Gave up on the game around the 80% mark. It all got too tiresome and frustrating.

I really wanted to give this title its due for what it's attempting. I like a variety of shooters and tactical games. But the way it's implemented here is too janky to tolerate after an extended period. I understand that my accuracy isn't 'real' and is entirely dependent on flanking tactics. But there are SO many times when it looks like you should be clearly hitting an enemy at their sides, but the game still considers them 'flanked' - so nothing. Even when you're positioned correctly, it often feels like you still need to go up and hug the enemy before hits register. Other times, you can spray down 3 guys with a mag-dump.

It works... okay enough in levels out in the open. But every once in a while it wants to shove you into a building and the whole experience goes to ♥♥♥♥. You enter a warehouse lit up with red dots and your teammates just throw themselves into a meatgrinder. The tactical view is simple but too limiting. It's never really clear what a good strategy for any level is supposed to look like, resulting in a LOT of trial and error. Sometimes you'll have to reload a checkpoint several times because everything is going FUBAR for unknown reasons, and then you'll ace it without a good understanding of what worked. Damage to the player is inconsistent - sometimes I can take a few hits from an MG before reaching cover, and sometimes it takes you out instantly.

This is a game for SOMEBODY, I'm just not sure who. I got the entire trilogy for a few dollars, so I don't feel cheated. I'm also probably going to attempt the sequels in the hopes that improvements were made. I did want to like this title, but eventually had to admit that it was mostly frustrating with me, and dragging on too long. The level towards the end where you have to take out 2 tanks with crappy Panzerfausts, assailed by MGs, with teammates being parked elsewhere (because too far and they won't shoot anything, too close they might as well be committing suicide), followed up by an awful, AWFUL warehouse rush is what ended up breaking me.

This is all on Normal difficulty. I can only imagine what BS this turns into on the two higher ones.

Graphics are good for the time. No complaints.
Story is typical Band of Brothers tropes that were common of the era in that show's wake.
No major technical issues, but the game did randomly freeze at various points for reasons unknown.

I'd say skip unless you have nostalgia for it - or have more patience and brains than I. I appreciate the effort that went into making a WW2 shooter out of the typical fare, but it doesn't gel well and is often opaque. It would have been better off as a straight-up tactics game like Full Spectrum Warrior, which came out that same era.

Good concept but very flawed execution. Out of all its many flaws, the one that stands out most is the AI: Your ability to aim and go "Full Rambo" is limited to encourage the "fire and manoeuvre" aspect of the game, and that means relying on your AI teammates to make sound strategic decisions. Spoilers: they will never. The need to be constantly told what to do and even then their effectiveness is severely limited to providing suppressing fire. Which again they may fail because they "cannot see the enemy".

The level design is almost always a box. And objectives often bug out when the NPC needed to progress the chapter gets stuck in the terrain. Not worth the hassle. Unless you have a healthy dose of Nostalgium to help you through.

piece of ♥♥♥♥, comparing to CoD 1

it's an extremely mediocre wwii game which with the sheer quantity of wwii games out there that's like saying this is a lacking and mediocre vanilla ice cream, there are so many other vanilla ice creams I can go get why would I get the most mediocre and bland one I could find?

That might sound strange for this game too since the whole concept of the game is that it's going for the story aspect by telling a true story of a platoon and also trying to sell you on it's real time command and strategy as its selling point.

At a baseline it's cool to allow the player to command their squad to take on bigger threats, that's an awesome thing you could put into a shooter if you don't make it clunky, bloated, have too many systems and you don't make it redundant, and while this game does not have it be clunky and it's rather intuitive and simple to use, what makes it a problem is the redundancy.

This game forces your shots to miss if you don't fill a bar for enemy groups which is the "pin down meter" if they're not suppressed with gun fire it will essentially make your shots not register and make shooting, the core of the game, not matter. You can circumvent this by running straight up to these enemies from their flank so you're both close enough and outside of their cover that the game won't register them as being in cover or by meleeing them. This is all done to incentivize using their command mechanics to make your squad fire on a location until they're pinned down and you can pop the enemies after that, but it really just slows everything down and make you wonder why they even bothered making it a shooter in the first place if they're purposefully trying to minimize that aspect of their game.

an alternative would have been to just make shots count and keep it all equally lethal, but make the threats bigger, make them more overwhelming so the only way you can get through is if you're both good at shooting and also are able to recognize which threats you need to hold off with your poor npc squadfire. Cutting off entire core points of how a player would expect a game like this to behave in order to put a spotlight on your experimental feature isn't good game design, you need to make them both work with each other in a mutually beneficial feedback loop for the player to enjoy.

As for the writing, maybe it was good at the time, or maybe this is what they were going for but it's not for me, after a "ha I saw a german trying to take a poop when I shot him lol" it's pretty clear what the mindset is for the writing, essentially your squad is just full of people who don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about anyone around them, the conflict they're in or what they're doing except for when it does the stupid 30 second audio monologues between missions that actually seem like they're pulled from a war documentary. Just a lot of dissonance between trying to show war as horrific only to feed to the player that "actually this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome and hilarious dude." Not what I was looking for and not what I came for and with gameplay I'm not a fan of I just don't really recommend this. Since I got the bundle though I'll check out the other 2 and see if I like either of those better before seeing if I'll refund this, maybe that'll make this game a bonus but individually I can't recommend this game.

I'd love to play this game and the series along with it, but for some reason I can't play audio though my monitor on any of the games. If anyone has a solution please help. I've tried my headphones, I've tried the community suggestions, and nothing works. I believe BIN Earned in Blood the sounds worked through my headphones will I switched to my monitor audio and now neither work...