Recent reviews by MochaRaf

What to say...

Well, let me start out by saying I have been a hardcore fan of the CoH series since the first installment. This is the first game I have pre-ordered in years, and the premium edition at that. Why? Because CoH2 has been one of the few games that my friends and I have been playing consistently over the years, therefore I wanted to show my support to the developers and make an exception to my no pre-order rule.

Having played 6 hours of the game (at the time of the review), I am not sure if I would do it over again if given the chance. The game still has that "unfinished / early access" vibe to it. While there are quite a few new additions to be excited about, IMO it's not worth paying full price at this point. I recommend people continue playing CoH2 and wait for the game to go on sale, by then they should have hopefully made some fixes.

Here are some examples that I experienced while playing as the DAK (in MP) which makes the game seem unfinished:
-Certain German vehicles (predominantly the 250 light carrier), sometimes spawn shaking uncontrollably until it's destruction (visible to all players in the match).
-Certain units (such as the MG gunner on the 250 light carrier) have texture glitches where the hat/helmet constantly disappears and reappears.
-The towed cannone da 105/28 field howitzer refused to fire for me, when directed to fire at enemy targets it would face them and shout they are firing but would in fact never fire (even at enemies pinned by MG fire that couldn't escape).
-The building construction templates (e.g. Light Support Kompanie, Mechanized Kompanie, Panzerarmee Kommand) are horrendous to place. There always seems to be plenty of free space in the spawn area where they could fit, but it won't let you build them in those spots (even though the entire template fits into the area without any issues).
-The game will sometimes play random low quality sound bites, e.g. I've had stationary 250 light carriers making sounds that resemble someone shoveling dirt (but stop as soon as the vehicle starts moving).
-Vehicle behavior is bizarre at times. Instead of going in a straight line to a point they've been ordered, vehicles will sometimes arch to the left and then to the right and circle around to the point. This gets quite annoying when trying to support infantry capturing a point with vehicles, but instead having to watch the vehicles exhibit a performative dance rather than following a simple waypoint.
-More bizarre vehicle behavior, my tanks have no issue rolling over my own defense structures (e.g. barbed wire) but for some reason at times insistent on going around civilian structures (e.g. wooden fences).
-The banter from the DAK is extremely underwhelming, after listening to a live stream from the devs and hearing about all the work they put into the new audio recordings it seems like they put the least amount of work into the DAK faction units.
-The UI seems rather big and awkward, definitely prefer the CoH2 UI. In addition, it doesn't give you the same zoom freedom as the previous installment.
-The game features no multiplayer progression, no XP or rewards to look forward to after playing a hard-fought battle online.

Lastly, I would like to mention that the developers decided to launch the game with only 3 3vs3 maps and 2 4vs4 maps for multiplayer. Not a very big selection for launch map options if you have a lot of friends who want to play the game with you.

The game can definitely be fun, especially playing with friends. But as mentioned at the beginning of my review, at this point in time the game just feels unfinished and probably worth waiting for some fixes or at least a sale.

I will keep this short and sweet, this game is absolutely stunning in every way.

• Great story? Check.
  
• Adorable characters? Check.
  
• Stunning visuals? Check.
  
• Hilarious mini-games? Check.
  
• Teamwork dependent tasks? Check.

This game is an absolute masterpiece and definitely one of the best games (definitely best Co-Op game) I have played in quite some time, the game just kept getting better as the story progressed. I highly recommend finishing all responsibilities/daily tasks prior to starting this game, as you will undoubtedly want to finish it in a single go. As for the pricing, the game is on sale quite often but even at full price every cent is worth it (especially since the game has the "Friend's Pass" which only requires one person to actually purchase the game).

Oh and before I forget, make sure you find a trustworthy Co-Op partner as your lives are quite literally depending on each other which opens up endless opportunities to mess with one another.

It would appear that I am part of a small minority of steam users who are not suffering from random crashes and are able to run the game at max settings without any performance issues. I have to admit that the scenery is quite beautiful, but unfortunately beauty isn't everything. At the time of this review I have clocked about 1.6 hours on steam, and I am seriously debating at requesting a refund and purchasing this game again when they've fixed all the issues.

Now to get to my issues:

I started the download a few minutes after 1 PM EST, which lasted a mere few minutes before being completed.

I launched the game and was immediately thrown into action as soon as the splash screens ended. I received a neat notification that I had discovered the planet I was stranded on. My first instinct was to simply walk around and look at the gorgeous scenery of my newly discovered planet when a pop up notification alt-tabbed me out of the game. I tried to alt-tab back in, but was unable to resume my gameplay. Using the task-manager I performed the "End Task" action and simply restarted the game.

Upon re-launch of the game I was thrown onto a completely new planet, once again receiving the notification that I was the person to discover this planet. Since I hadn't really done anything with my initial launch I simply shrugged it off and started playing again. After an hour and 25 minutes of gameplay, I had explored a good amount of the planet's surface while simultaneously getting credit for having discovered a ton of species and fauna I had come across (One of the flying species required me to climb a mountain and wait for it to fly by in order to scan it). I could track my exploration progress by pressing the ESC button, which showed me how much of the planet I had discovered as well as my status as being "online". At this point I alt-tabbed (unfortunately I had forgotten what happened earlier), and was unable to tab back into the game. The only option I had at this point was to force close the program and re-launch the game for a third time. At this point I was a bit worried since I wasn't sure that I would spawn back onto the same planet, as my earlier experience with restarting the game threw me onto a completely new planet. Luckily, I was not thrown onto a new planet but instead was spawned back on the same planet. However, all my progress had been lost. To ensure that this wasn't a simple connection glitch, I decided to "Quit to Desktop" and launch the game again. Unfortunately, even after restarting the game and re-connecting to the online servers my past progress did not show up in-game.

I cannot stress how frustrating it is to lose all the progress I had made because the alt-tabbing feature doesn't work properly. It said that I was connected to the online servers my entire game play session, so I am unable to understand why my exploration progress was lost to begin with. Does it not upload our discoveries to the online server upon us getting credit for them?

I feel like a player losing all their progress is a potential risk in playing an early access game, but I honestly did not expect to have such an error occur in a finished product that was pushed back twice before being released.

At the current state of the game I cannot recommend it, but if you do decide to try it out be sure to stay away from the alt-tab buttons and manually save your game by jumping into the cockpit of your ship.

---Updated Review---
A friend recently recommended that I re-install the game and check out all the new content added to the game. I have to say, I am completely blown away at what the game has turned into! It feels like an entirely different game from the last time I played it, which technically it is since so many features have been added that didn't exist when the game came out. While there are still some issues while playing multiplayer, the overall experience is amazing and it's clear that the developers are very passionate about their work (it really shows!). I feel like the minimum I could do to show my appreciation of their incredible work over the years is to update my review, if you're into open world survival/exploration type games I highly recommend you check this game out. If you already own the game but haven't played in a few years, re-install the game and check out all the new content that has been added!

I have decided not to remove my original review to reflect my experience during launch, other game developers can definitely learn a lesson that even with a very rocky start you can still make a gem of a game.