izigame.me

TL;DR
- Fairly steep learning curve to mastery. Multiplayer is brutal on newbies.
- Toxic online community (way better with real-life friends)
- Updates are infrequent and sometimes controversial
- Single player offers average entertainment value
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== Here's what's great about it ==
- At the time of writing, you won't find a better WWII RTS with this level of immersion, versatility and polish. The Essence engine is a marvel: the graphics look beautiful at their maximum setting, and there is nice detail to see when you zoom in close. Think of vehicle engine sounds, splattering terrain, pockmarked battlefields, smoke and foliage beautifully drawn and highly dynamic to grenades, fire and artillery shells.
- Replay value is high because of the sheer variety of modes: victory point, annihilation, theatre of war, campaign or a fully modded experience.
- Hardware specs are reasonable (your potato can run it). Recently it has been cross-ported to Linux, Mac and even Proton for your Steam Deck.
- You'll be learning your WWII history through animated models (e.g. that T34/85 took out my Sd.Kfz 142 StuG III)
- Voice acting is pretty good, with larger-than-life personalities balanced with dynamic feedback, e.g. I’m under attack!’, and occasionally quite funny if you listen closely.
- Campaign/Theatre of War and the Tutorial are well thought-out and engaging, though repetitive and lonely if you don’t find a buddy.
- There are 3 allied and 2 axis factions to choose from, each with options to suit your play style (see caveats).
- Theatrical music is pretty good and varied across factions... though the menu music can drive you crazy when waiting.
- Online play is free (no subscription) and very good for latency for up to eight players in a single match.
- You’ll experience a rush of adrenaline like no other RTS game, thanks to the quick paced combat and strategic thinking necessary to pull off a win. Victory point games leave you on the edge of your seat. Annihilation matches can be a marathon.
== Here's what's crap about it ==
- The dreaded 'bugsplat' (crash to desktop with an error submission prompt) is an inevitability for most gamers, and can happen at any time during your gameplay. Who knows the cause? Everyone has a theory. My friends and I usually cycle the game open-closed and pray to the random number generator gods that it doesn't happen in our match. All we know is you're in the middle of a multiplayer online match and suddenly, you're staring at your desktop wallpaper.
- Community opinion (mostly forums) has an overwhelming influence on game balance changes. There used to be lovely surveys you could fill out, but they just went into a void somewhere.
Now you'll log in to Steam one day and find a newly released patch has run a rough-toothed hairbrush over the UI like: rushed descriptor tiles with spelling errors and broken hotkeys, unit abilities nerfed, commander skill trees rearranged, and building resource prerequisites changed.

- Custom (non-historical) skins and/or victory strikes cause issues in the multiplayer lobby. You'll usually be asked to disable them before a game commences; for whatever reason, this just wasn't implemented properly.
- There are too many commanders. These were a selling point for the game back in the early days. I've played a great number of them. They're mostly repetitions of the same theme: underpowered or poorly balanced.
- Community management is a joke. Certain swear words are auto-sanitised (the F word becomes garden), and that's just the beginning.
Toxic players are rife. You’ll be hard-pressed to find good natured people who want to play collaboratively, which is a must to victory in this game. Lone wolves are ostracised quickly and viciously.
Tall poppy syndrome is also real. Don’t let your shine come out too strong.
Newbies in automatch games are witness to the community at its especially mean, vitriolic and rank/status obsessed worst. Team-stacking is common (they suck, we're pro) and divisive.
There used to be a ranking system, but it never worked at the best of times.
- High munition call-ins (200+) delivered by plane are often shot down pathetically easily. What was the point of all that sacrifice if they can't even deliver a payload?
- Halftracks typically have paper armour. They don’t last long against small arms fire. Meanwhile, the Kubelwagen 'sedan' is comparatively a damage sponge, which makes no sense.
- Mortar fire is too fast, accurate and furious to make for enjoyable tactical play with your infantry. The Soviet heavy mortar is particularly ridiculous. Forget about long engagements behind cover, the heat-seeking projectile of mortar will demolish you.
- Grenades are hard to use. They require excellent timing, precise aim and a good interpretation of cover, terrain & enemy squad model positioning.
- Small arms close-range units, like the Thompson, have really wild RNG, even at obscenely close range. Sometimes you unfairly ruin an enemy squad with ridiculous high damage. Other times, you might as well be throwing potatoes.
Many maps are wide open, dirt-ditched with flowing roads and fences; choose an assault commander and it'll will ruin somebody's day: yours.
- So. Many. DLC components. I mean seriously, the start menu is literally a carousel with ads for its upgrades.
- Laying mines, making caches and using resource trucks is weirdly divisive in online games. Don’t be an altruist, nobody will thank you for it.
- Like real war, the CoH2 battlefield is full of yelling, death throes, explosions and radio static. The cacophony of these sounds mixed together is too much sometimes. If you turn it off, you lose valuable battlefield info.
- Online games have no pause function. It can be incredibly stressful if something happens in real life that sees you AFK, like the doorbell ringing. You’ll come back to all your stuff dead, your fellow players raging and your enemy gloating.
- Some vehicles, particularly the medium-heavy tanks, have laughably bad pathing. A key point of the game is about hitting weaker side and rear armor; good luck striking that Panzer IV on the arse when your Cromwell tank is doing burnouts.
- Blobbing ruins this game. I don't care about your faction. 5-6 squads of infantry are just an abuse of the population cap and defeat the spirit of the game.
The only counter to masses of infantry is to throw missiles/projectiles, or blow up with a charge, rinse and repeat.
This is meant to be a game of flank cat-and-mouse. What good is that if you can just overwhelm anything with bodies.
- Because of the variable player base, it can take HOURS to play a satisfactory online game. Expect to be sitting in the lobby twiddling your thumbs. Or, expect someone to rage quit in the first five minutes and ruin the game.
- Expert CPU is a belligerent, bona fide cheater. Nobody wants to play against CPU in multiplayer matches online for this very reason. It sees through fog of war, has ridiculous resource bonuses, and never gets tired like a human.
- Mac, Linux and PC clients can't play together online. This is more of a Feral Interactive decision, perhaps because of the code base. This means you have disparate communities for what otherwise amounts to a great and still lively fanbase.
- There will never be perfect fairness parity between factions. This is an extremely divisive point, whether allies or axis are ultimately more powerful.
Let’s talk tanks for example. German armour has high HP and deflects a lot of hits. US armour has low HP only the Jackson penetrates reliably, Soviet armour is more diverse but hardly deflects hits, British armour is expensive and sluggish. Call it historical accuracy if you will, but these are my findings.
- Games are won and lost on the fuel point.
== Here's what I recommend ==
Try it anyway.
Despite all of its flaws, it is a good game, but it doesn't have enough redeeming quality to keep it an evergreen title.