Should You Play Company of Heroes 2 in 2021? 

The complete edition is on pc game pass.

While I liked CoH 2, the original CoH is still my favourite RTS of all times. This is coming from someone playing RTS games since around '95, starting with the very first C&C & Warcraft. I really hope RTS genre makes a comeback.

Only here to see what the gameplay is like as this and Ardennes Assault are both for free on Steam ATM

A moment I’ll never forget from CoH2 was when I tried playing America and dropped a ranger squad into a forest. They get pinned under heavy fire almost immediately. I clicked them to get them to try and retreat and I hear the guy say in the most desperate voice I’ve ever heard “what the FUCK do you want!?” and it SHOOK me.

13:46 My advice would be get the master edition of the game which is normally $5 on sale. It comes with everything but the ranger company if I recall right. All factions and the Campaigns

I'm still playing it 12 years later. It never gets old. A few more maps would be nice and the option to stay as a team against AI opposition for another game.

This is a wonderful review of the game, I found the way you put every detail as if you were putting together a puzzle, one piece at a time. Great job, and great video.

i just finished watching your company of heroes 1 video after binging on your retrospective rts reviews and just now realised as im watching this video that it was uploaded just minutes back lol. what a coincidence....love your reviews btw

I hope Company of Heroes 3 focuses on the Pacific & North African theatres.

The sequel has some quality of life changes that makes going back to 1 impossible. Things like having a button to tell vehicles to reverse or seeing when an units is in combat just by looking at its icon in bottom corner are sooo good. Edit: Forcing anti tank units to only target vehicles also i thing is a coh2 feature.

I came here because the game is now given away free on Steam (if you claim it before 31-05-21 its all yours without buying it, you get a free DLC with it) Haven't played it yet but a friend of mine has played the game, and is really stoked about the game. I am looking forward to play this game >.

Just wanted to say thanks for your videos covering Company of Heroes in general. I played the hell out of CoH 1 multiplayer back when it first came out and it really was my new favorite RTS after playing CnC Generals and Zero Hour growing up. Those style of games just clicked with me over other RTS titles of the time. I never did end up buying CoH 2 but I did get it during the recent free giveaway and am now looking at getting my dose of childhood nostalgia playing the OG game and CoH 2 for the first time soon. Your videos gave me some good perspectives and helped me know what to expect moving forward. I've been looking for that next small scale unit based RTS ever since I stopped playing CoH 1 and never found it... Guess I'll start with CoH 2!

What a great review, thank you, I couldn't agree more.

I play this for the PVP and is my favorite RTS. The balance of the factions is remarkable (to the point that intel bulletins decide many matches if ignored) and each have different strategic win conditions. Also, the effectiveness of different commanders varies greatly depending on the size of battle (1v1,2v2...) so it acts as a multiplier for the amount of strategic win conditions of each faction in a sense. For example, heavy artillery (doctrine dependant) makes almost no sense in a small 1v1 game, but can greatly impact the course of battle in a 3v3

Thank you for a great review. It's currently on sale as part of a Humble Bundle for just £12.50 including all DLC. My Dad and me are huge fans of C&C Tiberium Wars, so I might pick this up for both of us to scratch the RTS itch.

Man, you have such a great channel here! I have been mainly a console gamer for years but recently I also got a new PC and I was wondering what good RTS/Strategy/Tactical games are out there that I should start playing. And your channel and all of your videos have been really helpful for me so far! Thank you so much. Keep up the good work 👍👍

I've been wanting to play this game before but just haven't been able to. After watching this video, I might just check it out this time.

You my friend have earned another subscriber. Great video

I was yelling at the screen beause of your 1 man suicide squads.

Its a must nowdays IMHO, the game matured really well and is amazing esp given the sales it goes on. Multiplayer still very active and competitive although it has a steep learning curve but it is totally worth it

While I prefer coh1 1, which I still play alot due to it being on the iPad, I really did enjoy the change to capturing points, vaulting over fences, the cold weather and ice, the camo(if only it wasn't a microtransaction for so many), and the population being fixed. Everything else the original did better, especially the commanders.

Keep up the good work man! I support you! :)

Damn... I remember accomplishing all of theater of war mission, ardennes assault, and the base game campaign all in general difficulty together with additional challenges for achievement. Everything done in a potato laptop... The good ol' days of this game.

ive played over 2k hours in this game. Still love it to this day. Cheers.

Free forever on Steam at the moment. Just add to your library.

I legit do not know what the purpose of bulletins even is, in my experience they don't amount to anything legitimately noticeable in a real game.

