Recent reviews by Fortune

Nah.

I did not preorder a deluxe package. For me, this DLC is worth it. 2 new doctrines with lots of new mechanics is worth it, and if you don't want those then most of the content is freely available to you. So far I'm seeing a lot of crisp and responsive changes to the gameplay itself, which I expect will improve longevity.

It's never been Relic's style to launch an expansion so fast after initial release. So I don't understand the complaints in taht regard.

Genuinely had fun playing this game when it came out, with continued support (both from the developer as well as the community) it could've been a gem.

About the game & its development
What few seem to realize is that Relic is a development studio that tries new things. The leap from Dawn of War 1 to 2 was immense. The changes from Company of Heroes 1 to 2 were equally jarring to many. I would know - I was there for all of those leaps and changes. And each time a loud vocal minority made it clear that the changes were a mistake and a sign of some deep flaw.

But this is the point: Not to cannibalize the beloved game of yesteryear and rendering them irrelevant, but to bring out new concepts, game design, elements and mechanics enabled by modern technology and development resources.

A missed opportunity for all concerned
Dawn of War 3 could've (should've) been the beginning of the next chapter of Relic's squad-based, action-oriented strategy game concept ("action" here not being in reference to "action genre", but "actions per minute"). And perhaps it will, it's not easy making a game that will be played by hundreds of thousands of people for thousands of hours, but there will be another Company of Heroes soon. If nothing else Dawn of War 3 was a great opportunity to try and work with the vocal minority, perhaps next time around they can safely be ignored.

Constructive criticism of gameplay vs. concept
Many reacted vehemently to "Jumping Angelos", and certainly if you're very serious about the physics of what "Terminator armor" would mean in our real world, the idea is ridiculous. A misstep of presentation which, wrongly, was labelled as failure in game mechanics.
Had Angelos instead had a Teleporter pack which enabled him to have the exact same effect (moving ontop of enemy units to send them flying) there would not have been a backlash.
But did those who were so grossly offended by the lack of grimdark say: "Replace the jump/leap with a teleporter ffs!"?
No. No they didn't. Instead the reviewbombed the game, memed the issue to death and ridiculed the very concept of placing so much importance onto heroes. Never mind that it wasn't that much of a departure from Dawn of War 2 Retribution.

Cool ideas
Big units (for an RTS)
Larger armies while placing importance on the use of abilities
Pre-battle load outs, selecting your hero and special units
Varied factions and mechanics
Flying and hovering units

Missing features many Dawn of War / Company of Heroes veterans can't live without
Directional and non-directional cover, both objects and ambient (destroyed vehicles, craters caused by explosions)
Veterancy and related bonuses
"TrueSight", sight blockers, mechanics such as smoke or flares
Grimdark

I believe that these missing features could've been incorporated later in some approximation, perhaps like with Dawn of War 2 in the form of an expansion.

Things I didn't know I needed but do
Ork Waaagh rock music.

Meh.

Atmospheric, pretty to look at.

Tech tree leaves a little to be desired, certain technologies (mining for instance) scale incredibly well and you basically have access to infinite resources this way. Storms / Blizzards are definitely fun to deal with, but I'd say 90% of the game's challenge lies in the early phases where you're plopped onto the map with 80 people and no way to feed them.

10/10 would make children scrape coal with their bare hands again.

First, let's address a central question that may or may not be in your mind as you're reading this review.

CTA = MOWAS2 reskin?

Effectively, yes. The sounds of guns, tooltips of weapons, hints and tips in loading screens, UI, font choices for events (vehicle hull damaged/destroyed, penetrating hit, exp tickers when achieving kills etc), direct control of infantry and vehicles and the overall functionality of game mechanics are identical.

So what gives? To preface my actual review of the game and its content in terms of pros and cons (I mostly play RTS games and have racked up a few ten thousand hours across varying franchises), I'd like to open up a bit further about the whole Call to Arms / Men of War Assault Squad 2 mess.

As you may or may not be aware, MOWAS2's development issues, while layered in part to incompetence from staff, can also be explained by the Ukraine Crisis, as a part of the development team were Ukrainians and, one of the main publishers of Men of War in the past has historically been a Russian company. MOWAS2 is virtually unsupported today, and even during active development it was very apparent that the game did not build upon MOWAS1 in any way. To me, a humble consumer, MOWAS2 seemed like a blatant cash-grab. Mind you, I'm not a veteran of the MOWAS franchise, so I can largely forgive the nature of its development as I assumed the game would be developed past a certain point. It was not.

