Steel Division: Normandy 44
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes & 20 seconds.
Suggested soundtrack: Shadows and Conspiracy.
Welcome to another (RELOADED) review of Steel Division Normandy 44.
In this review, I will share with you the reasons I have purged my hard drive of this software and erased it from my mental library.
Disclaimer (can be skipped).
I might come through as highly judgemental, for some, but please do remember that you must side with yourself, when deciding what product to invest your money and time on. And you are probably here, reading this review, because you are a concerned customer and a WW2 strategy/tactics games fan.
– Real player with 410.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best RTS Military Games.
I was a longtime Wargame and R.U.S.E. player and Steel Division was a title that really excited me. I even got access to the close “VIP” beta and played the hell out of it. I obviously pre-ordered to get access to the open beta and played the hell out of that too. I eagerly awaited what I presumed to be a giant patch on release day that would’ve fixed all of the open beta problems.
The sad reality is that Steel Division has been a trainwreck from the day it released. A lot of the problems would be gone and the community would likely be thriving if the game would have had a much longer closed beta and a full-featured open beta to iron out the bugs. Eugen is not an early access developer, they have never been. They have traditionally released full-featured games with excellent support and with Red Dragon, free and paid DLC. Steel Division was not adequately tested in either beta so the release was a balance nightmare where divisions that had never been tested immediately became the meta and it was a really terrible meta at that. The patches since then have largely been targeted at trying to fix the horribly imbalanced airborne divisions. There have been various tweaks to AAA and planes and veterancy and infantry in general, all of these have to do with Airborne Divisions. Meanwhile, the rest of the game languishes.
– Real player with 189.1 hrs in game
Victory At Sea Pacific
Dev activity
They’re quite active. They reply promptly to direct contact on the Discord and are equally ready to implement suggestions into the game. Most notably when it comes to expanding modding support. Some reviews claim the game is dead or the devs have run off so the patch history follows.
9-14-2018 Public release, 9-19-2018 Patch 1.0.4, 9-20-2018 Patch 1.0.5, 9-25-2018 Patch 1.0.6, 9-28-2018 Patch 1.0.7, 10-5-2018 Patch 1.1, 10-11-2018 Patch 1.1.1, 10-18-2018 Patch 1.1.2, 10-26-2018 Patch 1.1.3, 10-30-2018 Patch 1.1.4, 11-8-2018 Patch 1.1.5, 11-23-2018 Patch 1.2 (introduced modding), 11-26-2018 Patch 1.2.0p2, 11-27-2018 Patch 1.2.0p3, 12-17-2018 Patch 1.2.1, 12-20-2018 Patch 1.2.1p3, 12-21-2018 Patch 1.2.1p4, 1-9-2019 Patch 1.2.2, 1-11-2019 Patch 1.2.2p1, 1-23-2019 Patch 1.2.3, 3-4-2019 Patch 1.3.1 Royal Navy added, 4-2-2019 Patch 1.4 Custom battles, 6-19-2019 Patch 1.5 Minor factions, 10-30-2019 Patch 1.6, 11-4-2019 Patch 1.6.1, 11-13-2019 Patch 1.6.2, 2-6-2020 Patch 1.7, 2-7-2020 Patch 1.7.0p1, 2-26-2020 Patch 1.7.1
– Real player with 181.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best RTS Naval Games.
As someone who really want’s to like this game, and I truly do want to like it, I’m sorry to say that I can’t really recommend this game in it’s current state. The gameplay is fine and can be fun, specifically when your right up in the action having the ship maneuver to avoid torpedoes and air attacks, and launching submarine attacks on convoys and task forces.
But while the core gameplay is really solid, the fact that it is so filled with bugs and glitches makes it really difficult to enjoy what’s there. Ships can just disappear from a taskforce, even though it is possible to find their models and still click and control them manually. I’ve had a case where I lost an entire taskforce of submarines to limbo because of a glitch despite the fact I was able to use said submarines to sink a flotilla’s worth of destroyers. I’ve had a similar case where I lost three battleships to limbo when I tried to control them manually.
– Real player with 133.5 hrs in game
Attack at Dawn: North Africa
Attack at Dawn: North Africa is a strategy game set in WW2 North African theatre. In the game you take command of battalions, brigades, divisions and air wings. The game begins with the German troops probing into the Libyan region of Cyrenaica, and finishes either with the total defeat of German-Italian Panzer Armee, or with the British loss of Egypt and their retreat across the Suez Canal.
FAST AND INTENSIVE GAMEPLAY
The game can be played in a Real-Time, or Turn-Based (WeGo) mode. That reflects the speed and chaos of the desert mobile warfare. Combine this with the fog of war, and the experience of being in command vehicle of a Panzer Corps comes to life. The game will immerse you in one of the most intensive and nerve-wrecking experiences of the Second World War.
