Add in the other playthroughs where you tackle different missions in different order, different campaign difficulties and different combinations of special ability upgrades and you can start seeing the value coming back, especially if you went out and got yourself the ranger company from pre-ordering (or with more money!). This leads to 18 distinct missions played on maps that contain as much variance as a relatively small portion of Belgian countryside would allow, with varying objectives and bonus objectives where, through the first playthrough, assuming you don’t lose once, you can easily drop about ten hours worth of gameplay. The Germans also never attack a region that you own, so once you get it, it’s yours for good. While a mission may initially be a push-over, as they get reinforced, you will find they will gain more and more support and veterancy to the point where you will be greatly challenged when you eventually run at them. This leads to a bit of tactical thinking as you can seen what enemy reinforcements will do to a mission. They basically don’t move from their positions until you flush them out, whereby they will retreat to neighboring regions and either get destroyed when they enter a region under your control or reinforce a region under enemy control. The enemy, whose strength in a region is represented by the little red iron crosses, in the campaign isn’t quite as dynamic as enemies are in the campaigns of the other strategy games I’ve mentioned. This will affect your choice on what division to throw at it because, for example, you wouldn’t want to throw your mechanized divisions at a map filled with tank traps. When you click on a potential mission, you can read up on intel about the mission, such as the kind of forces you will be facing, their veterancy and the equipment at their disposal, your objectives and potential roadblocks you might run into, in the metaphorical sense such as resource limitations or in the literal sense such as the map being covered in tank traps. All four have varying play-styles that you will take into account their advantages and disadvantages as you decide which one would be best suited to attacking Stavelot. You will be controlling three different companies, that you pick before starting your campaign, comprising of either Mechanized, Support, Airborne or Rangers (free if you pre-order). Now it might look like the campaign map is just a fancy way for you to jumble around the order of the missions and scenarios you will be playing, but there are just so many factors that are going to impact your decision that makes such an assumption erroneous.

Company of heroes 2 replay player