an expansion pack for Soldiers: Heroes of WWII
FOW is basically an updated version of S:Howw2 however it's not a vast improvement. Gameplay is something of a cross between Commandos and a typical larger-scale WWII RTS. So, for fans of Soldiers: Heroes of WWII, you don't need to worry about this review, just go straight ahead and buy it.
The good part of this game is that almost all of the fun things about S:Howw2 are ready here. But the bad part is that the gameplay still has old issues and it seems developers didn't try to fix them. Graphics and gamplay are not very different with S:Howw2. One of the new features is groups control. Your soldiers can be formed into groups with a leader to make man. There are 3 campaigns with 11 missions in each(actually it is 8 missions because 3 of them are tutorial and repeat in all campaigns). Missions are too long with big maps and lots of objectives & TONES of enemies.
Like S:Howw2, You can control the soldier directly. Direct control is a creative and useful feature that allows you to take direct control of a unit. Another good thing is that you can walk around on the battlefield and look for more weapons and ammo. This is very helpful if you are low on ammo or if you want more machine guns or grenades. You can pick up/use almost anything including enemy vehicles and guns as long as they are not broken. Broken tracks on a tank is repairable if you have a repair kit. Cover is very important and so is a very well placed anti-tank grenade. Grenades work well with AI using them well against you.
The game is excellent if you are looking for a challenge because some missions can be hard. You should also save games frequently as you might lose half your force in one unexpected attack.
And the reason that I don't give more than 7 score to this game is some bugs and issues:
1)Some controls & menus are a bit vague. Briefing & mission description also are a bit confusing.
2)When in group mode, some soldiers don't follow your orders, so you have to re-issue them. Its one of the reasons I almost always preferred to fight with 1 guy.
3)I think missions are unbalanced, some missions are too easy and some of them(most of them) are very hard.
4)Characters are very simple and without enough details. Voice acting is very poor.
5)The game constantly suffers from low fps whenever there are more then infantry units on the map, especially when tanks enter the map the fps drops.
6)The AI is sometimes very poor. Sometimes your soldiers do really stupid things like when you order a soldiers to throw a grenade on a enemy soldier or vehicle he stands in front of the enemy for like 5 seconds before he throws the grenade this often results in an almost killed soldier. There are a lots of this kind of stupid behavior things that they do. Sometimes though they do act in a clever way.
7)One thing I really hated was not being able to zoom out far enough to have a good view of battlefield.
As you see, most of the main disadvantages are simply passed from S:Howw2 to this game. Overall, this is still a good and playable game especially for fan of previous games, but new comers may have problems.