Epic combat, great graphics; More exciting than most shooters.
The graphics are very nice. Even today, they hold up well. They're very detailed, the textures are sharp. Models are very well done, especially vehicles. The effects and shadow work is amazing. The one weakness is animation. While everything looks great, and soldiers realistically take cover, their weapons have almost no recoil. It can be a little weird seeing a guy fire a huge rifle and not shift at all. Still, it looks astounding and the size of the battles can be awe-inspiring. Unfortunately there are performance issues. When stuff blows up expect single-digits. The latest patch (v1.04.1a) fixes this, but still expect some slowdown.
The sound design is solid. All of the weapons sound familiar, which isn't a bad thing but you'll swear you've heard them before. The music is decent, though it borders on corny. The voice-acting is terrible. I laughed when my Russian commander had a British accent. I heard that Soldiers has the same problem.
Gameplay is rather fun, but limited. It's rather arcade-like, and it seems very hard for your men to die. They can't get ran over, blown up, shot in the face and all that seems to happen is they lose a little bit of health or get knocked out. This makes the game too easy. There is a mode called "tactics mode" which alleviates this issue.
The scale also seems very small. While all of the battles are massive with tons of troops and tanks, you only control a small half-squad. Sometimes you have even less than that, maybe as many as 2-3 men. I would've preferred to have had control over many more men (there are a few missions which allow you to do this, but not many 1 or 2)
Those two gripes aside everything controls well. The interface is a big improvement from Silent Heroes (the same interface as in Soldiers). There are some quirks, but all together well done. The squad system and cover works well, but in a game with as small amount of controllable troops it's superfluous and unnecessary. The direct control feature is a nice plus, but you'll mostly use it to compensate for AI deficiencies.
The game is quite long. Each faction has two campaigns, one frontline-oriented, and one stealth-oriented. After beating both you unlock a super mission, just a massive mission larger than those before. These super missions are quite fun, though I have yet to beat the Reichstag one. There is no skirmish mode, which is disappointing though there is multiplayer. I cannot comment on that because I am a strict SP gamer. So you get quite a bit of game for your buck. There's quite a few mods out, and I would highly recommend "Commanders of War" It increases the size of the battles, adds meatier sound fx, fixes the invincible soldier issue, tweaks the weapons, pretty much overhauls and fixes everything. It's quite easy to mod on your own, and if you want you can swap out the music for something more epic.
The game was well worth the time and investment to beat it. The combat in it was more exciting than most shooters, and some of the stealth mission required good tactics. The graphics are pleasing, and the sound design not too bad either. You should be able to find it for cheap online. Overall it's a great game, though I hear Soldiers is superior.