company of heroes 2: ardennes single player review

Longer-term, these elements combine to create a rewarding campaign, but early on it introduces an unwelcome and pernicious learning curve. Those returning for another tour of duty will fare better, of course, but the introduction of three new commanders, specialised ability trees and a freedom of how and when you tackle missions means there's still much to learn and little meaningful assistance in doing so. At the game's most hectic, the lack of a meaningful help system hurts newcomers' efforts to keep up or even just stay alive.

It's this oversight, by the the very people that should be on your side, that's going to dent the morale and the long-term buy-in prospects of newcomers to a far greater degree than any enemy offensive. You may not need the main game to play it, but the lack of guidance and support for new players suggests Relic assumes you have prior form. This last is sadly indicative of a problem that plagues Ardennes Assault from start to finish and belies its status as a standalone expansion. There are horror stories of fresh-faced newbies growing frustrated at the lack of support or even a list of button-bindings, and subsequently losing several squads of soldiers to avoidable error before rage-quitting the mission and, soon after, the war. These are nightmarish tales of new recruits wading through menus looking for a way to reinforce decorated troops before they are wiped out, or not being able to find the keyboard command to group units together. These stories showcase Ardennes Assault at its dynamic best, but there are other stories that are far less noble.

Or when an entrenched squad of Dog Company's veteran assault engineers held out long enough against superior numbers to call in a support artillery barrage, but later perished as they covered their comrades' retreat. 50 cal heavy machine gun and successfully took out a high-ranking German officer. With three varied companies to marshal (and a fourth via a premium add-on), some of these stories are rousing tales of valour and derring-do - like the time that paratroopers of the airborne company were dropped behind enemy lines with a. Not the affected and laboured stories that dragged down the narrative in the base game, but rather the unique incidental anecdotes that are shaped during play. Ardennes Assault, the single-player standalone expansion to Relic's Company of Heroes 2, is a game about stories.

Company of heroes 2: ardennes single player review