I would highly recommend. Been a fan for years and still playing to this day, although it had it's problems and however small it is, really does matter at the end. They have to fix Advanced Emplacement Regiment for the British forces.

I do think that one thing that would be useful to mention is that if you play pvp, you can buy any of the factions and use this to play the game as a stand alone in the multiplayer. Also that it is possible to gain the commanders and skins via playing the game. (I also believe there is a mod that unlocks all commanders in custom games)

I just finish the first one a couple of days ago, and I love it!! hehe. I did think about improvements to make it more enjoyable, I'm glad to see they implemented the zone capture rather then the click and stand from the first game ^w^. And I see several more improvements that I didn't expect, so is really awesome. I just wish they let you select one unit at the time from any squad, like in the Men of War series, and realistic bullets, those sort of things. I'm wondering if I should buy this game or Ardennes Assault or Men of War: Assault Squad 2. I love the realism, but I also love a good story and good objectives in the main camping, since I'm a solo player. Thanks for the video, it was really informative and well explained nwn

I and my gang still play this to these days. It is still fun, hilarious, and frustrated as ever. The community is still lively. Also, we've just got a recent winter balance patch and commanders balance patch coming up next. I hope they did thing right this time. Some commanders have become so meta that I feels like playing against same tactic once every few games. So yes, even in 2021, it still a damn good game for co-op and pvp. The campaign has lots of bugs though since many changes and balances didn't consider the campaign mechanic (I still can't call in pathfinder squad in AA campaign).

Its free on steam rn and i have no idea what this game is about. thanks for the info!

It is free right now on Steam, together with the AA expansion

*"The original was better"* -Sun Tzu, Art of War

Well this has been a long wait indeed. For grinding the free drop, I believe Relic changed it at some point and you just get free point that progress toward getting a free loot after a number of games. Also I think they removed time limit to earn point so if you really want to grind those virtual currency for a particular commander for some reason, get the cheat command mod, set up a 1v1 game to play with AI and just yeet the AI when the game start for a quick victory. It will still give you point. It been a year since I played the game so can't guarantee it will still work but I see little reason for the dev to patch it out now for any reason.

Its pretty fun, its still get update (mostly patches) the game mechanic is fun and theres alot of mods if you are bored, the campaign especially Ardennes Assault and Theater of War is alot of fun! I love the voice acting, some of the voice acting can even give you chills. Buy the complete edition for more fun.

Hey. love your reviews, any chance of covering Paraworld? It seems that the game has been nearly forgotten at this point and it would be nice to see you cover it.

Ardennes assault is fucking brutal. I never got more than a few missions in. It's a shame there's no way to make it easier because a lot of people never really got to enjoy it.

It is incredible that in CoH1 we can play 3 incredible campaigns out of 3 and we have 3 stories about glory, camaraderie, honor and duty, the three factions originally shot their own deserters, and committed legal and illegal horrors within the war , some committed war crimes, but still you can play 3 campaigns in which we don't directly hate each faction. In CoH2 we use the main winning army of the 2nd world war, one that could be portrayed with a glorious campaign, wild and dark, but glorious, but no, there is nothing you do not do with the Russians in the campaign of CoH2 that you do not like. make you hate every second of the game. What is impressive is the quality, undeniable, but something incredible could have been done to empathize with, but apparently the creators of the game thought it important to make us believe that it was a campaign in which we had to play with the "enemy", when we played with the real enemy, the germans in CoH1, they didn't portray them like that, did they?

Nice review. I just bought the whole lot (with all DLCs) for only about £10 in the steam sale. The bundle even came with CoH 1 which I can’t play as it’s not Mac compatible, but still seemed a no-brainer for the lot for a tenner. A few nice craft beers I’ll probably drink during the first evening of play will likely cost more than that. 🙂

I played 300 hours of this game but the free loot drop takes so long to grind out compare to a match's length that I just quit entirely at one point.

LET'S GO BOIS

I bought and played this once, years ago. Got to the first snow mission (3 or 4 I think). After VERY SLOWLY capturing the objectives with snipers, keeping all my other units save by fires because it's one of those mission you have a limited number of units with limited chances to regain troops, and the map was big so my troops would have died before they could get to a fire. Suddenly the game gave me the final objective, to defend the last strategic point from a counter attack that included a tank......I had 1 sniper and 1 other infantry on the point, the rest had to be hastily bought in. The tank could be killed by mortaring the lank it was on, but the idiots on the mortar hit everything but the target. I chose to abandon the point to what ever remained of the enemy, so my forces could regroup and I could use the half-tracks that were on the other side of the map to retake the point, after all it was 1 of about 6 and they wouldn't have it for long ..........the game failed me when they took the point and closed the game in anger and disgust that it did this, never gone back to redo because of that, YES I AM PETTY!

