Well, I don't know what I expected.
Here's an excruciatingly detailed review from a guy that's been playing the Close Combat series since the mid to late 90s. Yay! go me! I'm familiar with all the games, so I'll draw some comparisons here and there.
I like that the idea was put down into a playable form, but this full blown feels like it's in an alpha state in terms of content. There's no campaigns or operations, just single missions. Stuff works, but again as far as content and gameplay, it feels like it was released before being feature complete. (Which would mean an alpha. Betas are usually feature complete.) You'll notice it with things like the soldier screen (called "Army" in this iteration of the game) where you check to see which men were killed, wounded, how many kills each guy got, etc. It took me a couple seconds to realize the white tabs on the individual troops' health in that screen was denoting them as KIA. (In what I'm guessing was a placeholder that looks like a little tombstone for some later graphic that was never added. There isn't KIA written on them or anything. It's just a largely untextured white tab with a rounded top.) There's other moments too, but I don't want to derail this and end up making a list of things I've come across.
The default force composition is all over the place with a mix of Russian conscripts and US troops in your force. One interesting aspect of the single battles is that it gives you access to EVERY unit, regardless of side. That's... Interesting.
A big change worth mentioning is that your men can no longer no-clip and materialize through building walls anymore. They actually have to use designated openings to get in and out. (Doors or windows. if there's a lot of windows, it basically plays the same as all the other titles.) This would be a far more welcome change if the pathing for the infantry wasn't bad. I'm talking comically bad. You'll give your guys a move order, and they'll be stuck trying to walk through walls to no avail, and in perpetuity unless you give them another command or tell them to stop. In every playthrough so far, I've found at least a couple units that I go to who have a fatigue status because of a simple move command I gave them during initial setup. They seem more responsive if you micro-manage the path they need to take to exit, though you'll often still get the occasional straggler at the location, leaving the move command marker there even though 4 out of the 5 guys in the team are set and positioned. (Strangely, this often seems to be the team leader.) The pathing issue doesn't seem to extend to the vehicles, however. More on that later.
With that in mind, I'd partake in the time-honored Soviet tradition of throwing human waves of conscripts with their Kalashnikovs at a building to see where the gunfire is coming from, and then while the enemy is distracted mowing my conscripts down (they're kind of garbage anyway), I'd have my armor or humvees with Mk19s just pummel the building into submission and send some actual regulars in after them.
The addition of things like the M-203, Mk19, AT-4, etc, is actually kind of hilarious. Unlike other CC titles, when you tell your squad to use suppressive fire on a target they don't see nearby, they'll basically unload everything they have on that spot. Rather than the occasional hand grenade, they'll make grenades option #1 and then use their guns. You can basically wreck a whole side of a building doing that before you even enter the thing.
An important thing to note with certain explosive-type weapons is that you have some minimal ability to indirect fire. If you don't have complete line of site towards an area you want to suppress or a squad you want to hit, with things like the Mk19 you can still place the marker down even if it shows red/orange, and it'll stick. Not only will it stick, the guy manning the gun will fire! Yay! That's at least reflective of how the weapon functions in terms of area effect. No more tree leaves blocking you from being able to lay suppressive fire on an area. There's limits to this, but it generally seems to be a thing. (Whether that's an intentional or not, or a bug that that was never addressed, I'm not sure. It's occasionally hit or miss as to whether it'll do it or not, but it's there, and only seems relative to things that go boom. At least from what I've seen anyway.)
When it comes to pacing relative to other CC games, this one is FAST. WAY faster than the other titles. While my conscripts seem to wonder off on their on f'n program at times, I'll completely overlook that because THE VEHICLES ACTUALLY DO WHAT I TELL THEM TO! Color me surprised when I was able to get my armor to execute several moves without running into the dreaded and seemingly random 8-point-turn-to-move-50m that you sometimes get with Gateway to Caen. (GWtoC probably being the most notorious offender of such acts relative to the other titles.)
It's hard to judge how balanced the game is due to the lack of any kind of campaigns or operations, but with a lack of limitations on units, and how those units perform, I guess you could say that you can just spam whatever units are OP and call it a day. Of course, there isn't much fun i that, so I usually refrain from such things.
One interesting thing that the maps all say is that they're for between 1 - 10 players? 10 payers on a single map sounds like a recipe for hilarity. It's too bad they didn't make any campaigns or operations where you'd work with multiple AI forces to defeat other multiple other AI forces. Where in the other games you can stack your various units on the strategic/campaign map, but are still limited to some smaller fixes number of units when it comes to battles, having multiple forces in the battle feels like a amazing way to iterate on that and in a way that makes sense. That has so much untapped potential!
On a side note, I can see that kind of multi-force thing working both ways as well in the series. Your one unit in the other games, be it a company, battalion, or regiment, might be ready for a round 2 fight against some German unit after the first battle, but then they suddenly the enemy gets reinforced by an armor battalion during the movement phase, leaving your guys to either try to tough out a significantly larger force and hold the line, or otherwise fall back after the fight to where reinforcements are. That really could add another layer of depth to the series if done right.
In general though, I'd 100% agree with the others saying this game isn't polished. It leaves a lot to be desired, but to where you can very easily see the potential had it ever been brought to a more complete state. It's entertaining for a spell, but not $30 entertaining in the state its in with the lack of overall content for the single-player experience. I'm giving it a thumbs up because it's not "bad", but it's not "good" either. If you were stuck in purgatory, this would probably be the version of Close Combat that would be available. Too bad there isn't a neutral rating option. If you're already a Close Combat fan, I'd get it on sale, as you'll see what I mean about the potential being there. If you're not a Close Combat fan, I'd probably pass on this one. (Don't hold your breath on any content updates for it anytime this decade, if ever. Mods are likely to remain the only other option to giving the game more flavor in perpetuity.)
