The good, the bad, and the ugly.
I was excited to see this game was produced by them, because they historically make fantastic games when they produce outside their usual RPG genre. A good example of this was Einhander, which by my way of thinking is one of the best flying shooters ever made.
I had some mixed reactions to Order of War, however...
Right away, I was impressed by the visual display. Units are very well rendered, especially up close, and the action seems to exist simultaneously at all levels. My machine isn't quite as up to date as I would like it, but I was still able to run the game at max settings with little problems. That's a big plus in their column.
I also liked the fact that the game presented campaigns on either side of the war, as opposed to just an American one, as you often find in WWII RTS games.
The presentation of the action was somewhere between fair and good. I am a huge opponent of this new RTS habit of replacing single unit production/command with that of squads. However, this game didn't feel too annoying on that point, and the interface/controls are pretty straightforward - with minor confusion about "do I right click or left click to do " All very minimal problems.
The thing that REALLY bothered me about the game though, almost right off the bat was the balancing issues. Even on medium, the way in which they chose to "balance" the game is pretty amateurish. And by this I mean that your units are completed retarded and incompetent compared to theirs. Let me lay it out a bit:
I chose to play the German campaign. The first series of missions focus on repelling the Russian army and counterattacking where possible. Well, the very first mission opens up with you trying to keep a column of tanks from entering a particular village, where you have your own column of tanks defending. So I set up my tanks in a nice arc-like defensive position, and the action commenced. Something seemed wrong pretty quickly though... At the start of the battle, the numbers were pretty even across the board. About a minute later, they had destroyed all but three or four of my tanks while only losing about six of theirs... Historically speaking, the Sherman lend-lease tanks these Russians were using were no match for the Mark IV's in the German army. They weren't known for speed, armor, or firepower. Yet... somehow they were able to effectively tear through my entire group with ease. Gameplay wise, my tanks simply refused to follow orders an annoyingly large percent of the time, and when they did manage to hit, it took a suspicious number of direct hits to down them, especially compared to the single hit it took to down mine.
Now, I don't have unrealistic expectations about the capabilities of soldiers in war games. I have played enough Close Combat to be well aware of the annoyances of order refusals, and poor performance, but this game just seemed a little over the top in this area.
The next mission was even worse. Fortunately, they gave you almost double the number of tanks that the Russians had, so you were able to keep a handful. However, the balance issues were so glaring in this fight it was almost ridiculous. At the start of the mission a wall of Russian tanks attacks a defensive position of yours that includes a good deal of anti-tank guns. Despite your orders or the number of times you replay this scenario, you are able to destroy 50-75% of these tanks before they overrun your position. This was probably meant to happen, so that's all well and good. Accepted.
However, after that, you later lead a counterattack against their defensive lines, where, in my case, they had a mere FOUR anti-tank guns defending. I kid you not, these four guns managed to destroy 24 tanks without taking a single casualty. This was half due to the fact that my tanks refused to fire on them, and instead focused on the infantry in front of them, and half due to the fact that a single round from these guns was apparently able to: A. Take out any tank that they hit within 50 feet of. B. Take out 4-6 tanks with a single shot.
If I were talking about hard mode here, I wouldn't be writing this review at all. I expect poor balance issues in hard mode, because, short of pouring ridiculous amounts of enemies at you, hard mode is hard to make hard in an RTS like this. However, Normal mode, in my opinion, should be a mode in which a casual RTS gamer struggles only mildly. NOT a mode in which a seasoned RTS player struggles heavily with the second mission of the game.