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Exact words of the text.

The Company sure is Lethal and my friends sure are dead

UPDATED 2022 REVIEW (Older review will be below this one)

At the time I first reviewed this game I would have easily given it an 8 or 9/10. SD2 has provided me with some of the most fun moments I've ever had playing strategy games and my friends and I have spent many nights playing team games against ourselves and others.

Unfortunately that was over a year ago right after the release of one of the best DLCs Eugen ever made: Burning Baltics. Since then new content has slowed into a stream of occasional 2 division packs, a whopping TWO MAPS, and the much hyped but very disappointing Italy and Drvar DLCs.

Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is still the top-notch Eugen RTS style, but when that gameplay consists of the same 10-15 divisions on the same 3-4 maps for hours and hours on end? It loses its shine and begins to become frankly unfun when experimenting with "non-meta" divisions is met with failure and harassment by other players.

The main issue facing SD2 is the incredibly stagnant map pool. Above I mentioned how in a year and a half we received only two new maps. Of these two, one is definitely top-tier and very fun to play and the other is...decent I'll say. Not good, not bad. Now this wouldn't be an issue if in that same period of time we had say 3 or 4 other maps releasing 1 at a time as free DLC or alongside big paid DLC like Tribute to Italy. But instead we've got 1 standout map accompanied by a slew of mediocre division updates and 1 ok map that the devs already had laying around in the files.

One last point I'll touch on before I wrap this up is that if you, the player, want to get into Steel Division 2 in 2022 you must be prepared for frustration. Frustration at a slow development cycle, frustration at a very fun but very difficult style of game, and frustration as the developers take months to release tiny updates and occasional DLC content.

Overall in 2022 I would have to give Steel Division 2 a 7/10.

Pros:
Fun and Challenging Multiplayer
Battle Scale
Good Performance/Optimization
Satisfying Gameplay Loop
Insane Customization
Lots of cheap or free DLC
Decent Balance

Cons:
Mediocre Tutorials
Mediocre Singleplayer
Stagnant Development
Occasional annoying bug or mechanic

While I would by no means call myself good at this game ( I mean have you seen the SD League players? ) I feel that I am decent enough and have seen pretty much everything Steel Division has to offer and will freely give my opinion an almost any feature in the game. If you are a new or prospective player considering buying then feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to respond in a reasonable time.

I will be leaving my older review below as many of the points I made there still apply to the game in 2022.



OLDER REVIEW (More detail oriented)

I have to start out by saying I love this game, it is so much better than the original Steel Division and has sucked me in and convinced me to buy all the DLC. However, there are a number of gripes I have with the current state of SD2.

**(These gripes are based off my personal experience both in public and private MP sessions.)**

MAPS

Too often maps are the deciding factor in how a game will go and if you end up on the worse side or with the wrong deck then you start the match at a disadvantage. Also of note is the map pool, there have been no new maps in several months other than Tannenberg which is a 4v4/10v10 map. The 1v1-3v3 pool is limited and randomized selection almost always picks the same two or three maps. A map creator or even a couple new maps with each major update would be amazing for this games longevity.

AA

Next, the AA buff, or How I Learned to Stop Playing Air Decks and Love Heavy Flak. In the current state of the game, 2-3 heavy AA pieces will shut down almost any air wave a non air deck can muster. Even when attempting to manually space out planes and bring them in from other angles, heavy flak tracks and spots so quickly and has such a massive amount of suppression that you are likely to lose several planes. I do think air decks before this change were extremely powerful, but the scales have been tipped too far and now decks that need to rely on air often find themselves on the back foot when facing any decent AA presence.

SUPPRESSION

Buckle up because I have a lot to say about this. Relatively recently, there was a change to how suppression worked with infantry/support weapons both dealing and receiving massively increased amounts of suppression. While an interesting change to the gameplay and overall not a bad change, I believe that much like the AA buff, it went too far. German MG teams are incredibly powerful now as they have an insane amount of both damage and suppression, even the squad based ones (which we will return to later). On the other side, Russian MGs in general are awful and in some cases will lose at long range against normal german squad MGs. The only exception in my experience is the Doushka team as the .50 cal puts out an insane amount of suppression. The change has also made sapper/engineer units incredibly important. Where before they were good but not necessarily vital units, they are now the end all be all when it comes to forest fighting. Oftentimes, I will see engineer units throw satchels at enemy engineers only for both units to either die or be suppressed immediately. This has turned what was a useful and fun type of unit into a very strong gimmick that can only be countered by itself or other gimmicks like flamethrower troops.

SQUAD MGs AND SQUAD "MGs"

Another relatively recent change, MGs now have a minimum range of 100 meters. Combined with this was the reclassification of most Western Allied (W.A.) squad MGs (Bren, B.A.R., etc.) into auto rifles, effectively having most W.A. squads dodge the CQC nerf. This nerf applies to almost every other faction in the game, meaning standard W.A. infantry is now more effective at close range than almost every other standard infantry in the game. However, there are some positives to come out of this change, such as infantry now standing a much better chance against armored vehicles at close range and dedicated close range infantry being much stronger and less situational.

THE .50 CAL DILEMMA

With the release of Burning Baltics (the most recent major DLC) .50 cal MGs and others of similar caliber were incredibly overpowered. Before the MG rebalance and range nerf, decks that had American half tracks or tanks were basically impervious to air assault as the .50 cals blot out the sky. The devs quickly caught on to this and released a patch nerfing the overall range of .50 cals as well as they're air attack range. Unfortunately, dedicated AA trucks which used .50 cal or similar were also caught up in this which makes them effectively useless.

I love the game so far especially coming from Deserts of Kharak. I'm trying to play the games chronologically (lorewise) so I started playing remastered Homeworld 1. However I really messed up on the second mission by capturing everything and couldnt progress through the third because there were 4 frigates and I didnt have any interceptors. I was like "well crap" and restarted mission two. About halfway through I recieved an error window saying "Access Violation." This happens everytime I try to play the mission and since I reset the campaign I can't skip ahead. I payed for the bundle so I don't understand what could be going wrong. I checked the game files with steam's built in system and the files are fine. If this is a common bug please let me know. The game is beautiful and I love it and although I have some gripes with controls and camera movement, I'm sure thats just because I just started playing.

9/10 for Great graphics, Fun Gameplay, and In-Depth Tutorial (But game-breaking error: -1)

FYI: I'm reinstalling to see if it fixes the issue; will update post with results.

FYI2: I'm a bit of an idiot and never got around to updating the actual review.

Had the bug fixed with the help of Camerons101 in the comments (Thanks btw) Recently got back into this in 2022 and am having a good time relearning the game.

Updated Score of 10/10