Review of Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor

I have always enjoyed the CoH series and this expansion pack in a sense gives us a little bit more of what they wanted and that's being able to get up close and personal with some of the major battles that has been fought in the game. I like the idea that Relic has moved this game from more of the same to a more tactical RTS. But it's not enough...read on and see what I am talking about.

This game is reminiscent to the recently released Men of War but prettier and contains much less micromanaging.

I do like the idea that you still accumulate resources and use them to upgrade your men based on the amount of kills incurred. Also some of your solders get new abilities based on the upgrades like calling in artillery strikes or healing your solders. Also I like that this game is a bit more fast paced than Men of War where ONE scenario could take a long time to play with sometimes overwhelming odds only problem is, sometimes it feels arcadey.

The controls are sometimes a bit touch and go as the direct firing system you have to learn to manage and switch over to access another squad without taking the present unit off of an objective.

One of my complaints right now is that sometimes the enemy AI doesn't respond to attacks and just sit there while fired on or sometimes they retreat from my unitsfor no reason or that some kills on enemy armor is insanely quick.

But my biggest gripe of them all is there are ONLY 9 MISSIONS total?? (and it doesn't help that I am 5 missions in!) Ok...wait you mean to tell me this is called a 'standalone game' in which you don't need the original games and you ONLY OFFER 9 missions that you can breeze thru in a day or 2 Relic?

This is not a good deal unless the people who want to play this game online don't care and unfortunately I am not one of them. This wouldn't fly as even a seperate solo game!

Relic, listen closely...when you produce a game like this for the single players out there, 9 missions is NOT ENOUGH. Try doubling that number or better yet, go back and let players use old maps from the originals to play in the new mode, don't cheat us by giving a thirsty person a sip and steal 30 bucks for it!

Worse yet you don't get any new countries such as Russia, Japan or Italy to tangle with and the new units just don't feel all that special.

I will be the first to admit that I fell for the okey doke because I liked the other 2 games but this felt like an afterthought and not worth a 30 dollar purchase. SO be warned.

Heck take notes from the little guys from Russia that produced Men of War!!!

You guys dropped the ball on this one!



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