I was waiting until u finally got into this one. I was playing the old one for some time now and decided to buy CoH2 now and i got addicted to it. But as you said, there are many things wrong, especially with the monetization of the game. it feels so disencouraging to buy the game, but in order to be even able to use certain techs and units from the commands you will have to buy those as well.

The best part has got to be the contextual audio quips your units have for specific situations. Like "Taking fire from that cute little Panzer! F***ing adorable, like a puppy. KILL IT!"

Russia: Ban this game, we do not use our men as cannonfodder. Crimea War: Okay bois, go die, here's some paper armor to protect yourself and no food.

Try playing the Wikinger community mod as it revamps the commanders to be coh1-ist and is a lot more fleshed out theme wise.

Try it with Tuning Mods All Units (170 added) no commanders needed it gives you access to all units and building of a faction. Wikinger: European Theater of War (really good mod, its a bit more realistic than other mods)

In the original release of CoH2, intel bulletins were awarded by earning them through achievements related to the bulletin. I never knew that they became microtransactions because when they made the switch to make them purchasable, Relic also simply unlocked all of them for players who had owned the game before the change. I liked it a lot better, it gave me a reason to just play some comp-stomp skirmish and work towards certain objectives with a more tangible award than just an achievement.

funny thing, I first bought the physical copy of the Western Front Armies back when I was in college; then later on I bought the base game. After that, I bought the Brits, and finally Ardennes Offensive; I was tempted to buy a few commanders, but I didn't give in to ALL the monetization this game had. CoH 3 is based on the Italian front, which is nice, but here's hoping a Pacific Front or Modern Combat CoH (not the mod) will be made in the future

There is a edition (forgot what it's called) that does give you all armies+DLC's+Commanders.

I just got coh2 and Ardennes assault on a special free weekend and keep it thing on steam

It's free on Steam atm, checking here if its worthwhile to make content about it

"Sega is trying to milk old games" Rockstar games:*looks around*

Weirdly enough, I was spamming Artillery and Mortar barrages earlier this month

I recommend playing it with the Wikinger Mod its an awesome mod.

pretty much my favorite CoH so far, probably because i got the whole package with all the dlc for like 5 bucks

Steam just had it's big summer sale and all of CoH 1 and 2 was on sale for 75% off. So I got both games and all available DLC for the current cost of CoH 3. I've been having a blast. Gonna wait for CoH 3 to work out some of it's kinks before sinking 60 bucks into it.

Remaster DOW 1 for god sake.

I love this game so much, however I only play with advanced powers mod. I would use advanced powers, makes the game much better

my favorite game of all time

As someone who has never touched coh1 I still agree with your criticism regarding bulletins and commanders. I heard about the OG battlegroup system and it has way more depth. While commanders can have cool abilities, there’s no picking a path to go down and making interesting decisions like in 1. Also kinda dumb that you have to pay for a lot of them. Glad 3 is bringing back the system from 1 Great vid overall, have well over a hundred hours in 2 and your points are very well-put! Imo Ardennes assault is very underrated as a dlc. Good thing the game is free forever now

Someone sold me their humble bundle key 😊 so happy with cool skins too!

There is an all out war edition that has all commanders and factions included.

it's free to download now on steam until June 4th

It’s free this weekend on steam

my game keeps crashing on the game i get a black screen and the sounds keep repeating is there anyway of fixing the problem

In general it's a very good vid but there are a few things I'd like to cirticise you on ( I'll be brief so I don't write a full essay ): - Commander microtransactions are in the game but I don't think there's a single person out there that bought them, besides "Fox Company" for the Ardennes Assault campaign, which I agree is absolutely bs for being a microtrans within a microtrans. - I respect you for mentioning the coldtek stuff but unless you're in custom games and choose to play those maps with coldtek on, chances are that you won't run into it - Coldtek and the mud slowdown used to be a thing but because ( I'm assuming here ) players got annoyed by those things happening so they patched them out. - I was gonna write up about the Master and Complete edition being "full packages" but I've seen some commenters point that out, good on them. - Mods are also cool but keep in mind that they do not work outside of custom games, going PVE or PVP online does not allow you to keep your mods so unless the player specifically choses to play custom games, mods can be sidetracked ( But in custom games they can really spice up a lot of things and there are some pretty cool ones out there ). - Honestly, what seems to plague this review is your lack of experience playing PVP. I know it's not for everyone but saying "Oh lol it's my review" and completely avoiding it is a bit of a low-blow if you ask me. The PVP has basically become the core of the game and although you did a more than great job at describing the game mechanics and the Singleplayer experience, you really should've played a bit of multiplayer, commented about how commanders synergise there ( Which probably would've given you a better opinion of the 'Commander system' and intel bulletins ). Making the enemy guess which commander you're gonna pick can give you an edge and surprising them and countering them can really be up to the commander you choose ( You did mention the constant need for adaptation and countering, although you should've mentioned the Rock-Paper-Scissors nature of it too! The rest that I did not comment on I've either an agreeing opinion on or I'm just neutral. Apologies if this comment seemes a bit pretencious.

