***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***
Day three and still going through the single-player campaign. More capture and hold levels with the one I left off from the day before being a lot easier than I thought. With three "free" assault guns, captured long-range mortars, and a howitzer, it was pretty easy to drive from one end of the map to the other knowing that I had a limited amount of time. After reaching the first objectives, I just parked a nice line of tanks, field guns, machine guns, and infantry to defend against the counter-attack. Oh, and the artillery helped too.
Spam Spam Spam
One of the next levels was similar minus the tanks. I only had access to half-tracks, field guns, and infantry. This one was annoying because I regularly got strafed by a German plane until I captured their radar station. Instead of a free tank, I received a single rocket-launcher that could do long-range barrages. An airstrike was also available every so often. This is the level where I realized that artillery may be a bit overpowered and the enemy AI isn't the brightest. To capture the last few control points, I supposedly had to go through two very tight spaces between downed bridges. There was also one heavily defended alternate trail for infantry only. Well, all three points were captured after spamming them with artillery while "laying siege" to them (i.e. put up a bunch of field guns and machine guns on my side to kill anything coming through).
Tiger vs. Infantry
The most interesting and annoying level of the day was the one where I only had access to infantry and limited resources to go up against a Tiger tank. This meant access to only anti-tank -- supposedly -- grenades, anti-tank -- supposedly -- rifles, mines, and three captured field guns on the map. The mines momentarily stopped the tank, the anti-tank "everything" barely made a dent on the tank at all angles, and they didn't last long once discovered. I probably wasted a ton of the ammunition resource throwing smoke and grenades at it early on. Eventually, I remembered the manually detonated explosives available on the engineer. This level was in an urban area, so there was a lot of cat and mouse and tight spaces. Long story short, the explosives won the first part and then I just spammed infantry along with captured field guns at it for the second part.
Capture the Castle
After that was an urban level with empty fields to the north. This was the first opportunity I could remember where tanks were readily available to be manufactured. I made a ton of mobile assault guns, tank destroyers, and a T-34, but realized that they sucked against infantry. It'd take a few minutes to kill infantry at times. A captured German Panzer IV and mobile flak gun, in addition to a friendly built half-track became essential to supporting the tanks -- snipers kept killing off my infantry support. The last part of the mission involved defending against a major counter-attack with probably a dozen or so tanks and half-tracks. Having parked all 6 heavy tanks and 2 light tanks in a row, it was very easy and hilarious to watch how one-sided the engagement was.
Still Going?
So, I'm still thoroughly entertained. Pretty good game so far and I'd say worth the full price that I paid considering how much I burn on books. I might be nearing the end because the last level I left at was based in August 1944 -- less than a year of war left. Wonder if it makes it to Berlin.
Related
Company of Heroes 2: Single-player Portion Review
Company of Heroes 2: Single-player First Impressions
Company of Heroes 2: Second Impressions
Company of Heroes 2: Third Impressions
Company of Heroes 2: Final Impressions
