StarCraft was my favorite RTS until Company of Heroes was my favorite RTS until StarCraft II was my favorite RTS until Company of Heroes Online didn't become my favorite RTS but rather got close 2nd place. And now that that introduction is over, I say: Relic (the developer who made this game) is unleashing on we non-Asia RTSers this MMORPG after a year of testing in the East. Will this game blitzkrieg its way into our hearts? Or will it lick balls?
(Random animation of children.)
If you haven't played Company of Heroes before, then you were really smart, because Company of Heroes Online is FREE. It features basically the same graphics as that game, and it comes with the great Company of Heroes singleplayer campaign. So you should play it now! Stop reading!
Uh I mean basically, you were smart to see into the future and say, "This almost-perfect, $50.00, man-killing game will be free and not incredibly annoying to play online (I'll explain your reasoning later)." CoH Online even includes a non-existence of the balance-destroying Panzer Elite and Brits (it only comes with the Americans and the Wehrmacht) and thus, the CoH multiplayer experience no longer feels like pulling out your own teeth, especially because people have better PCs now; people lag out and drop out a lot less now; Relic Online may be more sophisticated this time. (This is not a Games For Windows game, by the way).
I mention the multiplayer so much because it's CoH Online's meat and replay value.
Like most good games, CoH Online is built on its gameplay, which is the same gameplay (and same multiplayer maps) as the previous Company of Heroes-es. Every multiplayer match begins with you and your enemy on opposite sides of a map; everyone begins with a headquarters building and a builder unit (two or three manly men) who can do many a thing, like build other buildings, lay barbwire and tank traps and mines, garrison civilian buildings, capture sectors. Capturing sectors is the way by which you increase your resource-getting rate (captured points passively augment your resources). And sectors are, essentially, parts of the map, and in the middle of each sector is one of the three types of capture points: a manpower one, a munitions one, or a gas one. All infantry can capture these points. And the manpower ones are the fastest to capture and recapture (and uncapture), while the gas ones take the longest. The catch is: your opponents can capture your points from you as you can theirs; and the sectors you've captured must be connected by another sector(s) to your base in order to augment your resources, which means intense battling. This catch can be upped a notch if you play a "critical points" match, matches in which there are three critical points that can be captured, but instead of yeilding resources, tick down, from 500 to zero, the points of your opponent. (The other way to win is to annihilate your opponent's buildings).
And there are many other catches/cool war things that make the games even more interesting, such as: units can use cover (light and heavy cover); units can fight from buildings; units have special abilities like mine-laying and grenage-throwing and barbwire-laying; you can use armored cars, tanks, off-map and on-map artillery, King Tiger Tanks, Tiger Tanks, German tanks, etc. All these make for intense, non-stop, unit-on-unit, vehicle-on-vehicle action, with realistic graphics (a mid-range PC is needed for massive battles with ultra settings), great sound effects, AI soldiers who crawl to cover and say useful things like "TIGER!" when they are being attacked by a tiger, and blargh!
It's basically the 2006 game, except now you can bring hero units and special abilities and stat-boosting things into a battle, if you've earned them, or bought them (with or without real cash). You level up your hero units in battles (and they can level up five times, and stay leveled up from one battle to the next), and you yourself can level up; the higher you are, the better and more expensive the RPG stuff you can wield. And leveling up allows you to increase the efficacy of your special abilities as well as get new ones. [Note: I paid 10 dollars for 1,000 CoH points; I've found that, with battles potentially garnering little XP and stat-building progress, it's best to spend your real money on the things that (1) you can only get with real money and (2) on the shwag that doesn't cost much.]
Unlike CoH, in CoH Online, you gain XP for your commander from game to game. I'll explain:
When you start up CoH Online, you select a commander from six commanders. Three German. Three American. All sorta-lively animated in 3D. Every commander wears a different sort of dress but, in their 3D, living portrait, share the same backdrop as their fellow commanders. The German commanders, with the exception of the Blitzkrieg commander, wear either a horse-riding uniform (the Terror Commander) or a wine-drinking contest uniform (Defense Commander). These Germans stand behind a bunker under overcast skies next to a French beach that looks like it could use invading. Meanwhile the American commanders wear homely rags (except the airborne commander, who wears a mohawk, unless you tell him not to, although I haven't tried). These guys stand on the set of Bambi. You can customize your commander's head and skin a little. My Blitzkrieg commander is level 24, and his name is "DeathFart."
When you play the biggest part of CoH Online, the play-with-people-you-don't-know "Rewards" games, which give you extra XP and "requisition" (the stuff you use to heal your heroes and restore your depleted stat-intensifyers), when you play these games, you can't help comparing CoH Online to StarCraft II. It's because, whenever you search for a Rewards game, the Relic cloud looks for the player closest to your skill level (somehow). It can take from zero to five minutes, and when a Rewards match-up is predetermined by the Relic cloud to be unfair, the lesser team or player gets more XP and stuff than their opponents do (and the game tells you to stay alive as long as you can before the match begins). This is actually an ingenious way to keep the few existing CoH players from feeling bored or frustrated from winning and losing too much.
It's easy to compare CoH Online to StarCraft II. These games represent the best of the genre. They both have their minimaps on the bottom left and their interface, unit-directions buttons on the right. They both require lots of micro. They both feature unit caps. And more! Both games are so well-designed that I can't really say one is better than the other; at least, once CoH Online gets its replay system working ... Well actually there is one thing: try to avoid going into CoH Online thinking that you will be playing it because of how much of an e-sport it is (and not just because going into battles with or without your heroes and stuff basically wrecks balance). Even though you could just set up a game with someone who is about your skill level, and agree not to bring heroes and stuff, nothing nullifies the fair game-destroyer that is this: CoH cannot produce fair matches because it uses chance-based systems (heavy cover, for example, lowers the chance of a unit of getting hit by most enemy fire by 50%). This is a game where luck is important. StarCraft II doesn't do so much chance. In that game you see things like, "6 damage," and "3 defense."
Personally, I find StarCraft II more fun than the Company of Heroes games. But with Company of Heroes Online around, SCII won't be the only RTS I play.
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