Hands down, my favorite RTS of all time.

The graphics and sound design are top notch. Love the way the game looks and sounds, and watching the action is a real treat. All the bombs, planes, machine guns, grenades, artillery, light to massive vehicles, and the destructible nature of the maps, all combine beautifully to create dynamic battle scenarios in each match that are just fantastic to behold.. the game just feels awesome to play.

I think that the reason why I love COH2 so much is because it doesn't rely on twitch reflexes and micro as much as an RTS like Starcraft 2, for example. I think winning has a lot to do with patience, positioning, and making correct decisions on what action or objective to prioritize at any given moment.

Deciding which points to capture and in what order, giving up positions in order to win key engagements, knowing when to commit to risky dives, sometimes sacrificing a unit or squad in order to kill a key piece in the enemy army. Knowing when to lose map control in order to save resources for an important unit or playing desperate defense while setting up that ONE KEY BATTLE that turns the tide and flips the balance of power on the map. These big moments are thrilling and it is incredibly satisfying when you pull off a game changing push that takes you from being completely dominated to suddenly being in a position to hold and win.

Game allows you to save a replay of the last game you play or spectate, which gives you an opportunity to review timings, mistakes, positioning, etc. great tool for improving your skills and strategies. Nice little spectator feature that lets you just pick a game to watch, either with fog of war off and free cam or following a players camera view, allowing you to learn from other people's games or see the first person view of pro players.

The 5 armies are different enough from each other and I get a kick out of playing all of them and slowly improving my understanding of each army's strengths and weaknesses. To further add variety to the game, each army has several commanders to choose from that allow you to deploy special abilities, passives, or commander specific units to the battlefield. I really like switching commanders out, thinking about the loadout I'm going to use with each army, thinking of which commanders are going to be effective against different strategies my opponents might use, which commander works well in each map. All of these can be purchased with the in-game currency you can earn just by playing matches. No need to spend real money, but that's an option too, if you want.

I play primarily 1v1's and I feel like there is good balance between the factions in this mode. You can play 2v2's up to 4v4's and the scale and chaos of an 8 man war really captures what must have been the insanity of WWII.

You might have trouble getting victories in online competitive when you are first starting out, and the gap between the good players and the bad players can seem extreme, but with some practice, it doesn't take long to start to understand the finer points of the game.

If the competitive aspect of the game does not appeal to you, you can play skirmishes against a.i. opponents, or try the many mission like solo or co-op scenarios on offer. On top of that, you got a really nice campaign as well. I just finished the main campaign after clocking in over 1000 hours just playing multiplayer.

The Soviet story campaign was very good, pretty replayable, and the USF campaign seems to be even better with some interesting new mechanics being introduced that make it even more engaging and replayable.

I can't say enough nice things about Company of Heroes 2. I hope more players come and give it a try!

EDIT: the Ardennes Assault campaign is an "iron man" style 1 save per run campaign.

It could be fantastic.. Except for being totally bug ridden.. There is no indication that any of these gameplay significant bugs are ever going to be fixed.

There was probably a time when it was working as intended, but later updates to the game could have maybe affected the Ardennes campaign.