CoH1 vs. CoH2 - Company of Heroes 2017 showdown

My opinion:




To play along here's the spread sheet.

with 20 criteria,

Show Spoiler

rate each game 1-5 to give a score out of 100, try to take into account both games in 2017 to take into account CoH2's improvements, but give some weight to the fact that CoH1 came out in 2006.

What are your thoughts what would you give each game, based on those criteria?

Great video! I liked it! One thing I wondered, why give CoH2 more points for faction design, when the vanilla factions of CoH are far more complete than CoH2's vanilla factions that needed dlc to have some basic functions such as tank traps?

I find it hard to weigh 'Menu UI' as much as 'Balance' and 'Faction Design' or what you mean by "Social Interactivity"...

Great video! I liked it! One thing I wondered, why give CoH2 more points for faction design, when the vanilla factions of CoH are far more complete than CoH2's vanilla factions that needed dlc to have some basic functions such as tank traps?

5 factions baby, sure Wehr and US from CoH1 on their own are amazing, but they're not on their own, the're trapped in a car with their retarded children PE and Brits.

No one faction in CoH2 is as good as Wehr or US from CoH1, but all 5 are decent. CoH1 has two amazing factions, one kinda ok faction (PE), and one terrible faction (brits).

I find it hard to weigh 'Menu UI' as much as 'Balance' and 'Faction Design' or what you mean by "Social Interactivity"...

I think social interactivity in a game is really important, it's how players get hooked and drives player retention, no social interactivity leads to dead game.

5 factions baby, sure Wehr and US from CoH1 on their own are amazing, but they're not on their own, the're trapped in a car with their retarded children PE and Brits.

No one faction in CoH2 is as good as Wehr or US from CoH1, but all 5 are decent. CoH1 has two amazing factions, one kinda ok faction (PE), and one terrible faction (brits).

Agreed. Well said.

Both games have their own ups and downs, a cheesy stuff comparison would be nice. Because both games have some super ultra lame tactics and abilities that is rarely mentioned when the games and esp.its critics compare them.

If you compare OKW vs PE i would prefer PE over them all day. Best axis faction so far (my opinion).
Sure the blobbing things is a mechanic that needs to be looked at, but i find the more distinct from the original wehrmacht than what we have now. I especially liked the idea to have soldiers already pre-equipped, mp only and also generic soldiers that you can specialize later.
Poor PE, miss you.


A mod for COH2 - AllStars would be awesome though.

Nice overview.

But I agree a bit with ZombiF, it seems like issues of less importance (to me, but we are talking opinions here) make out the overwhelming differences in ratings.

I think you were too harsh on CoH1 on the capping rating. Also, I don't think the UK voice-acting make up for the German shaky-voice history-lesson. God they completely kill any hype I've built up for the game itself.

The weirdest thing is the combined Abilities and DLC-Model ratings; 7 vs 6? Something really misses its mark there.

OF/ToV was a sad move in the wrong direction (Brits much more so than PE, though), but the blatant p2w flavour-of-the-month commander DLC model was a Sarah-Palmer-scream level travesty and betrayal.

But the most important issue - which is a bit difficult to convincingly thematize in a review - is IMO the vCoH1 game mechanics vs. OF/ToV/CoH2. It's like Relic had this smashing hit on their hands and then they suddenly stopped believing in the core mechanics and gameplay of the product.

Out came Brits from gamechanging trucks that could click-ability their infantry past MGs and shoot out of APCs, while PE dropped the armoured vehicle mechanics for most of their vehicular fleet and didn't have sound suppression-units.

If I'm honest and none-biased, I'd make less changes to CoH than I would to CoH 2.

Relic reached a sort of nice balance for CoH on their own, the community Balance team has been trying to do the same for CoH 2 for the past few months but their attempts have been kinda meh to most of the casual non-competitive 1v1/2v2 community that just wants to play the game for fun, and which is the predominant part of the game's entire community.

In terms of features and content, CoH 2 beats CoH, hands down, if of course we aren't counting CoH's many mods that adds a hell of a lot more than CoH 2. In that sector I count units, abilities, new features such as vaulting, truesight, ColdTech and so forth, oh and commanders.

But if I was to go into commanders specifically, CoH 2 was a down-grade in terms of commanders, the game used less when it could have used more in terms of abilities per commanders, and many commanders are useless (many Soviet and Wehrmacht commanders specifically).

The UI... eh, I prefer CoH's UI if I'm honest, I hate round corners, I prefer boxy corners, and the 3 map markers (Attack here, Defend Here, Capture here), but I like CoH 2's unit icons with the clocks for units that are idle under fire and so forth, but I prefer CoH's ability to hide the unit icons since sometimes there would be action on your Top right side of the screen or you'd have too many units and it would be a cluserfuck to choose.

And I also like CoH 2's quality of life changes, like the ability to queue capturing orders from the minimap, select multiple groups together, reinforce groups instead of only individual units like in CoH which is annoying, especially if you go PE and have lots of Panzer Grenadiers.

But that's about it, the graphics are too cartoony for me in CoH 2, same as Dawn of War 3, I much rather prefer CoH's more realistic, gritty and dark graphics, and also explosion effects.

