Hidden gem and best massive TACTICAL ww2 game there is. Why hidden gem? Lack of marketing, thus hype and therefore pretty unknown to the masses. Instead, focus and resources are put in making a great game, which is still worked on to this day. Pros: - Most historical accurate ww2 game in the genre (no politics, no agenda's, no censorship, no bs, just facts and truth); - Interesting game mechanics, holding flags by capturing and holding certain regions on the map that bleeds away tickets from enemy. It's possible to have a draw outcome. Longest 10v10 fights lasting over an hour are the most epic battles I've played and experienced; - Massive battles on massive maps up to 10v10 player and/or autofilled with ai; - AI is not braindead as in >90% of games, it knows how to play decent, like hiding in forest to make an efficient shot that can pierce bypassing vehicles in the flank. AI is a challenge on higher difficulties, as it gains more points to call in reinforcements, on top of already decent AI can be a real challenge on hardest in some scenario's (outside of the 10v10 skirmishes); - Range + Line of sight indicator, which inc. info how far the enemy is away from current position in meters (up to 2000m) and % chance to hit and pierce (and if in line of sight, with colored layer, if that wasn't obvious); - Official autofill servers to play against bots with friends, highly recommended to have a very relax experience in late evenings; - Game is balanced, good job! Unlike some other games, king tiger and elephant are historically accurate and cannot be pierced by chasing peasants with revolver, they're stronger than allies' tanks, but they're most expensive to call in. - Active devs and mods in discord server. I haven't seen hardcore cheaters in the sense of hacking (game altering), other than cheaters playing with double accounts being afk in your team to have map awareness (i.e. semi-maphack), teamkilling or just afking. Sometimes little kids flaming. Well, easy to report in discord to mods, but nowadays is done via email to Eugen with replay and screenshots as attachments and I can genuinely say that those hardcore gameruiners are banned. To verify, I've even saw one of them complaining on Reddit about it and never saw them in game again. Neutral: - Graphics are decent. What is most important are the mechanics, which are top notch. What makes a game replayable is good AI and some randomness. AI is decent, which is rare last two decades. On the other hand, runs well on 3440x1440 ultrawide all highest settings on 3070, vsync on (60Hz) not even 50% gpu utilization; - Pretty unknown game, which means longer wait time in lobby to fill 10v10 matches. With friends is no problem of course and even with 10v10 autofill servers, is pretty fast when you play together. Cons: - Artillery, mortar and offmap call-in spams are not uncommon in 10v10 games, which might kill your fun and experience for that session if you're targeted and have very little left and are dependent on the rest of the team to victory; - AI has full map awareness (can see through fog of war, i.e. maphack) and snipes expensive (high value) units with mortar and artillery, even when fully invisible and never been spotted. How does this compare to Hearts of Iron IV and Company of heroes (1, 2 and 3)? Like I've said at the first sentence, this is a TACTICAL game. Hearts of Iron IV is a grand STRATEGY game and it's my favorite game at that and in my top 5 best games ever (and I've been playing before 2000 on Pentium III on DOS, good games such as heroes of might and magic, transport tycoon, jagged alliance, dwarf fortress, etc.). Company of Heroes is also a tactical game, but more like esports and arcadish/gamey. I've given CoH3 a negative review (CoH2 is good), because the balance was whack, pathfinding issues, dumb ai, too unrealistic and too many gameruiners (afkers and quitters) to enjoy. As an example, chasing inf with small calibre can damage tanks, so what do you see in thsoe games, chinese players blobbing up inf and runnig all over the map, such a shtshow. If you do this in SD2 (Steel DIvision 2, this game I'm reviewing), they will get pinned down by mg on tanks from 750m, so they never can fire off their anti-tank projectile ranging 100m, 120m or 250m. All those blobbing infantry will simply die, just like in real life. That's the difference: realistic vs fantasy. I might give CoH3 a positive review if they keep improving, but for other reasons than realistic. Another huge difference between CoH and SD2 is that SD2 is a (very) relaxing game. It takes time to move big boys such as elephant to a certain location on a much bigger map. CoH games are click-fest intensive, like Starcraft, hence esports and triehards, requires little braincapacity, but high on lsd. SD2 is most suited for people that can appreciate a relaxing intersting gamestyle, which requires thinking where to position units on the battlefield and when to call in air support and offmap artillery. My rating for this game is: 8/10. A MUST-HAVE/PLAY game for WWII enthiousiasts and enjoyers of massive 10v10 tactical battles (vs players and/or capable ai). If you don't like realism and more arcadish games instead and are the esports type of guy/gal, you will most likely not like this game, which is where most of the negative reviews come from. EDIT: You might ask, why not 10/10? I only give a few games this score out of thousands I've played in the last few decades. The following (extra) criteria has to be fulfilled for me, in essence, it comes down to REPLAYABILITY: 1) Procedural generated content done right, like Rimworld or at the very least, each playthrough has a very high probability to have a different outcome, based on user actions (such as HoI4, many different ways to interfere outcome of historical WW2 by manipulating any major totalitarian faction). It must be dynamic, so that one does not have to memorize its way to victory. This means well implemented procedural generation is extremely important for replayability and there are only few games that hit that mark for me; 2) AI has to be at least decent. If it's no challenge, there is no replayability; 3) Mod support. Can expand the game tremendously, both in content as in mechanics. See Rimworld, TW Warhammer 3, etc. It's such an important feature for me that I base my purchase decision on this factor, does it have Steam Workshop. The reason is simple, devs don't have infinite resources to make infinite content and cannot ever think of all the possible interesting mechanisms to implement than the sum of modders, well, it's too unlikely. More people involved coming up with more ideas and content, the higher the likelihood the game will be even better and stay relevant, so it's a win-win for everybody. SD2 fulfills #2 and #3, but #1 is too important for me. Can this game still be played 10v10 in say 10 years? Are there enough people to fill a room in reasonable amount of time? Will there be random map generated content per session for people who have already memorized all the favourable spots beforehand? In essence, replayability is my number one concern for games I buy. Legendary games, such as heroes of might and magic 3 still are immensely popular and played to this day, because of this. The most valuable asset one has in life is TIME (it's not money), so I want to spent my time on quality games, such as SD2 and others, though, I've to admit, I like to hoard games that I might find interesting in sales to fill my library (most of whom I'll most likely never play). I'd definitely recommend to buy the Total Conflict Edition and some dlc you'd like to play with the unit decks therein, that's what I've done. The TCE in sale is the most cost-effective package with the most interesting (and strongest) units in deck.
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