It's not Company of Heroes, but then again...
Then again, in fairness to Stormregion, I decided to keep an open mind while writing this review and rather compare Rush for Berlin to other contemporary games in the same genre such as Blitzkrieg II and perhaps even the Sudden Strike series.
Gameplay:
After having spent quite a few hours with the game, I must admit that the gameplay is pretty tough, focussing very much on up-front strategic planning in each mission rather than just taking the "guns blazing" approach while constantly calling for new resources where those on the map have expired.
In a sense, this may annoy some RTS players that enjoyed Blitzkrieg II for example, where the ability to get reserves on demand makes that game a bit more arcade-like in my opinion.
Instead, Rush for Berlin requires quite a bit of up-front planning and thinking before rushing into (excuse the pun) any mission.
The main issue here, is that resources such as ammo, etc. can only be replenished once key strategic objectives and buildings have been taken and are kept, otherwise your mission is doomed to fail. While other buildings can be constructed that may be used to create armoured vehicles, etc., it's clear that Rush for Berlin focuses primarilly on achieving strategic objectives as quickly as possible. In a sense, this is actually not that much different than Company of Heroes, come to think of it.
This brings another key dynamic to the gameplay, since time is a very valuable resource in this game, with most missions measured in available time to achieve this mission to earn any medals or bonusses, etc. Games like Blitzkrieg II and Sudden Strike simply don't have this concept embedded.
The user interface is pretty good, once you spend a while getting used to all the bubbles hanging off the two main interface components at the bottom of the screen. At first they seem somewhat confusing, especially in the heat of battle, but once the learning-curve is over, they do actually work quite well.
Graphics:
Rush for Berlin actually has very good graphics and certainly better than the two other games I mentioned earlier, although we don't really know what Sudden Strike III will look like yet, even though a Demo has already been released.
Weather effects are superb and there is a lot of attention to detail in terms of model accuracy and texturing.
I use a NVidia-based 7800 GTX graphics card with 512 MB RAM on board, and I suspect that some of the lower-end cards will battle somewhat to keep up with this game, possibly making the entire experience a lot less entertaining due to the low graphics settings needed to effectively play the game. This may be somewhat of a drawback for a lot of potential players out there, since I guess a 6800 or equivalent will be almost the bare minimum needed to get any respectable graphics out of this game.
Sound:
The sound is actually superb and it's quite refreshing to hear soldiers speak their native tongue, instead of using English accents resembling some low-budget movie cliche.
Weapon and special effects sounds are also great.
Value:
Value depends entirely on what you expected to get when buying this game.
If you expected a game like Age of Empires or Rise of Nations that focuses quite a lot on random skirmishes and a lot of resource gathering, researching, etc. then this is fairly low Value as far as I am concerned.
Then again, if you enjoy some real in-depth strategy and planing in a game, then I would give it a fairly good Value rating.
The only real problem I have with the game, is inherent in a lot of RTS games in WWII genre, in that the game doesn't really have any form of skirmish ability if you feel like just hacking away at a random scenario for example.
This is where both Blitzkrieg and Sudden Strike have a bit of an edge, in the sense that they at least included some form of "level editor" in their releases to compensate for "modders" like myself who like to tinker with the creation of historically correct battle scenarios, etc.
It would be great if Stormregion would consider some work in this area and perhaps release some form of map editor for us to add some new stuff to the game.
Who Should Buy It:
Anyone who enjoyed similar WWII genre games like Blitzkrieg I and II and possibly Sudden Strike and some others that come to mind, has a pretty up-market graphics card installed and doesn't mind spending a few hours to come to grips with rather complex strategic planning as part of the gameplay.
Who Shouldn't Bother:
Obviously anyone who's more into first-person shooter games or games that have a lot more focus on resource gathering, research and all that other stuff instead of just plain war logistics and planning.
Oh yes, any anyone who has a fairly low-end graphics card installed, since you really won't get much joy out of the visual aspects of the game.