Iron Harvest

This game needs a sequel I don't understand why people don’t like it it's so good I wish more people played it. I also wish they had made more DLC for it instead of letting it die. I understand that the story isn't the best, and the AI could be better, but overall, it's still a great game.

I played this after the DoW4 announcement. Wanted to check what it's about and maybe set my expectations for DoW4.

Overall the DNA of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War is very apparent here, the team is obviously full of fans, the dedication and attention to detail is great. I love the attention to the campaign overall, it's well written and progresses very well. This is obviously a product of passion.

The game is not perfect, could be overwhelming early on, some pathing issues where squads split, maybe some mechs are too clunky.. but overall none of this takes away from the experience. Very good game, and sets my expectations very highly for DoW4.

I wanted to like this game. I remember when they released the Pre Alpha in 2016, and many said the combat feels clunky and in 2024 it's the same.
Art style is very good, campaign is good, but the fighting is clunky. I wanted to play the challenge mode where you have to defend against 10 waves. Damn. I was pressing R like there is no tomorrow, constant unit replacement, constant retreat. Pathfinding is not good, units jump out of cover and get shot down. Ai is basic.
Only thing they had to copy was COH combat and this game would be golden.
I recommend this game for campaign only.

Jumped into the game and immediately got into the action through the conquest game mode. This is essentially a Company of Hero's clone with a 1920's aesthetic and steampunk mechs. What more could you ask for?
The negative reviews seem to revolve around how the game being poorly balanced and "abandoned." What I can see is it has a straightforward rock paper scissors game play, including 3 distinct modes that can be played solo including: campaign, skirmish and a very simple Total War style battle map with select missions attached to each territory. This is a solid game as is especially when on sale for $7 for everything. It may not be Starcraft 2 or CoH 2 and it may be very straightforward but it does not need to be complex and, most importantly, it is fun.

As a Company of Heroes 2 player with over 1000 hours, I would recommend this game on sale. I really enjoyed the single player campaign.

Pros:
- Beautiful graphics, design, dieselpunk. Original and imaginative. The design styles are consistent and polished.
- Well-directed cutscenes - which are many!
- Interesting plot & characters. Deep, very insightful, captures the essence and brutality of war. Inspired by WW2.
- Eastern European voice actors, which are a refreshing change compared to always hearing American. They are not perfect, but very passionate. There was an attempt to put on an American accent, which was hilariously bad.
- Well-written and thought out dialogue.

Cons:
- EVERY VEHICLE MOVES AS FAST AS AN ELEFANT TANK DESTROYER, WITH ENGINE DAMAGE. No wheeled tanks. Forget about Blitzkrieg because the war will be over by then.
- Terrible UI. For example to cancel the production of a unit, you have to click the --> arrow to scroll to the unit and cancel it in the unit groups tab. The unit groups tab only displays about 8 units at a time.
- Infantry variation is quite bland between the factions. Every faction has the same: flame, MG, anti-tank, etc.
- the air artillery unit is OP. You can just build it and win the game with the only 1 type of unit. Every faction has the same unit.
- dead player count and multiplayer, sadly.
- connecting to their servers is problematic at times

That being said I'll still say that I really enjoyed the campaign. The World Missions is fun, but gets stale after a while because of the air artillery spamming and repetition. Definitely worth it on sale. No regrets buying.

Never listen to those who put negative reviews on this game. This game is so fun and full of amazing things. There's more to this game than meets the eye. Hoping there will be more factions to be added and massive updates. More power for the devs.

I got the game on a pretty steep discount. Only cost $6. I was pretty excited having played the board game a lot. The campaign took me 20 hours to play through. The narrative was really good with lots of fairly long cutscenes between missions.
The graphics were great. The mechs in particular look very cool walking around the map and there are heaps of different designs.
The game play wasn't anything new for an RTS. There is almost no base building. You can only build 3x buildings. An HQ, Barracks and Workshop and they just spawn units. No research track or workers or anything. You gain resources by holding key points across the map. There are only 2x resources steel and iron. So compared to say Age of Empires one this is a pretty big step down on complexity.
The different units each have pros and cons and you take advantage of cover and buildings but most of the time you just select all your units and click attack any available enemy. Units get blown up too quickly to really work on getting into good cover or focusing specific units on specific enemies. There are some times where you get to defend and engineers can build cover points but half the time your own mechs walk through them and destroy them so that can be frustrating. Also you build a bunch of cover and the enemy just walks around it.
The campaign missions have a few different types of approach to keep things fresh. Some of them go for more of a stealth approach where you just have like a single unit and try to avoid enemies which can be slow and frustrating. I didn't like them much.
Unlike the board game you can only play 3 factions which I was a bit surprised and disappointed about. The three factions are all fairly identical as well. Although they look a bit different they function the same.
Overall for $6 it was a steal to just have fun marching mechs around the map and blowing things up. The narrative of the campaign has lots of great moments as well with mystery, betrayal and the consequences of war. Not to mention sending the Bear, Wojtek in to wreck stuff.