Combat Mission 2: Barbarossa to Berlin

CM2 Barbarossa to Berlin is, from what I understand, the second game in the CM series coming right after Beyond Overlord. That one took place on the Western Front, after the D-Day landings where you could see countries like Britain, France, America, Canada etc. fighting against mainly German forces. Well whats another popular front, as popular if not more popular then the Western Front? East obviously makes sense the 2nd game focuses on it. So welcome to the Eastern Front! The main, fun gameplay loop is still there with a few enhancements in the UI that make it look better and new factions and maps. Not much else to speak of but not much else needs to be added either I suppose compared to the first game. +The fun gameplay loop is still there. Ordering your soldiers, seeing them try and handle things and seeing how the battle turns out. Trying to use them all properly and watching the enemy shove its tanks into a forested area just for it to stumble upon your infantry and flamethrower teams and receive lots of satchel charges thrown at it as a welcome gift and the tank being drowned in flame by the flamethrower crews as a goodbye gift. The gameplay loop is still fun. +Controls, audio, graphics, essentially all same as the previous game. Thankfully they're fine, hearing the soldiers say things in their native languages when you zoom in on them and the gunshots, explosions, tank tracks sound good enough in both games that I don't mind the fact that 2nd game hasn't changed things around that much. If you know how to play the first game, you know how to play the second game. +Lots of vehicles, lots of units, huge time frame, fun maps that can be quite big at times. All the fun stuff you'd expect. This goes for missions as well, just like the first game there's lots of single missions where you just get 1 battle lasting however many turns and you see how things go. You can find German forces in here like the SS, Wehrmacht or even the Fallschirmjager at times similar to the first game and again similar to the first game the Allied team has some variety too. Soviets, Romanians late in the war, I think Partisans are like a force they can have but yeah. After single missions come the campaings and just like the first game the campaings are a set of battles back to back each lasting however many turns and at the end of every battle the campaing ends and you see the stats for your forces and enemy forces. +Aside from the changes that come with the change in theatre, all the factions and stuff that comes with it there is one big difference between this game and the previous game which is the battle UI specifically. Its a lot more expressive and detailed, giving you better information about what the unit you clicked on has from ammo to healthy/wounded men to the weaponry they have. Good change. -While there are many single missions and campaings the campaings only really include the big players. Soviets or Germans. There's like 1-2 campaings where the German forces end up being Fallschirmjagers but again, they're all major countries. That sucks a lot because Romania, Hungary and Finland are modelled into the game as minor nations. You can play as these nations on the Axis side and for Romania specifically they can be on the Axis side early in the war and on the Allied side later in the war so when you do a custom mission depending on the time frame you're choosing the Romanians will switch sides. This is all cool and wonderful but these only really exist for single missions and custom missions you can make yourself. For the campaings there isn't any campaings where you can play as a minor nation. Huge loss for me cuz I love them a lot. All in all its essentially the first game with a few nice addons mainly the battle UI being improved and a new coat of paint. Eastern Front, new teams, new maps and campaings but the core of the game is the same and thats for me not an issue. Its a good game and if you're interested in the CM series it can be worth taking a look at. If you have the money to cough up, I'd recommend the more modern versions but if you aren't sure if you'll enjoy the gameplay loop or want a cheaper alternative to the more modern versions of Combat Mission then this is a good place to start.

Hit F2 in the main menu to enable WASD. Great implementation of this old gem with wide screen support and better camera controls, for an unbeatable price. A modern game with this much content would involve like 4 DLCs and be massively expensive. I also prefer the more abstract approach to terrain in the older games compared to modern Combat Mission, in which the terrain is modeled by area, but not down to each individual pixel of tree etc. Realism, chaos, failure... other than the ancient (though I think charming) graphics, all 3 games in the first trilogy hold up magnificently.

Game runs well on win11, alt tab works fine, controls are smooth, camera has been modernized at least a bit, which helps. Unfortunately due to the abysmal performance of CM: Red Thunder and other "new" engine CM games we have been forced to return to a 20 year old wargame, go figure.

Played this years ago when it first came out and thought it was amazing. The entire Eastern front as a sandbox tactical game! When this series came out it was ground breaking IMHO, now having the ability to play a game I have not played since the late 90's is something else, a major trip down memory lane! well done Steam.

Smooth gameplay and plays better and then the later iterations. weapon sounds also punchy 9/10

Recommend with a buyer beware. The ammount of content you're getting here is insane for a fiver. But something I didn't realise was squad sizes are abstracted. You'll see three men on the battle map, but they actually represent ten men all with different weapons. I don't mind stuff like this in a hex and counter game, but for 3D tactical scale I find it... repugnant? If you can get past that, it's awesome, but for me personally I'm gonna stick with the newer games for the most part.

A great old game that is a steal at this price - if it works. I think I'll ask for a refund though, because even though I've got it running on my desktop successfully, it will not function on my (very similar) laptop. The only significant difference between my two setups seems to be laptop is win 11 and desktop is still win 10. Since I will need to retire my win10 machine soon, THIS GAME DOES NOT WORK. All of my attempts to make tweaks to get it to work under windows 11 have failed. All of my reading indicates that is the result for the majority of users. I also enthusiastically tried to find opponents to play this with by posting on Steam and have had zero success and zero replies. I have played this game quite a bit years ago, but it seems a shame that they are selling it now for some quick bucks when the game DOES NOT WORK using current windows. I would have thought that Steam would at least test a game before allowing it to be sold, but that apparently is not the case. At least I can get a refund.

Super fun game with chunky classic graphics and deep rewarding gameplay! Its hard!

awesome game! try out 'all in one' mod which gives it a good facelift and pick the scenarios with good avg scores from theblitz site

Battlefronts finest hour! As deeply engaging now as when it was first released in 2002(?), if you just put aside the graphics (that look dated now) it still has deep and satisfying gameplay with nailbiting suspense. The replayability is unlimited due to the quickbattle system with generated maps. I am very happy that this game was released for Steam, Multiplayer (TCP/IP) was a chore but we managed by using Zerotier. I'd be willing to pay top money for this exact game with just updated graphics.