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Company of Heroes: Ardennes Assault is Relic Games’ second expansion pack for Company of Heroes 2. Except this time, Ardennes Assault is a standalone game, so you will not need the original game to play it.
Ardennes Assault is a single-player real time strategy game that focuses instead on the overall war than a single battle. The game features an open-ended campaign map and your job is to knock the Third Reich out of greater Belgium in the ruthless Battle of the Bulge.
Gameplay:
The game has 3 different commanders with three companies, and each commander brings their own personal story and reflections to the game during their pre-mission reports allowing for a more humane connection with the player.
The first commander is Kurt Derby, a veteran of the first World War in charge of the Support Company.
The second commander, Bill Edwards, is a third generation solider meaning he will be more focused on the element of speed and surprise. So his company is a far more mobile aggressive mechanized infantry.
The third commander, Johnny Vastano, isn’t too stoked about being in the war (or the idea of war in general) and has now been promoted to the role of commander after the death of his superior. He leads the Airborne company.
Each of these companies has their own skill tree upgrades to choose from with unique units and abilities which allows you to customize them in different ways. The skills trees and specializations focus on unique units of each company making their play styles very different from each other which also allows for multiple play through’s of missions using different approaches.
So while focusing on just one companies skills is alright and feasible, you’re better of striking a balance between the three. Of course after playing for a while, you will have a favourite. All three companies will have infantry and vehicular options though.
You will have various missions to complete, these will include defending heavily fortified points, defeating outposts, or reducing the enemies ticker to zero. In between these missions you will get optional objectives that can reward you greatly..if you succeed that is. These objectives will stress you at key moments during the mission.
But the great thing about the game is that even though you lose a battle, you still have plenty more to go, so you don’t necessarily lose the war. Of course, the opposite also applies and winning a battle does not mean that you will win the war.
Also time and resource constraints during key moments with these optional objectives forces players to explore their companies abilities and skill trees better.
Completing missions allows your company to gain veterancy, making them harder to kill which will be very necessary as the companies do come with a limited manpower pool so more casualties means it becomes smaller and once it is too the low, the company is disbanded outright on the campaign.
So players will need to be careful not to lose all three as they will have to restart the whole campaign otherwise. And reloading saved files do not work as the game autosaves after each mission. Multiple saves are also not possible, so losing your manpower will set you up for failure later into the game.
Besides missions, you can move your company freely around the meta map, and in doing so you will come across random events. These can either help or hinder you.
The game also has a lot of potential for replaying campaigns. Players have the freedom to take on missions in any order and the maps’ open structure offers enough reason to revisit a campaign to try out each company with its different approaches, even after the missions have been completed.
Also, given that available requisition points are limited and doesn’t allow you to try out all the abilities in the skill tree means you will have to replay a mission in order to try a different approach by each company.
The only downside is that the game has a very steep learning curve with no proper guidance or support for new players. There isn’t even a list of button bindings. Relic has created the game keeping the older players in mind so there isn’t an in-game guide or other kind of assistance to go by.
This can make it very frustrating for players who are new to the game and don’t know what’s going on or what the keyboard commands are and it may cause them to rage quit campaigns after losing several squads of soldiers. Even returning players may have some trouble with all the new features and skill trees.
But once they are past this, then the game becomes much more intriguing and rewarding. So the problem here does not lie with the game elements itself but rather the lack of information on these elements.
Verdict: 9/10
Ardennes Assault is an excellent real-time strategy game and a great addition to the Company of Heroes series. The game rewards exploration, is very replayable, and has a strategically satisfying well designed campaign.
Sadly the learning curve is quite steep so new players might find it hard to get into at first.
Pros:
- Well designed campaign.
- Companies with unique abilities and play style
- Commanders add a humane element to the game
- Very replayable
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Not very newbie friendly
