with the tanks, I couldn't just swarm and take the victory. I used more Conscripts to hold up the German tanks while my T34s crushed the bunkers. The whole mission was unbelievably tense. I felt constantly on the verge of defeat, like I was hanging on by a hair's breadth.
And I felt what the cutscene wanted me to feel; the horrors of ordering men to their death to do what was necessary. It sounds silly, but in the heat of the action, the game does a lot to make you feel the humanity of what's happening. Instead of just taking everything with Guards, I had to reserve the Guards to concentrate them, while squads of Conscripts would die just to get a Molotov thrown, or to recover an MG. And I'd see them rolling in the snow, clutching their wounds and screaming, slowly dying off while I fought a war larger than any of them.
TLDR: If you play Company of Heroes 2, put the difficulty up to Hard. You won't regret it, but you may feel some serious guilt about the war you're fighting.