RO2 Single Player Hardest Mode Tips

This guide is intended to help fellow morons trek through the awful single player experience of Red Orchestra 2.

Overview

Welcome, fellow masochists. A lot of people think Red Orchestra 2 is strictly a multiplayer game, but I'm here to let you know it simply should have been. If you are a soulless achievement hunting ghoul such as I, then you will tediously throw yourself at the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a campaign Tripwire decided to shoehorn into their otherwise passable game. After a lot of agony, I trudged through it on the highest difficulty and I hope to share my near-worthless knowledge with the wayward fiends that seek to follow in those footsteps. There are 3 modes that the campaign will subject you to: Training, Attack, and Defense. I will cover the basics of those in their own sections, with a special section for tank missions. For now, let's outline the consistent rules of engagement for tackling the single player.

The first thing you must understand is that you are alone. The game tries to trick you by spawning what appears to be allies, but those are in actuality harmless apparitions. Their purpose is to occasionally distract enemy fire from your position, suppress your aim while you are defending, and provide a proxy through which you can spawn if you are killed (this happens often). Missions typically begin by giving you 10 of these guppies that try to look busy while you pick off enemy combatants. If you wish to preserve them for your personal use, your best bet will be to order them to follow you by using the command menu and selecting "Follow Me". This by no means keeps them in order, but they will haphazardly follow your movement and avoid some enemy fire, since you will be bravely taking point. If you wish to hold or take an area of contention you often need allies to match the enemies numbers. In that scenario, you want to order your fodder to Attack/Defend the specific objective named in the command menu.

The next revelation in the single player is that the enemies are cheaters. The good news is that like most cheaters, they have glaring gaps in their practical knowledge of how to play. At medium/long range the enemy A.I. will beat you. They have a robotic and unflinching accuracy when you are not entirely protected by cover or are standing still. What this means to you as a player is that "fortifying your position" and "laying down suppressing fire" is irrelevant, because it will only get your face shot out. Instead your goal will be to sprint as near to your opponents as possible and then slowly take them out. At close range your idiotic opponents will usually try to bumrush you and try to melee you to death. In those moments they face almost certain death from your clever human disposition towards shooting things. If you have no choice but to engage the enemy from a distance (such as in the first and last missions) your best chance is finding sufficient cover for your front and sides, and then meticulously shooting your victims. The game will then devolve into a race to kill straggling enemies before you lose your patience for the tedious hunt-and-peck style combat and get overly brave (killed).

Here are a few final tips for making progress through the campaign. You can carry two primary weapons and when possible I recommend picking up a submachine gun or a semiautomatic rifle. Those two guns are the best you'll get for close quarters fighting, and that's where you need to be. Additionally, the game saves your last checkpoint and should you get fed up with the sickening flow of gameplay and rage quit out, you can "Continue Campaign" from where you left off and begin your rage anew. Don't be trigger-shy when it comes to restarting checkpoints, either. If you get shot down moving to your opening position, it is just better to rack 'em up again and start fresh rather than wait to spawn on your dumb ally who is probably hiding on the wrong side of cover in an open field. On the last mission I noticed if you go prone and hold sprint and move you'll kind of crouch run. Who knows, that might help you move without getting shot as much. Hey here's a good one, press escape to skip the cutscenes. If you feel like you're missing something, trust me you aren't. You can supplement your play experience by reading the Wikipedia entry for WW2 instead.

Training

These are sections where the game half-assedly explains game mechanics to you. You might gleen something from them if you're new to the series, but generally these just pad the monotonous experience that is single player. There were a few instances where I got confused about what the tutorial was asking you to do, and had to pour over the control bindings to find what the game was yapping about. If you get really stymied just start the ♥♥♥♥ over and save yourself the grief. They generally highlight in blinking yellow the areas they wish you to steer towards, so home in on those spots. In a game this bad it's pretty sobering to know that even the tutorials are a pain in the ass.

Attack

Attack is the most prominent mode in the campaign and is won by clearing a capture point of enemy combatants. This is also the easiest of the modes, because usually once you are on or near the point in question your enemies will be foolishly milling about from position to position, just hoping you leave of your own accord. If the point is a building, you'll want to find a side entrance and then cut through the enemy positions while they act oblivious. The maps are pretty large so if you find yourself getting slaughtered on the approach, try taking the long way round. You will almost always be clearing 10 or so enemies from a point by your lonesome, so use your sound and listen for their mindless bustling. At those close ranges expect a few rogue agents rounding corners and swinging at you. The pistols are pretty decent at goon swatting so don't overlook your sidearm if you don't have a moment to reload your primary in. Eventually you will take the point and be able to move on to the next, following the same procedure. What a game!

Defend

In the Defense missions you will be tasked with guarding a control point from 2-3 waves of enemies. This mode is maddening, because you are often impotent to kill enough enemies in as much time as it takes them to capture. Trial and error plays a large role in defending and it is your task to find the position that allows you to execute the ignorant enemy slobs without taking much return fire. This magic spot will not be foolproof nor intuitive, and is based entirely on how bad the A.I.'s programming is. Most Defense missions will have 3-4 positions for you to defend or fall back to. With this in mind, try to pick the most easily defended of the bunch (either the first position or the last due to the constraints of the loading options). Trial and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ error.

Armor

The boneheads at Tripwire have been misled to think that the armored warfare in Red Orchestra is something resembling fun. It is not and has a few cameos in the already awful campaigns, seemingly to spice them up. I wouldn't really call diarrhea a spice. The objectives for the armor missions are familiar, but amazingly enough your teammates buttress your firing power in tank battles. In another twist, keeping your distance also works in your favor, as enemy accuracy begins to drop off severely enough to give you an edge. These missions mostly go smoothly, but if you lose enough allies your chance for success plummets and you will be focus fired and obliterated. Take your shots from as far away as you can make them and keep your team behind you.

Conclusion

I wish there were some really cool and helpful tips I could tack on here, but this will be mostly about your sanity versus the micro-holocaust that is the singleplayer. The best advice I can really give is that you avoid the campaigns altogether. Don't end up like me. Since you are likely an achievement hunting cretin you will ignore these words and shamefully follow my demented path. If you are determined to do this, you must take with you my ♥♥♥♥ tips and vow that if given the chance to prevent someone else from playing this campaign you will do so.

[Noxian]

Just type killbots in the console (~ or F3). Spare yourself the pain.

[Kangaroo]

Gday Captain America from the marvellous mystical magical Land of Oz, this guide is well written, accurately informative & bloody funny! LOL hilarity ensues reading this RO2 guide, humour is sadly all too rare in RO2 so bravo to u champ!

[UKchampbound]

I got to mad in tanks on war thunder now this I really don't think it can be all that worse we will see

[HSTS Femcel]

I just want to know what it was like though.

[naqoyqatsi]

Indede.

[Kabal]

Let my guide be a vista to another, less civilized era of Red Orchestra 2.

[naqoyqatsi]

They removed it because it was so shit.

[HSTS Femcel]

How do you even start the SP?

[Mattack_1412]

so true...

[EmotionallyBroken]

Im still working on the "how to start single player" part