I played the mission alpha and posted my review after 5 hours of tinkering around and because I had a slur word I got banned. Anyway I like this text so I removed any offensive content and I will be putting it out again since I consider it the most based.
Turns out it's not too bad. I don't have too much time so I will write in small paragraphs.
The good
- DAK feels too much like the good old Panzer Elite from the vCOH days. Especially using the recovery vehicle (Bergertiger anyone?). Small agile squads with lots of versatility but never good at anything beyond a certain point.
- Amazing, and I mean amazing voice acting. Hearing it through headphones really immersed me greatly. Tank crews sound like they talk out of scorching hot african weather conditions on a shitcan. The fire guys (schiattori or somethin?) sound over their gas mask and it's pretty cool. Also, from a gameplay standpoint they remind me too much of flame penals which we got rid of.
- Very very good physics engine that makes for "realistic" as in "fun" vehicle combat. When you kill an enemy tank it blows up but does not stop on the spot like COH2 does but rather it tries to improve over COH1's vehicle mechanics, whereby after you kill it it bursts up but stops moving naturally due to leftover speed from the driver. I liked it a lot.
- Buildings collapsing may be retarded but they blend in well with the general feel and aesthetic of the game. I like them.
- New abilities that may spice the game up a lot. For example, Vickers MG gun has a built in "fortify on the spot and have 360 degrees range" ability.
- Towed weapons in general make for some interesting shit. For example, when you pull in a towed ATG, you can place it somewhere and use the truck for resource boosting (think Zistrucks from industry sov commander) and to reinforce (now that I write it it sounds op). I like this.
- Zombie vehicles may work. Right now all the armored fights end up way too quickly, so it makes sense to be able to pick up your lost vehicles and reuse them. Even Panzers III die quickly (in like, 1-2 hits max with some snares) so using a zombie vehicle can put interesting gameplay options. Personally I like it (may be biased from vcoh days but whatever).
- Diverse mix of models and Italian spices here and there. I liked it even though it still looks quite primitive.
- Caches are fixed. No ammo/fuel. A single cache on every point and you are good.
- Very good OST. Blends perfectly with desert war. They took inspiration from games like MOH.
The bad
- Brits are again designed to be a emplacement spamming cancer fest.
- The engine sucks ass. I have the most newest graphics cards and motherboard installed (I even tried it on some university computers which have double 1080tis installed) but could not get a steady 60fps from an engine that still uses one core. Do not expect the game to work well even in decent systems.
- Auto-reinforcing may be way too op, even for this forum's axis' larpers' standards. I cannot see a way to fix this. It gets worse when you realize that you can build an HP center in every point you capture and it gives you free reinforce, free heal and retreat point. So in essence for paying 100mp and 50muni to upgrade point, you get auto reinforce, free reinforce, free heal and free retreat point. Boy does it sound shitty.
- Auto-vaulting dumbs the small arms fights way too much. Even though it sounded good to me before, I take it back now.
- UI needs serious work. I cannot understand why they put the units' emblems bottom left corner. Buttons way too big, sometimes icon glitch out. Easy fixing.
- I cannot understand how weapon system will work. Maybe they took my advice when I said make every weapon upgrade a sidegrade and give each squad 2 slots. But they locked everything and cannot learn shit right now.
- Historical accuracy. Have talked about it before. But not too bad. Passable I would say.
- Weird graphical design. When I put every setting on max it looked like a chinese fake mobile game but when I toned down the antialising looked pretty good and with nice desert aesthetics (think Uncharted 3 Rub al Khali). I don't know what to say.
- "Tactical Pause" is an unworkable and useless piece of shit. Obviously it cannot work in MP and in SP it makes you have the pseudo feeling of a general managing 2 theaters at once but in reality you just blobspam everything since the AI sucks ass.
- They will get unit skins for multiplayer and other idiotic P2W nonsense. I hope at least they make the MP component free so that people can actually have a reason to populate the servers (have talked about it before).
- Tank riding is borderline broken and OP. It allows you to potentially roam around with a tank killing taskforce (tank cannon + panzergrenadiers shrecks + snares). I really hope it's locked behind only some units (like Panzergrenadiers for their namesake).
- The animations are horrible, much to contradict what another forum guy said about COH3 having the best animations ever. Don't believe me? Here, take a look at this:
Conclusion
- Slightly better than I expected it to be.
- Definitely not 60$ worthy.
- Still has major work to be done. Cannot see how that would be feasible by the November 2023 deadline they set.
- Balance will be problem.
Will edit if new thoughts occur.
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