POLISHED INTERFACE
Game map and the units have been designed to be uncluttered, informative and easy to understand. You can choose how will your units look like: as top-view models or unit counters. With the ability to zoom out and see the entire battlefield with a glance, you will have the best possible situational awareness.
HISTORICAL
The game features campaigns and scenarios - both historical and hypothetical. They have been designed after an in-depth research of the historical orders of battle and battle histories. Special attention was given to the composition of the armies, combat values of individual units and overall authenticity of each scenario. Check out our series of maps and historical articles that were created based on our research: https://www.attackatdawn.com/news/categories/blog
LARGE MAP
The game features a large map, covering a distance of almost 2000 kilometres and you can use the Scenario Editor provided within the game to create your own scenarios anywhere on this large battleground. Starting at the bay of Sirte in Libya and spreading to Suez Canal in Egypt, the terrain varies between sea, desert, mountains, wadis, ports… There is one long asphalt road “Via Balbia” spanning the whole length of the map, and a handful of well-known desert tracks leading towards the deep Sahara.
Read More: Best RTS Turn-Based Games.
Blitzkrieg 2 Anthology
Found this game and it is a diamond in the rough. The second i started the tutorials i realised that brute force and overwhelming numbers don’t work. You have to use strategy, such as an artillery bombardment before your charge, or hitting the enemy in the rear and making there defences useless. The reinforcements system forces you to think about what the attack will cost you, it affects you in the long run. They feature that cought me off gaurd is the ammo system, your tanks and soldiers RUN OUT of ammo, when this happens you need to have a supply truck resuply them, and they have a limited supply, making ware houses (infinit supplies) something to defend as well as your supply routs to the front lines. Further more unlike some games that just copy paste units, every side (even the NPCS) have thier own unique rooster of units giving them an advantage in thier field. Germans: Tanks Soviets: Rocket artillery Americans: Jack of all trades. The graphics arn’t master pieces but they are pretty good for 2005. As the campaigns go on, you steadily start being assigned larger and more important missions, which makes it feel as if you are rising through the ranks from some leutenant commanding a few squads of infantry and a hand full of tanks to a general commanding an army to glory. Over all it is a very realistic RTS, gameplay wise, and it will apeal to those who like a realistic RTS.
– Real player with 166.7 hrs in game
No problems on my win 7 laptop. The game does without the core units of the previous game. Instead, you end up leveling up “classes of units”, which gets you slight to very good improvements. Some of the missions deploy you in a bad spot, so it makes it hard to achieve no losses for a particular class. I miss have the sniper as my spotter. I basically used my disposaple infantry as spotter and cannon fodder. The AI still attacks the nearest units, so my entrenched infantry were being attacked instead of my anti-tank guns or tanks. The AI still doesn’t move when being attacked by an unseen force. You are restricted as to what units you can deploy as reinforcements, but you are given a good amount if you just want to zerg across the map. My prefered method of attack would be ground air planes as spotter. mobile artillery so I can move it out of the way of enemy counter artillery, and heavy armor for their sligthly better defense. However, I usually had to use infantry as spotter and medium armor to attack.
– Real player with 105.0 hrs in game
Blitzkrieg 3
The “Don’t Escape Trilogy” is a collection of three short first-person point-and-click adventures with static screens (no camera movement, no scrolling). The games share a creepy atmosphere and a few gameplay mechanics, but are otherwise unrelated. In the first game, you play a werewolf trying to lock himself away before a full-moon night, so that he won’t kill anyone when he turns. In the second game, you’re trying to barricade a house and protect yourself from a zombie horde. In the third game, you’re the only surviving crew member on a spaceship and need to stop “something” from getting out.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Even though the entire trilogy is available for free on Armor Games, I chose to purchase this game series on Steam because that’s how amazing ScriptWelder really is. The Deep Sleep and Don’t Escape series were some of the first PC games I ever played, and I have ScriptWelder to thank for making my early experiences so magical. I have followed each and every game you have published on AG, hunted down every achievement, set of choices, and walkthrough I could find… simply, because every single second I spent in any of your games was one of either awe, wonder, fear, or curiosity.
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Blitzkrieg Anthology
I bought this game in 2003 just after it’s release, now in 2014 I find myself still playing it just as much. A few things to know about this game:
THERE ARE NO BASES - There is something awfully appealing about having a certain ammount of units and being told to capture an area without reinforcements.
The Campaign is fairly repetitive after a while. Essentially you will end up doing similar convoy missions, town clearing missions, defend the gun emplacement missions etc to get upgraded tanks and artillery.
– Real player with 94.4 hrs in game
Bottomline:
Probably the best real time tactics ww2 game ibe ever played, certainly the best in the blitzkrieg series imo.
There is no base building, resource gathering, increasing production, or managing whole wars & armies here. Just good old military tactics.
I played this game for 100s of hours years ago, and even though i have my original disk (somewhere) i bought it again on steam.
