Old but gold(.. on mobile at least.)
First a game from two thousand and two, and now a review from twenty o’ five, this wolf must be daft, yes? Anyways welcome back to another recommendation my dear viewer, I am as always your most humble of reviewers, Delta the Wolf. Today I recommend CoH, or Company of Heroes… Really this is probably a waste of time as many people have recommended this old game, but oh well, I guess this is yet another recommendation in a sea of praises of it.
[DISCLAIMER: Review for mobile version only! Stuff like the official East Front mod will not be mentioned!]
Price.
We are starting off with price today my dear viewer, as this is the first paid game, Fourteen US dollars on mobile, factoring in the two expansions at four dollars each, that is twenty-two dollars. Is worth the price, well that is up to you, though if you do choose to buy the expansions, personally I would recommend only buying Opposing Fronts, I will explain why in my individual reviews of the expansions. This will be a longer-than-usual review, so bear with this wolf that is trying to not make this too long.
Optimisation and graphics.
The game is only available to middle-end devices at minimum, the devices it is available on it will run rather smoothly due to Feral’s auto-detection of device specifications which will generally put graphics a couple of tiers below what your device can run at maximum (that I knew of while writing this,) for me the game runs at a stable twenty-five to thirty fps when I push it to the maximum with anti-aliasing set to eight. It took some extreme measures to drop the frame rate below twenty-five for me, such as having ten plus squads on screen (accounting for about forty entities), or having a multitude of artillery pieces firing at once, it will probably run better on higher-end devices.
Though that being said, the issue with graphic detection is that the graphics may generally look bad for you as a result, so like the helpful wolf I am, I will attach a video guide to this section of how to modify graphics, and it wont even be a plug for my youtube channel, for your utmost convenience my dear viewer.
(I cannot find a guide, so uh.. if you need help ask in the comments.)
Also, I would recommend only messing with effect settings, and enabling post-processing, reflections, and shadows. Other settings don’t really do anything but impact performance.
With that being said, if you can run it, the max graphics are good from an isometric point of view, looking quite cinematic.
Even on some forested maps, it can look fantastic, given the age of the game;
However, don’t zoom in too much and you’ll start seeing flaws with how old of a game this is, such as the ground being rather low poly on some maps, specifically beaches and cities.
The effects in the game help elevate the cinematic feeling,
maybe it is the proud British artillery pummeling some SS Sturmtruppen to Kingdom Come,
Or maybe, a tank machine gunner going ham,
Or The preparation before a battle.
Now we have tarried too long on graphics, but before moving on from graphics, I would like to mention that units, specifically the vehicles are very well detailed, even infantry, for example, Wehrmacht squad leaders can be seen giving hand signals when fighting, brandishing an MP44 proudly while their squad uses the simple Karabiner 98 Kurz.
Anyway, to summarise, the graphics are cinematic, for the game's age that is, and the optimisation is good, now let us move on.
Game-play [NO DLC]
[Rangers leading the way]
For starters, CoH is a normal strategy game of its time, you build your base of operations, and certain structures will grant certain units, like the motor pool from the US faction will build support vehicles. One of the more interesting parts of CoH comes from the doctrine system, the US for instance the gun-toting heavy guns enthusiasts they are, can go for the armour doctrine and spam out tanks faster than the Soviet Union, crushing the enemy with heavy armour or, they can go for the infantry route, which ends with no other than rangers leading the way.
Not so interested in the US? Well in skirmish the Wehrmacht are available, their game-play differs from the US in that to build certain buildings you need to spend resources at your HQ to increase the stage of the game, offering a more complex survival focus of game-play, their doctrines (aside from blitzkrieg) are also more defensive. Overall, this makes for some fun game-play, as the Americans you get to crush Nazi scum with heavy armour or well-trained units, and inversely as the Germans, you have to fight the Americans with weaker, untrained units until the latter half of the game.
The gameplay is also focused on micromanaging, though more on that when we cover opposing fronts, as you can live without micromanaging in the base game. From here you just deploy units and just take resource points to build, and eventually fight your enemies as per normal in these old games.
Now the campaign? Admittedly I have not finished the base games campaign, but I finished most of it. The campaign from what I played are long missions, offering some good strategic game-play, such as assaulting a city in one mission, to defend it the next. I won't explain the plot as I am not qualified, as per usual, yes this is now a running joke.
Before moving on let us just cover the AI here, the AI is a product of its time, it is bad, the difference between higher and lower difficulties is just that the AI has more resources, the AI generally just builds the counter to what you build en masse too, so yeah, balance out your builds. Overall, the base game can be fun for the campaign then a couple of skirmishes, but the game-play may admittedly get stale fast as the tactics are mainly, hit hard or defend.
Game-play, Opposing Fronts.
Opposing Fronts is a content expansion for CoH adding the British and Panzer Elite, along with Operation Market Garden which follows the Panzer Elite and Wehrmacht forces, and the Liberation of Caen which follows the glorious British Commonwealth Forces. Now all I can say to start, this is where the game becomes fun, if you want an expansion, but can only buy one, buy Opposing Fronts.
Opposing Fronts is practically what made me play the game so much, the factions in opposing fronts have the best gameplay in the game. I won't go into too much detail as this review is long enough, however, both factions have very diverse gameplay. For example, the British can either be the defensive backbone of their team in two versus two or higher with the Royal Scotts, or they can be a hybrid between aggression and recon with the SAS,
while the Panzer Elite can either defend and tactically retreat focused with scorched earth tactics, or with the Luftwaffe a hybrid of attack with the Fallscrhimjagers and defence with powerful flak guns.
It is Opposing Fronts which has my favourite faction, the British, for reasons other than being New English, but the artillery doctrine which you saw in the introduction. The Panzer elite also has their own air of being fun compared to vanilla with how complex they can be, they offer complex upgrade paths, strategic doctrines, and an overall very active strategic play-style as they require managing large squads of SS soldiers, ah right I did not mention that they are Waffen SS. The British are similar in regards to strategy, while in my quick summaries above I mentioned the memey ways to play them, in actuality they are a very strategic versatile force, offering mobile headquarters, no buildings aside from defences, and possibilities to specialise into absolutely crushing the enemy with artillery, using the Royal Scots engineers to bunker up and strike in the late game with Churchill tanks, or becoming recon support with the SAS. Unlike the base factions, they do not have veterancy, instead opting for officers to boss around troops, just like in the days of the yore.
Now let us move on.
Gameplay, Tales of Valour.
Tales of Valour is unique, you get three expansions, two of which with unique mechanics, of these the only one that's really good in my humble opinion, is Tiger Ace. We could go on for a long time about what this DLC exactly adds, but overall, it isn't worth the time, nor the money.
Closing remarks.
CoH is good if you can afford it, good graphics, decent game-play without DLCs, and good game-play with DLCs. There are some issues in the base game that may cause it to be unenjoyable after a couple of matches, and with the DLC factions, there are issues with them being maybe a bit too strategic for the normal player, generally playing the long game over quick strikes. Overall I would recommend it, if you are into strategy games and are stuck on mobile. Another game I would recommend in this category is Xcom: EW for mobile.
Thanks for reading this review,
I am as always your most humble of reviewers,
Delta, the Wolf.
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