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Greetings! Today I’ll be in the trenches with Ardennes Assault DLC for Company of Heroes 2. COH series is probably one of my favorite RTS out there and maybe one of my top of all games. I’ve always loved COH2 so I was hoping this expansion would be an easy victory, did it survive contact with the enemy? Let’s Discuss!
Rangers Lead the Way: I do enjoy the map grid style of the campaign and the unique missions and modifiers are good. The game has an interesting way to represent fleeing forces to reinforce other missions and the leveling system is easy but enjoyable. The company strength thing needs a bit refining though as it seems fairly inconsistent the way it measures losses. Otherwise, just more of the same. The biggest thing this needed was more content, sure 18 missions were a lot, but a lot just felt like skirmishes with modifiers, not a bad thing, but more please.
Rangers are MIA Sir: No mid-mission saves….really? This was done intentionally and despite what the intent might have been this is not a rogue-lite game. This was incredibly frustrating and overly punishing especially with the way the company strength mechanic is. As you lose units you lose company strength, run out and you can’t reinforce or create new units, add to that if you finish the game you now have 1 out of 100 company strength and due to the way the campaign is set that might mean not using that company the rest of the campaign. At least the final level doesn’t really use that.
Nesting DLC Dolls: I want to briefly mention the monetization, for this stand alone DLC, you get everything for the listed price, but you can’t play the faction in ‘multiplayer’ and don’t be fooled, that’s against the AI too. All you get is this campaign, want to play skirmish for this faction, a different DLC. Oh and there is a new, and very powerful, sub-faction for the Rangers, easily the most powerful of the 4 and it’s another DLC…which again, isn’t multiplayer, it’s just for the campaign. It’s not enough that each and every bit is a new DLC, it’s also incredibly difficult to parse out what is what. The game is over 10 years old, has almost a hundred different DLCs and still doesn’t have a ‘complete edition’.
Overall, if you like COH2 you’ll probably want this. For $20 you get a decent campaign, with a new faction, except you don’t. This one is tough for me, I’d probably wait for a sale, as I did. I want to recommend it for the great campaign, but just wish there was more. Overall, I’ll lean on the side of recommending while hoping for a sale. Enjoy!