(Sorry if this is more appropriate in COH2 Central, the forums for some reason wanted me to use a subforum specifically).
So yeah, like I said in in my intro thread, I'd like to share my thoughts on CoH2, now that I finally have a PC that can run it in any capacity and, full disclosure, I got it during the official giveaway on Steam late last year. Also, this is based on ~2 hours' worth of skirmishes, and unlike with other games, I didn't start with the singleplayer campaign. We are talking of the base game, no DLC whatsoever.
I like to have a more varied RTS "diet", so I already have experience with the likes of the Command & Conquer series, Dawn of War 1, WarCraft III, Age of Empires/Mythology series, Star Trek: Armada 1 and 2, a bit of StarCraft I and II... all the good stuff, so I'm talking from the perspective of someone who played all those, but had limited exposure to CoH.
What I like:
* the setting - finally, a major WWII game that doesn't feature Americans masturbating over D-Day that is wrongly presented as the start of the war somehow. Also, I have a soft spot for snow, since I live in the Med and I see it once every 5-6 years, and for a very short time. I've still yet to fully investigate on why exactly people in the whole CIS wanted this game banned, but I'm happy to play as the Soviets.
* the new mechanics - so not only did they not break the cover mechanic from Dawn of War 1 and Company of Heroes 1, but they also allowed infantry to jump over walls and trees, which does take a special command to do from my limited experience and therefore extra time, but it's so cool to have. Also, whoever made the blizzard mechanic, if you're reading this, you're the MVP. (And my overly cynical self is not that easy to impress 
).
* handling of singleplayer content - even while offline, skirmishes are accessible. In this day and age of pointless always-online-ness, that sadly no longer goes without saying, but at least someone thinks with their heads.
* visuals - apart from the game looking outright astonishing from the details perspective, it also goes into such details as disabling non-historical skins, which I find commendable. Most of the interface is also top-notch, though the buildings and defences menus could've been merged.
* the character - more so than I've seen of CoH1, units have a lot of sass in their responses. A little thing, I know, but a little cheese never hurt anyone.
What I hate:
* starting content vs. DLC - why has it become an unwritten rule to strip content that can easily fit in the base game or a singular meaty expansion pack and make ten billion DLCs out of it? The original CoH may have had only two factions at launch, but why did CoH2 also have to? And why are even commanders that come with the DLC... DLC in themselves? And what is skin DLC doing in an RTS?
* loot - same as lootboxes in other games, fuck that shit with a pneumatic drill right up the arse.
* map variety - in older RTSes, you'd get a lot of default maps without having to rely on expansions and fan-made content. Here, you just get a truly pathetic map count, and to add fuel to the fire, the interface also shows the maps for the DLC you didn't buy (just grayed out), so the base game is really thin in this aspect.
* bases - an RTS without bases is not an RTS. As with CoH1, bases seem to be pretty much ignored after the first 2-3 minutes completely except for making an odd unit or two if your micro sucks and you lose troops.
* LAN - Relic, you old sheep! Not only did you gut LAN in the post-GameSpy versions of Dawn of War 1 and split Company of Heroes 1 into two versions, but you also gave the middle finger to the only way one can play multiplayer when the official servers go down! Sure, nobody expects Steamworks to croak in the foreseeable future, but is future-proofing so much to ask?
* tutorial - instead of always the same barely-bare-bones tutorial for people who never played an RTS, I expected something that'd tell me something about mechanics unique to the game, like the commanders and their support powers.
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As a summary feeling, I love Company of Heroes 2, but I also hate it. I believe it has the most polished RTS gameplay in many, many years (alongside StarCraft II), but I'm also disgusted by the way it's monetized. I need help, because I don't know which voice to listen to.
What I wonder is:
- whether there is any number of fellow noobs online who also aren't casual-minded turtlers, but also not toxic nutjobs
- are the DLC factions worth it even on sales
- how many people still care for and play CoH1
First off, have some respect for the men and women that gave their lives then just so you can even comment right now behind the safety and comfort of your computer, wherever they came from, and never forget that not the Soviets but the Canadians are every year celebrated by your country.
I agree about the mechanics, there are also a lot more changes that make more sense like tanks requiring infantry in order to dig in instead of just going forward and backwards to dig themselves in like in the original game, as well as units coming off map (or at least used to for the infantry) and the blizzard effects that were removed for one reason or another.
Single Player content was only handled well for the Ardennes Assault campaign in my opinion, some Theater of War missions felt half assed or too hard without a competent teammate and were ultimately abandoned in the end, same as the Soviet Campaign. Campaigns in CoH were handled much better and the stories mattered as much as the gameplay there as well if you ask me, you could actually feel the struggle of the characters.
Snow was however handled pretty well in terms of visuals in CoH as well, you can play the mod Battle of the Bulge or Europe at War's Ardennes Offensive front to see what I mean, it was basically replaced rain really but still very well and immersively done, I had the feeling I was actually Easy Company trying to take Foy at one point even.
The Character you're talking about is only present for a few units as I've noticed, such as the Infantry Section for example, it's actually mostly for the British that I've noticed it, the German and American units in CoH had a lot more character, you can even google it if you don't believe me and you will find what I'm talking about in YouTube, the first game also had a lot more memorable quotes. Matter of fact here's a video that I often return to to have a nice laugh once in a while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mwJaQCf6to
Here's a longer video of only Axis quotes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3azxIAWJdh0
So far I've only found one such video for CoH 2 that's about 3 minutes long, if I am not mistake there was another such video but it got deleted for some reason.
But I will admit that people have for some reason uploaded more speech videos of CoH2 units than CoH units for some reason.
Now about your negative points:
The only such content are the commanders and was the Theater of War mission packs but now with the improve Spoils of War system commanders, skins, bulletins and whatever else, so you only need to buy the ToW mission packs, AA campaign and Armies themselves if you really want to, the rest of the stuff is fully earnable, sure, with a lot of grinding, but still better than the old system. I would even go a step further and make the original Soviet campaign a DLC, cut the 2 Eastern Front Armies in 2 same as the Western Front Ones and there you go, if they even go ahead and like make the game Free to Play that would be even more perfect if you ask me, then all of this DLC would be actually worth it.
I can't comment about match maker but they did the right thing by adding Workshop support for maps for both games, most recently I went back to CoH and I played for about 2 weeks or 200 hours all on custom maps.
I don't know what you mean by bases but I think the base building in CoH was enough, in DoW2 it was even more minimized and I would say that CoH2 is a sort of mix between the 2 really since for the USF and UKF you're basically researching tiers like in DoW2 but with a visual representation.
LAN... yeah I don't know about that to be honest, I don't think any games after 2009 have that but I can't be 100% sure about that.
I remember some sort of tutorial mission but you're right about it, compared to CoH, CoH2 really lacked such an in-depth thing, the tutorials in CoH really went into the mechanics, at least for the US Army, Brits and PE, I don't know why the Wehrmacht got left out of having their own tutorials or campaigns, but they said that they received some flak for the PE campaign from probably Soviet fanboys and liberals, God forbid there be any other viewpoint other than the victor's one.
But I still think that CoH could be added to with an Italian Front expansion (which they planned but instead did CoH Online) and an Eastern Front one (just make the mod official) and with some mod support on the workshop it would be perfect, and more or less could achieve more than CoH2 in it's current limited modding and now also end of support state.
And Yugoslav partisans, whom we actually celebrate on 22nd June every year, were very much sided with the Soviets until the Tito-Stalin split of '47 so there 
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