Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault Review

Criticisms

Mistakes made early on when the player is still getting used to the new units and mechanics can easily haunt the rest of their campaign. In a fast-paced game like Company of Heroes 2, one or two wrong calls are enough to make a mission fail. A single bankruptcy can reduce a company’s strength by more than a third. It’s all too easy to end up in an impossible-to-win situation, and the game is long enough that starting over seems like a chore.

In turn-based games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, the realization that your next move could have a profound effect on the rest of the game increases the tension and excitement, but that’s because the player has time to think about everything in advance. In Ardennes Assault, it was just annoying. It doesn’t completely ruin the game, but it’s such a significant component that my feelings towards it ended up coloring my attitude towards the expansion as a whole.

Final verdict

While I don’t hate Ardennes Assault, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the vanilla campaign. Soviet missions were just as challenging without the added frustration of a poorly implemented gimmick, and the writing is good enough for an RTS. If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself and don’t already have the base game, you can get the standalone version available on Steam, which includes the vanilla campaign and multiplayer content. I found Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault to be a disappointment, but if you can look past its flaws there is still a lot of fun to enjoy.