As a veteran player who played this game long ago, came back to play with my bf in some co-op mp private matches, and uhhh... Wheres the invite button that was there in the pause menu before? Pressed map button, went into settings / key binds, see nothing. I even tried shift+tabbing and clicking on their profile and guess what? Can't invite and they can't join, just "watch game". So yeah recent updates have messed up normal private co-op pve gameplay, thanks devs for ruining another experience for us that we just wanna get back into after some time + after hearing about all these "updates" and "Free dlc". Nah we're good! Hopefully we can try to get a refund too for this faulty product that once worked how we wanted to, but now sadly doesn't anymore, plus the DLC'S are awful garbage ps2 level design maps, I just took some screenshots I might post in the community of the Ardennes / invasion of France DLC, literally 4 rooms / 2 houses back to back, all 4 rooms have only 2 of the same items in each, a black and yellow couch and a table in front in each room, literally copy and pasted... The camps you spawn in as defenders? 2 tents and a undrivable prop truck... Even in other maps as defenders, I remember you can drive some of the trucks in spawn that were civilian / military trucks you didn't spawn in to.
Anyways, gameplay is alright, guns feel good and they tried balancing lmgs like the mg42 by switching overheated barrels, looting system is okay as well. Vehicles feel more off than they do though, the sights especially on the one plane I just tried again recently on the Ardennes map I pointed out with the copy and pasted rooms (the first map / mission in the dlc btw lol.), the neon yellow / green sights make it hard to see now, it wasn't like this before, and dropping bombs both in first person and third person is now wayyyy more difficult. I used to be a "pro pilot" and drop those small single 250 lb bombs (I think) directly right on top of a heavy tank and instantly destroying it, sniping infantry in trenches with the guns on the plane, bouncing the wheels slightly on the ground with planes like the stuka and making you go high up in the air and makes it near impossible to control (which is still in the game I see.), etc. Now I can't even drop 3 bombs in a carpet bomb line right over an enemy objective TWICE (went back to resupply) with 3-4 red enemy battalion banners over the objective, like what??? I literally free cam and looked back to see my bombs landed way off in my first go which I thought obviously it must be my rusty skill right? Come back the 2nd time and adjusted mostly by bombing much closer as it seems they ruined the dropping velocity / weight physics of the bombs perhaps? Anyways the 2nd carpet bomb row landed mostly right onb the enemy objective, but guess what? ZERO hitmarkers and ZERO kills on leaderboard, with me just dropping 2 smaller and 1 bigger bomb right on an enemy objective in a map with 140 units... (the highest max in multiplayer which I tried playing with my bf this time around and couldn't).
So yeah, sad to see another great game fall to both spaghetti code, greed (like cmon, why release paid DLCs first when there was never any real free content for ever, and all mods that have dlc content is locked unless you spend all your money on EVERY SINGLE DLC... All players get is the most boring and uninteresting parts of ww2, people want D-DAY, Stalingrad, etc. Too bad those DLCs especially D-Day are COMPLETELY trash anyways so their not even worth getting either... In a comment to another person's review on their newest DLC glazing it, I compare their maps like D-DAY to PS2 games attempts on recreating ww2 / d-day scenes, but even then I feel like old cod games / other games portraying those scenes had better map design and not "Free copy and paste looking assets and map design" yknow?), poor game design / bad decision making, etc.
I recommend this game to people who can afford all DLC's and game at it's high and rarely on high sale costs, to people who are also lonely / have no personal people in your life that you wanna play with privately and not in some giant sweat multiplayer asian, russian, etc lobbies (and just wanna play pve with someone...), who can overlook poor map and uninspired operations maps designs (Like d-day, stalingrad, ardennes, etc.) when you're in a tank / plane not paying attention to your surroundings as infantry (can't even shoot through wood and stuff lol.), maybe also play on an older version where tanks and planes don't have their new NEON BLINDING LIGHTS FROM GOD HIMSELF (their not that bright, but at high graphics on mac, which btw the mac port works fine but does have visual bugs / rendering issues, another con for mac users, tree leaves will flicker from time to time and such. Anyways sight lights on atleast high graphics which is all I tried this game on, glow so much that it's hard to anything from the glow in the middle of the sights, same for my bf trying it on a trashier i3 laptop but using GEFORCE NOW with high graphics too.), and if you're the person who can afford all DLCs and want more end game content by modding, than perfect for you. Otherwise? No end game / infinite content for you, plus ai spawns aren't optimized / even a thing on most modded maps, have fun setting all the spawn things and editing everything in the map editing software yourself~! But yeah, game has it's moments, especially when you first play it, vehicle gameplay is where it saves it mostly, the planes being the best thing it had (which is now ruined.), you could bomb enemy artillery in their spawn at their edge of the map, ships, landing crafts, destroy some buildings, etc. But now the AA even with 0.8X reduced ai accuracy (thought the lowest could be 0.7X before these updates where you could still get achievements...) and 0.4x player damage taken, AA guns can one shot you in planes like it did to me twice when I just replayed this game again just earlier... I swear things like that NEVER happened before all these new updates, especially being able to invite a friend in a private MP match...
Could go on and technically already tried ending this review, just have many frustrations especially now with this game we once loved, it always had some issues but atleast we could play together in a sandbox PVE sim which we can't as modern games like this rarely exist, maybe we can play some operator together when we can get it + get a new pc set up soon. All I know is we won't be playing this together anymore, like I said hopefully we can get this back so this wasn't a total lost. Sad it has to be this way, maybe if the have the devs have the capability fix up their act, I thought these devs were one of the "good ones" but nah obviously that can never be true, even just looking bak at the game / map design... Honestly I feel like my bf and I were playing with rose tinted glasses, this game looks really outdated even at "ultra" lol, and as I said before, copy and paste map design especially in the very first levels back to back!? For a paid DLC MAP which has the SMALLEST AMOUNT OF MAPS!? I atleast wish we wasted our money on the Blood on the Danube DLC with it having 3 entire operations with dozens of maps in each, the Ardennes / invasion of france? Has one operation with like 7-10 maps in said operation lol... Like if were were to get boned / scammed out of map choice like we did with D-DAY but atleast refunded it, instead of Ardennes or Stalingrad we would've got the "Family sized / meal" DLC instead of our 2 snack DLCs that still costed alot.