Plus the design of the Armies is fucked up in CoH 2, it makes no sense at all that the Wehrmacht is stuck with wooden base structures while the OKW has mobile HQs and not concrete structures like in CoH, since they're basically a late war representation of the German Army, nobody mentioned anything about them being based on the Ardennes Offensive Wehrmacht before the Ardennes Assault expansion so I'll stick to Relic making them up out of thin air. But I like the design of the Brits, sort of, except for the mortar pit. It gives you more choices in terms of what you want to do with them than forcing you to dig in like in CoH. I just regret that Relic didn't go full out with it instead of half-assing it, Anvil and Hammer could have been so much more than what they are now. The USF are also a no sense Army, and the riflemen spam is due to the fact that you have really no other options since they're your basic infantry. CoH's design for the US Army is so much better if you ask me. And I like the simplicity of the Ostheer/Wehrmacht and Soviets, I just think that they're lacking the repair options of the WFA, forward retreat points and some heavier tanks (looking at Wehr/Ost specifically, OKW has all of the cool toys, the Elephant is low compared to the Jagdtiger).

GAME UI: 3/5
Easy to look at.

GRAPHICS: 3/5
For the time it came out, it was decent enough. Doesn't need to be that good since it's an RTS game.

VOICE ACTING: 3/5
Liked CoH1 voicing better but it's not too bad.

MECHANICS: 3/5
Taking cover, using abilities, naking units. Teching up, tier levels. It's all pretty standard of an RTS.

CAPPING: What?

RESOURCE SYSTEM: 3/5
Too forgiving compared to CoH1. Bad players can spam regardless of territory/squad loss and still win.

MENU UI: 3/5
Same as game UI.

SOCIAL INTERACTIVITY: 1/5
I don't talk to people and if I do they're usually pissed off.

MUSIC: 4/5
Good, but CoH1 had better music.

BALANCE: 3/5
This game still isn't balanced, but it's improved.

FACTION DESIGN: 2/5
All over the place.

ABILITIES: 2/5
There are useless abilities then there are TOO many abilities.

DLC MODEL: ???

THEMATICS/ CHARACTER: ???

CAMPAIGN: Didn't care to play it.

MODABILITY: Don't care.

BROADCAST-ABILITY: Don't broadcast or watch any.

RELEASE STATE:
It was broken on arrival.

ENTRY LEVEL: 3/5
Easy enough for casuals to pick up and play without learning the meta.

SKILL CEILNG: 4/5
Unless you've played this game for a long time... there are a lot of units and abilities to understand and new people aren't going to understand how to use these abilities right off the bat.

Overall: 3/5

Good game, but held back by the amount of bugs and exploits that were plaguing it. It wasn't the content, balance or design that put some people off. It was the fact that at times the game was just unplayable because of the amount of bugs surrounding it.

you forgot the 21st criterium:

snipers:

coh2: different types of snipers and sniper teams made it less frustrating 3 points
coh1: sniperspammerinoRNGroulettino -20 points



and the 22nd criterium:

2vs2 Meta

coh2: different approaches and diversity through commanders 3 points
CoH1: Repair Bunker City vs Calliope and Howitzer -25 points

good as Wehr or Brits from CoH1

terrible faction (brits)

WTF I just read?

CoH1/CoH2
GAME UI 4/4
CoH2: The same as CoH1, although it could be better if the portrait hide soldier's eye (make it feel unknown soldier lost in war) and basic statistic counter against each type. CoH1 also better when it come to vehicle critical display.
GRAPHICS 4/4
CoH2: Better graphic, but worse fx.
VOICE ACTING 5/4
CoH2: Has some good voiceline, but still inferior to CoH1 when it come to voice during battle or infiltration.
MECHANICS 4/5
CoH2: Better mechanic for vaulting, multi-reinforce, capture point
CAPPING 3/4
CoH2: I don't know why this criteria is included but area capping is suck when it come to booby trap mechanic or heavy weapon team capturing.
CoH1 population need capping. Really good mechanic to risk cutting off strategic point.
RESOURCE SYSTEM 5/2
CoH2: Remove all importance in each strategic point, which make team game become even more terrible.
MENU UI 4/3
CoH2: No lobby until very late, require 2 layers for just a skirmish game (and stable connection), hidden tutorial in menu bar.
SOCIAL INTERACTIVITY 1/1
What this? Does it's even needed if someone play single/campaign only? But both games are poor when it's come down to Relic support.
MUSIC 5/3
The CoH1's credit song, Panzer Elite's convoy theme, British's For King and Country.
CoH2 have some soviet red songs and only one song in WFA, which are good.
BALANCE 4/4
CoH1 is better for team game (almost nobody play Brit in CoH1, almost suicidial, PE fare a bit better).
CoH2 has good solo game AFAIK (doesn't care), but team game still suck with poor resource system.
FACTION DESIGN 5/4
CoH2 has near as good as first one, until last faction is aborted. More unit does not mean better faction design, though.
ABILITIES 4/4
Unless you count CoHO, then ability of both games are as good as each other. The only exception that CoH1 does not have bunches of duplicate abilities. And some unit does not have ability because they are good enough without it.
DLC MODEL 1/1
What?
THEMATICS/ CHARACTER 4/4
My stand point is each game has its own style of play. But unfortunately, DoW3 suck, which lead me think that how fine CoH2 was before Relic going downward.
CAMPAIGN 5/1
That's the ratio of how I repeat campaign between CoH1/CoH2.
MODABILITY 5/1
Yeah, I'm a modder (check out my signature). Even more, I have work as modder since DoW1, CoH1, DoW2, CoH2. So I know which one is better and which one is suck hard.
Prohibit people from using scar code and change model/sound file... Relic does know how to annoy modder overtime.
BROADCAST-ABILITY 1/5
I don't know why this is criteria when I never follow anyone's stream(except some tournament stream, but they use third party program).
RELEASE STATE 3/3
No comment, never play game since beginning.
ENTRY LEVEL ?/?
What's this?
SKILL CEILNG 5/4
CoH1 still encourage me to 1v1, CoH2 has too much micro management that I found hard even on 2v2 and above.