Watched this, decided to get it. Found the full bundle, CoH & CoH 2 with all DLC for 15$ on steam, such a steal. Good timing.

I have 3k hours in coh2 and have played multiplayer since beta never finished campaign and only play pvp its still my favourite RTS

Whats your point with the ZSU M17? Its produced in USA but they delivered nearly every produced halftrack from the M5 variant ( thats how it called in us without AA) where delivered to allies

This is a no brainer.. CoH2 is very good, especially with the mod that enables all units, cant remember the name. It is the best of all the series.

This was my childhood game

yes !

If you want to play coh2 buy the all out of war edition, (you have to google for it sadly) you got the base game pluss all dlcs (single player and multiplayer) all commanders and you get a second copy of the base game for a friend

1500 hours under the game, it is completely worth it.

Single okay is... Okay I guess but the real meat of the game is the multiplayer. It's relatively balanced, had insane depth, and a flourishing community. Honestly the microtransactions aren't really an issue because you win gold after like every 2 matches once you unlock everything. Plus the balance allows the vanilla packs to be extremely competitive.

All units mod is the best, its like playing Company of Heroes unlocked.

who's here because its free on steam?

Yes.

Watching this after Company of Heroes 3 trailer came out

since tis free on steam should i play it?

Yes, especially the mod Wikinger!

Prefer using my apm focusing on production which is coh1, instead of unit special abilities fron coh2

IMO Coh1 with back to basic mod is the ultimate coh experience. Also honorable mention to Dawn of war 2. (Especially with ELITE mod) COH2 winter mechanic was a cool surprise tho.

Bulletines are kinda pointless in Multiplayer too.There are also some bulletines which are funny reduce the cost of x ability by y amount, since the games economy is in whole numbers the x abilities cost actually doesn't change.

"The game reviewed pretty well"...shows a 2.2 audience score.

By this point I've played way more of the Spearhead mod than the actual base game, and I don't think I can ever go back to vanilla.

I 've had this for a long time now. It was given away for free in steam.

Anyone here played Iron Harvest? I found it a cool alternative COH 2 like game. Can recommend it :)

Fuck yeah!

Its stays awesome, please bring us new factions!

You are here cause of steam trust me 😇😇

It's for free on Steam right now :)

They just had like 90% sale on the entire game with all dlc so there's really no reason not to pick this fantastic game up.

nice

Is it worth playing sans DLC?

Hi, I hope someone can help me. I have never played COH, I am thinking of getting COH2, but also can get COH2 all out war edition. I will be playing single player (skirmish/campaign?) only, but am I right in thinking that COH2 all out war (which has The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West, COH 2 - The Western Front Armies: US Force). Which should I get as a single player? Does COH2 all out war edition come with the original COH2 (which I understamd is mainly single player as the Russian army)?

Have about 1000 hours in mp, I highly recommend for mp, community still going strong with updates, and I think the game is in a great place, has some big balances issues I think in team games though one v one pretty balances and two v two is ok, to summerize, the axis are way to strong in my opinion, regardless totally recommend for mp, ton of fun, no other game that I know like it, with the flow, cover system, sight system, battle mechanics, counters, , vehicles, abilities, call ins, off maps abilities, all a good time and that is the reason why I always go back to the game, don't get this game if your gonna play it just for coop or single player I don't see the point now in 2021 the campaigns were forgettable, unless you really want to, there are some mission packs that I have not done that could be fun and that might be interesting to do as coop, play the COH 1 campaigns for a singleplayer experience if you want that I still recall some missions of COH one to this day, after like, pshh 14 or 15 years?

Seeing this makes me wish for a dieselpunk world war 2 RTS. Like retro future units and etc

Its free on steam now, grab it while you can.