CTA blumbered out of no where and was in part funded by crowdsourcing. The daily playercount as far as the consumer is concerned is from 40 to 50 people, with a spike of perhaps 15 people online at once (oh boy.)

That was the preface, now on to the review of the product itself:

Call to Arms is topical, it features a fictional arab fighting force (GRM) which you'd be forgiven for mistaking for ISIS, and a Gulf War era US military, though without Javelins.
When considering multiplayer versus play (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4) the game's pacing takes place in 3 stages:

Infantry,
Mechanized,
Heavy mechanized.
Each of these stages lasts roughly 5-7 minutes, so your average game should not take past 20 minutes no matter the size, as the amount of resources given per player is a fixed amount (boring, in my opinion) and after incurring X losses you just stop getting income, period.

There are no heavier tanks past the Bradley, BMP-3 and Stryker MGS, though the fact they want to implement the Abrams is almost painfully obvious. AT Weapons are limited to the RPG-7, LAW and AT-4 rocket launchers.

This is where any original ideas end. The rest of the game and its mechanics are familiar to anyone who has played more than 5 hours of the MOWAS franchise, which is a let-down. There are 2 arguments that are popular to excuse this fact, first: "It's only 20 dollars!" and second "It's in Alpha!"

To the first point, 20 dollars is a nice price. It's genuinely what this game is worth if you intend on purchasing it. To say that it's "only" 20 dollars is like saying that a cheeseburger is "only" 1 dollar - is it a bargain? Or is it just the maximum amount of money the producer can ask without being scoffed at, at this point?

To the second, and this is funny, CTA is actually more stable and better streamlined than AS2, which is just bizarre to me. This 20 dollar title is better polished during Alpha, than MOWAS2 ever was after years of development. I'd love to give CTA the benefit of the doubt in terms of developmental stage but I highly doubt it will ever become more stable than it already is.

Pros

- It's a cheeseburger, good value
- More stable than the platform used to develop it (Assault Squad 2)
- Better balanced overall in terms of infantry small arms, penetration values of AT Weapons and vehicles


Cons

- Its a cheeseburger, not a filet mignon
- Already has achieved its full potential minus 1 or 2 units prefaction, and it's in "Alpha"
- A few desynch-inducing bugs
- Tiny community
- No new creative thought, it's same old mechanics with a new narrative
- Elite infantry are far too good, infantry AI is detrimentally bad

CTA relies on its multiplayer component for replay value, without a community this replay value does not exist. While I would like to recommend the game based purely on the fact that it's stable, relatively balanced and rewards skill and tactics (but only to a certain point, sadly, especially the BTR-80 can wipe out infantry armies in seconds at long distances), I cannot recommend it based on the fact it does not have enough players to give you, the customer, any reasonable replay value.

This game needs around 10,000 active, daily players to be able to deliver what it promises. However, due to being a MOWAS game and therefore having a learning curve that requires patience, it does not seem to have a very good retention rate for players. People tend to buy the game, try it for 10 hours, and then never looking at it again so sales figures are deceptive.

Should you buy it? If you're a MOWAS fan and want to support the developer, yes.
If you're an RTS fan who's looking for a new game to dedicate to, create content (YouTube, Twitch) or be part of a community, this is not the game for you.

If you're looking for a squad-based, tactical, micro-rewarding but not micro-insisting RTS which rewards high-skill play and has an element of RNG to simulate the fact that humans aren't perfect.

Cons: Getting all DLC is sort of expensive.
Pros: You only really need the factions for multiplayer.

This is a relatively competitive multiplayer game. It's population isn't huge peaking (9000 concurrent players), but it could still grow.

This is more of a review than recommendation; Section 8: Prejudice has everything you want from a blockbuster shooter, nothing more, nothing less.

It gets boring fast, but frankly the only thing this game is lacking - that keeps it from being a memorable title like Tribes or Counter Strike - is the community. There is no real way for players to "connect" after, during or before matches.

With a World Chat or the like, this game could have alot more than it does.

Still, a game to play if you want to experience something mildly refreshing, it's a shooter, and it has alot of things right.

It's a good game. Buy it.