Graphics are a little dated of course, but still looks good enough. The best part of this game is its gameplay, not its looks so if what you are looking for is flashy shinny explosions, there are better options out there. But if youre after a challenging, realistic and extremely fun gameplay, with complete historical accuracy, this is certainly what you are looking for.
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
COH 2 - The Western Front Armies: US Forces
The Americans are unique and fun to use, and the extra maps seem well balanced, but if you are looking for new single-player content or for something to get introduced to the world of Company of Heroes 2, you won’t find this here. The expansion lacks an ambitious single-player campaign. This expansion is recommended only to the experienced players
The DLC is great in terms of the new faction. US Forces do not build bases, they have a prebuilt base that requires higher echelon troops to unlock buildings which gives an entirely different feel to the game. However, the Americans are a bit flawed. For one the American riflemen will be the backbone of your army literally since they are the only combat infantry available short of using a commander summon. There are no rangers or even mortars. All in all, if you liked the first company of heroes this would probably be a must buy since they go back to their roots a bit.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
The USF is an overpowered faction based around developing a blob of insanely powerful infantry over the course of the game. By the midgame a decent USF player should have a swarm of veteran infantry that can melt anything and be on the attack almost constantly.
At the beginning of the game the USF start with a disadvantage. Their starting engineer unit is weaker than both the OstHeer and OKWs engineer units. The USF will not be able to seize key objectives at beginning of a game unless they decide to rush with additional units.
Company of Heroes 2
It’s ruled for almost a decade just like the first one, which remains it;s only competition. It is the defining WW2 rts with a perfect balance of realism and fun competition.
– Real player with 5494.2 hrs in game
If you’re looking for a fun WW2 RTS game, COH2 is arguably the best choice. In terms of gameplay, it is fun and immersive. The factions are unique especially since there are two german factions but they still play differently. The soundtrack is great but when you have been playing for a long time, you’d notice that there isn’t much OST used in-game. There are mods available but it’s a downgrade of what modders are able to do in the previous installment. What most they can do is provide different stat values and in-game rules but no custom models and sound effects, although custom maps and custom icons are still available.
– Real player with 1348.7 hrs in game
Company of Heroes
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT LEGEND MEANS THEN READ THIS STORY TO END!
Prolouge:
This game is the game which made me “Addicted” I never forget the day that a friend of mine brought this from Canada for me in 2006 and I installed it and while it was installing and downloading patches I was busy reading the amazingly designed manual to learn everything. I started playing for fun and after 2 years I decided to play like a real professional and it was the first game which made me to join tournaments. I honestly never ever forget my greatest RTS memories with this game, I dare to say it gave me more fun than Red Alert 2 did although RA2 was a better and more balanced game.
– Real player with 1244.4 hrs in game
Have been playing this game since 2006, it’s a Real Time Strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by the now bankrupt THQ, based on the Essence Engine 1.0 which itself is a brand new engine inspired by the Impossible Creatures one which Dawn of War also used, albeit a modified version.
At the time of mostly stuff like Age of Empires, StarCraft and Warcraft were the dominant strategy games, CoH broke that mold by doing away with economic gathering and management by simply replacing it with a sector capturing system which generated resources for the player instead of stuff like wood, stock, gold and so forth you have Manpower which pays for your units, Ammunition which pays for your upgrades and abilities and finally Fuel, which pays for your buildings, some emplacements and your vehicles. Dynamic cover, something which only craters in Dawn of War provided and also destructible terrain, for the first time ever in a physics based RTS game were you allowed to create, destroy and use cover, your units could build sandbags, tank traps and emplacements, Tank and Artillery shells as well as stuff like satchel charges made shell craters on the ground giving your infantry light cover which helped them in the late game, I’ve often times had matches where the map looked like a side of the moon even.
– Real player with 1059.7 hrs in game
Company of Heroes - Legacy Edition
Company of heroes is a masterful example of how Detail and polish on even the smallest of elements can marry Gameplay and theme to create something that truly deserves a place among the greatest games of all time.
Company of Heroes is a Real time strategy game with a WW2 era finish, and my god this finish is pristine. The game’s basic gameplay elements (both single player and multiplayer) are unique and offer true decision making and deliberation on your part to be successful; positioning of weapons teams and the will to only fight when you have something to gain is most important of all. Holding territory and maneuvering into a position of power is the game of war, not pointless bloodshed.
– Real player with 209.2 hrs in game
I remember having played this game for the first time when it was released. Being a fan of RTS games, especially the ones released by Relic, there was no way I was going to let this one go. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say I was literally hooked from the word go. No RTS before or since has been on the same level as this.
The single player campaign was just brilliant. If I had to point out a weakness, the only one I can come up with is that it’s a bit short. I just couldn’t have enough of it. But it’s not a perfect world. Relic’s competitors can maybe come up with a 20 mission campaign with mediocre results, but this one gave you 13 that were nothing short of brilliant. They were varied in terms of gameplay, offering multiple methods to achieve the objectives.
– Real player with 80.3 hrs in game