- [T.J.] One of my only disappointments
with Eugen's Steel Division: Normandy 44
was the lack of any love
for my beloved Eastern
Front of World War II.
Steel Division 2 corrects this,
adding tons of new
historically grounded units
and divisions from the iconic T34 tank
to the lesser-known woman-led
Soviet sniper teams.
It does almost everything
Normandy 44 did as well or better,
but just about everything new it tries
gets bogged down in the mud.
(dramatic music)
If you played the original,
Steel Division 2's multiplayer
and Skirmish vs. AI modes
are going to seem very familiar.
You select one of 28 thoroughly researched
historical divisions from
either the Allied or Axis side
to serve as the base deck for your forces.
There's a lot of fun tweaking to do here,
as you have to consider trade-offs
like having fewer, more hardened
troops with higher stats
but also higher costs,
or a larger number of
weak and cheap rookies.
And Steel Division's
three-phase battle system
makes a return, adding an extra wrinkle
of having to think about which units
are going to become available
in the early, middle,
and late parts of the battle.
Not all of the units are
impressive to look at though,
especially when it comes to the infantry.
You won't be zooming down
this close very often,
but still, these NKVD officers
look like action figures
that got left out on a
hot day for too long.
(dramatic music)
The available divisions include
some very interesting new possibilities
that open up tactics you
wouldn't see in Normandy 44.
The late war on the Eastern
Front saw two juggernauts
that had been bashing heads for years
having to make do with what was left over,
leading to some memorable
and different formations,
like the ragtag and disheveled
German Grupa Hotnik,
which takes the normally
pressed and prepared Wehrmacht
and shows off what they're reduced to
after a hard night of
trying to invade Russia.
The Soviets really steal the show however.
I fell in love with the long suffering
184-ya Strelkovy, a defensively
minded infantry division
that gives a starring
role to sharpshooters
and offers that dramatic
feeling of holding the line
against overpowering odds.
The 184-ya do particularly well
in the new Breakthrough mode
which is the best new
feature of Steel Division 2.
Rather than having two sides
try to fight for control
of a neutral battlefield,
Breakthrough gives the defenders
almost all of the map to deploy on
and challenges the attackers,
who start with just a sliver,
to breakthrough the enemy
lines by any means necessary.
Building defense in depth
is extremely important
on the defensive side
and the way it forced me to think
in terms of multiple flexible lines
instead of a single rigid
one felt refreshing.
Attacking on a Breakthrough map is tense
and can alternate between
euphoric and frustrating
based on how well your
advance is proceeding.
(dramatic music)
Unfortunately Steel Division
2's biggest new feature
is kind of a flop.
The Army General mode tries to add
a strategic campaign layer on
top of the tactical battles
and it has some good ideas.
Units move across the
turn-based strategic map
with realistic speeds
depending on terrain, roads,
and whether they're made up mostly
of guys, tanks, or trucks.
When meeting the enemy the
phase each unit deploys in
is based on how far they are
from the initial point of engagement.
This sounds cool in theory
but it led to some vexing situations
like going up against an
enemy armored emplacement
with artillery support
while I was using only recon units
and having to wait an
excruciatingly long time
for my armored support to show up.
At which point the battle
was pretty much lost already.
The amount of fiddly campaign movement
needed to alleviate this
makes the whole thing
feel like herding cats.
To frustrate me further, I
ran into a couple instances
where the end turn button would lock up
and stop my progress entirely.
And the whole thing is
also very poorly explained.
There's no tutorial, but
rather an in-game manual
that I was never told about
so I eventually found it by accident
after several turns of flailing around
trying to figure out how anything works.
It's text heavy with only static images
and charts as examples.
Oh, and there's not even a tutorial
for the actual tactical battles anywhere.
Normandy 44 had a very good one
but those who are picking up the sequel
as their first Steel Division game
are going to be very confused.
And for such a complex game,
that is not a small problem.
(dramatic music)
Steel Division 2 continues
the series tradition
of tactically deep, enjoyable,
historically grounded World
War II real-time combat.
The new Easter Front divisions
bring plenty to the table
to reinvigorate the
multiplayer and skirmish modes.
The combat mechanics themselves
haven't evolved that much
but they work well enough
without trying to reinvent the wheel,
just stay away from the
Army General campaign
and if you didn't play Normandy 44
you'll probably need to
give it a spin first,
as it does a great job of explaining
a lot of things that Steel Division 2
won't even bother to try.
For more historically inspired combat
check out our reviews of Red Dead Online,
Assassin's Creed III
Remastered, and Mordhau,
and for everything else stick with IGN.
(gunfire)
