Order of War

Order of War is a solid RTS. It's not particularly innovating but it's simple to learn, and difficult to master really fun alone or with a couple of friends.

Although Squaresoft games has developed really good games, this one is the one to be better ignored. The reason to play it longer than a few hours is simply missing, even if there are three playable fractions.

Order of War does little to justify a purchase above the likes of CoH or Dawn of War II. The campaign modes are light on depth, and most seasoned players will breeze through before heading back to the heavy-hitters.

Order of War is like a popcorn war: fast and tasty, a nice little snack, but not a full meal. It's too easy for veterans and not impressive enough for casual gamers. But if you are looking for occasional fast battles, it's a good choice. It won't get less complicated than this.

This simple real-time strategy game isn't original, but it's a lot of fun.

How much fun you'll derive from Order of War entirely depends what you are looking for in a strategy game.

It’s almost arcade-like, perhaps appealing more strongly to FPS players looking for a change of pace than the average RTS player.

Order of War is not a revolution in this genre, but at least is a fun game that will appeal to RTS fans and WW2 lovers.

Order of War doesn’t require superhuman reflexes, leaving you enough time to plan your strategy, type a message in the text chat window, play about with the “cinematic camera” and so on. It looks like nobody at Wargaming believed in the multiplayer mode, but in the end it is more compelling than the single-player campaigns. All in all, Order of War is an outlet for experienced players and an object of derision for juvenile “hardcore gamers”.

Order of War offers enough challenge to satisfy the purists, but it’s also surprisingly inviting for newcomers. The World War II-setting is used very well and the cinematic perspective makes for a great addition. The graphics are disappointing though, and there are tons of little nags that start to irritate after some time.

A nicely packed RTS game based on WW2, paying great details to hystorical events and reconstruction. A solid, easy to master, fast-paced and yet tactically deep gameplay does not though suffice to raise this title above the others, due to some technical flaws and the lack of variety in missions and troops at your command.

You have to be ready to put some effort into liking Order of War. The things you would logically try first are the worst of what it has to offer. It's not really as deep as World in Conflict or Company of Heroes, but it does simple strategy decently well, and looks good doing it.

Order of War does little to justify a purchase above the likes of the truly great recent RTS efforts out there, giving gamers a short distraction before returning to the big guns of the genre.

Overall, Order of War asks consumers to forgive quite a few major gameplay errors in favor of a $10 price cut from the PC standard MSRP. This is a game that will be a tough sell for anybody who is a veteran of real-time strategy games, but it's not entirely bad. The right type of gamer (RTS newcomer/casual tactician) will be able to have some fun with it.

It's not a game for the ages but it is a reasonable introduction to real-time strategy for action fans.

In the end, Order of War is a typical World War II RTS through and through. It does what its supposed to do, namely provide two campaigns and some skirmish play, but that's about it.

A sweeping but imperfect RTS. One for casual gamers only. [Issue#26, p.47]

Minimum game, maximum animations. The fierce contest of nice-looking but rather unplayable real time strategies has its winner. [Nov 2009]

The one aspect that raises its head slightly above 'ordinary', and ventures into 'quite good, actually' territory is the Campaign mission design, which is both varied and well-balanced. [Dec 2009, p.125]

As good as the game looks, this is a setting that is so familiar that you can’t just give the player a bunch of 20 minute tank battles and call it a day. Not when Relic has experimented with resource capture zones and static defenses in Company of Heroes.

Boring combat. [Jan 2010, p.76]

Although there's no small amount of ambition on display, It's readily apparent that limited production values and adherence to tried-and-true methods cause Order of War to fall short of its target.