Really the pinnacle of an CoH experience. Old school prowess!

I have played this game for hundreds of hours more than listed, as I have owned it for close to 2 decades.

It is in many ways an amazing strategy game, that got ruined with Relic's incompetence. I have listed the problems and reason for this in my Soulstorm review and the reasons haven't changed.

So lets get to why this game is still a gem.

This game far outpaces both CoH2 and CoH3 in quality and replay ability, the graphics are almost the same, but I would argue the effects and audio are better in CoH1 and it still somehow can run on a toaster and takes up 10% of the space the newer ones do.

Aside from this, the game is a lot better balanced as well and provides a myriad of routes for you to defeat your foe. Which brings us to the simplicity of this game, capture sectors, to generate more resources, to deploy more squads, to crush your enemy by overrunning them with troops.

It seems simple enough, but under the surface lurks a web of complexity, that allows you to do some cunning things, to affect your enemy logistically. Territories need to be in supply and fuel can only be generated by owning sectors, each sector can generate low/mid/high resources. This means you can easily turn the tide of battle, by cutting off 1 or 2 sectors, destroying a sector outright, siphoning resources off or simply ambushing and killing infantry trying to capture important sectors.

It means the gameplay can quickly become complex and can be bent into a micro/macro style, depending on how you prefer to play strategy games.

If this isn't enough to win you over... It has bombs, tanks and rockets, they make craters and huger explosions, plus you can deform the maps into a desolate hellscape with artillery... Which is just plain fun!

Brilliant!