Unusually for me, I went for the digital deluxe version. I’m not one for collectors’ editions though.
It does seem to have some cool stuff
It’s unlocked
It’s sort of jarring how it throws you right into a tutorial without any preliminaries, or menus, etc. It’s simple enough to follow of course, but I guess I was expecting going first to a menu where I could adjust settings, etc. Minor quibble though.
Plays, well, like CoH, as far as I can remember. The max zoom is pretty zoomed in; I don’t remember the last time I played one of these games so I don’t know if it is about the same as always. There seems to be two single player offerings, the campaign starting in Sicily as an American and something called “North Africa Operation” as the Germans. Mostly it all feels pretty good at first glance.
From what I remember back when they did the first beta it was pretty close to the previous games as far as that zoom level.
51% on Steam. Yikes!
Zoom, UI, and graphics seem to be big complaints there. Anyone played CoH2 recently to really compare the zoom/ui ? I thought zoom was always pretty minimal in the CoH games.
HelpingHans is streaming, so I think I’ll watch him a bit and see how it looks.
I find the initial 24-48 hours are usually getting brigaded by something. Upset nationalists, racists, woke people, anti-woke people, or some technical issue that may or may not be solved by updating their drivers.
It seems to take a little while to settle, but it’s certainly not a good start. :)
That’s a trend I would like to see die. It drives me nuts, especially when the default settings are butt (like it goofing up and putting me at 640x480 or something on my 32:9 monitor).
I’d love to hear people’s impressions that play. I loved CoH at launch but felt it got worse over time (AI pathfinding issues and such). Didn’t like DoW 2 and 3, skipped CoH2, but I thought Age of Empires 4 was pretty solid. So this is definitely in word-of-mouth territory for me.
To be fair, unlike a lot of games, you can adjust settings in-game when the tutorial starts. You can also quit the tutorial and go to the main menu.
My main complaint so far is that the MG nests on the campaign map are weirdly underpowered. In the alpha, on-map emplacements were fairly nasty. I also had a bug where a squad was trapped when it exited a building, which I don’t think I ever had in any of the previews.
I’d wait for someone that is more into the series than myself to chime in, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Watching right now, it looks like pretty standard CoH, visually and gameplay wise. Maybe that is part of what folks are complaining about. The graphics are okay, but don’t really look that different from what I remember of CoH2. Of course I’m watching someone’s 1080p stream, so maybe it looks better when actually playing. HelpingHans mentioned that a number of top players of CoH1 that didn’t move to CoH2 are excited about the new CoH, so I guess it plays more like the original, but I’d have to go back and play that to see if I could even really tell what the differences would be beyond the leader/faction stuff.
Most of the negative reviews say it’s not significantly better than CoH 1 or 2, and in some areas worse than those. There is not significant “tangential” brigading that I could see.
Thanks for the info!
I ended up refunding it, somewhat reluctantly as I do think it’s pretty nifty. I think it’s mostly because I’m discovering that traditional RTS mechanics just are for me any more. I found myself constantly stopping and starting with the pause and couldn’t really get a sense of flow. Part of it might be my reaction to the relatively tight zoom of the game, dunno.
I do think it’s nicely done overall, just not for me really.
CoH for whatever reason has never really got its hooks into me.
I’m going to just call it like I see it. Sure, this is coming from a CoH player with thousands of hours in both previous games so keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that I prefer skirmish vs AI and multiplayer so I will not comment on campaign.
With that said, take a gander at the negative reviews and you will see the typical hours or minutes played and assinine comments of some of these reviews. If there are negative reviews due to performance or things not working, that stinks for them and I get it, don’t blame them for leaving that type of review. The majority are people who just couldn’t wait to get their negative review in. Trolls…The graphics are fine and the gameplay is typical with CoH, really good.Using cover, the chess game of units countering each other, the grittiness of the game, it’s all still there. In the previous tests, there were graphics bugs but have since been corrected.
To each their own but I am really getting tired of seeing some games taking a hit in reviews due to morons who don’t give a game enough time (under 2 hours is enough to judge). If people who do give it time still don’t like it, then by all means, it’s their right to refund. The problem I have is the trolls. Happens in other games too so I will just stop my rant here and go play some more CoH3.
I wasn’t gonna say anything, but since this is me as well, I’ll just affix a +1 here. :)
I was initially excited to hear this was out today, but after running through the tutorial, the first part of the “dynamic” Italian campaign, and then a test skirmish, I’m realizing that I’d rather just reinstall Age of Empires 3 because I already know and trust it, and because I don’t really feel any particular attachment to a WWII skin stretched over my RTS, especially when it’s just going to turn into the usual slurry of toe-to-toe tank battles against the AI. So while it looks like solid work, I’m afraid this isn’t for me anymore.
But I do look forward to reading everyone’s impressions, and especially more about how the campaign and factions unfold for y’all.
I haven’t tried it yet but I certainly put a lot more trust in the Metacritic 82 score than the first batch of Steam user reviews.
I don’t understand how you can compare Company of Heroes to Age of Empires other than it’s an RTS. Very different games other than genre.
*edited for spelling
You don’t understand how I can compare two RTSs? Really? I don’t believe you. :)
For the record, I’m not trying to imply one is better than the other; I’m just saying I prefer the one I know to the one I’d have to learn. No more than that.