Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront

tons of fun! I love the complexity of it, with each unit having its own inventory and being able to pick up ammo and weapons from dead enemies. the tactics and everything are all wonderful. I only wish there were more single player campaigns. absolutely recommend. 9/10

As someone who’s a big fan of Men of War: Assault Squad 2, I can confidently say that Gates of Hell: Ostfront is a fantastic upgrade in nearly every way. Both games are phenomenal in their own right, so I don’t want it to seem like I’m downplaying MOWAS2, but this new installment brings a refreshing array of new features and improvements.

One of the standout elements of Gates of Hell is the variety of campaigns it offers. The single-player and co-op modes are both a blast, allowing for hours of strategic gameplay, whether you're tackling missions solo or teaming up with a few friends. The cooperative aspect in particular is where the game really shines—it's easy to get lost in the tactical depth and the team dynamics.

As for the multiplayer, I’ll admit I’m not much of a competitive player, so I can't speak much to the PvP side of things. I mostly enjoy jumping into private matches with friends and having fun without worrying too much about rankings. If you're into that casual, laid-back multiplayer experience, this game definitely delivers.

Overall, I picked up the entire game + DLC during a Spring Sale for just $30, and I can honestly say it’s been worth every penny. The gameplay is solid, the campaigns are engaging, and it’s an easy recommendation for fans of tactical strategy games.

If your getting this game for multiplayer don't.

It requires that everyone in your friend group has a good connection AND a good computer with SSD.
So if anyone lacks either the game forces everyone to wait for the slowest person to catch up.

Additionally it lacks game modes for pvp and co-op is poorly optimised.

Only buy this game for singleplayer and when it goes on a deep discount

Good game, It scratches the MOW itch.

The audio and explosions are really good. I'm glad to see it is expanding beyond the east with the DLC. Love the details to each unit and how they sometimes change and have seasonal camo.

Critique about conquest:
No way to hide locked units, gotta scroll through all these units.
On defense maps if I manage to wipe the floor with the opposing force the game doesn't end until the timer runs out, not fun.

On the game: Cheaper DLC please, The pricing has gone up just in time to 'lower' it for a sale and it discourages purchase.

I love it when I micromanage so poorly I lose 90% of my troops, but clutch with just a flak cannon Blitz and a dream... Seriously though, this game is like alcohol for me, absolutely needed to enjoy the day. Only problem I've had is crashing when loading into a map (though it is probably a very easy fix, just haven't bothered lol).

This is the successor of Sudden Strike and Men of War Assault Squad 2! So realistic and amazing!

This game is absolutely awesome, especially if you can get it at an on sale price. Most realistic WW2 RTS games with the sort of depth seen in GoH are rather clunky and feel a tad lacking in production value. That's not the case here. The gameplay is solid and intuitive. The tutorials are excellent and they don't bombard you with information. After running through an hour or so of pretty slick and engaging tutorial content, you'll be commanding your forces without much trouble.

This isn't to say that the game isn't hard. Most of my time in the game so far has been spent trying to crack the first German mission where you need to break through Russian defenses. It took some trial and error, and some reloading of old saves, but it's a good way to get familiar with the game. Mission 2 scales things up in a big way, and I'm really impressed by the depth, spectacle, and smoothness of the game.

Yes, the AI can be a bit stupid, especially when you're in 3rd person control and the AI seems to just stand there with head poking up out of trench lines, but for the scope and scale of the game this can be forgiven. If you're into WW2 and RTS games, get this.

AVOID! This company went out of business and I was unable to complete the tutorial as the controls do not work.

WOW, Amazing game. Like Battlefield, but then you can RTS and then control any unit 3rd person!

its honestly just a worse men of war assault squad 2, the direct tank control doesn't feel polished and just makes tank game play worse. there are less unique units than MoW AS2 and the UI is more condesnt and less usable.

It has a few problems but all things considered, i love this game its very fun and can be quite challenging.

Deep, engaging RTS with good coop mechanics.

Potentially fun game ruined by braindead AI, GARBAGE pathing, and being an extremely bloated crash-prone pos. Get it on the biggest sale and it might be worth it. I might write a more in-depth review for this later but I just wanted to put the basics out there for now.

I really like the fact that you have so many actions you can take with an individual unit. but its simply too much to manage as one person.

Your units will not try to get under any cover if they are flanked, even if they are already in a trench but an enemy gets along the length of the trench they'll just sit and get gunned down...medics will not attempt to heal or revive fallen allies on their own, even in the same squad. you have to find the body and right click on it perfectly. Better yet, the medic will choose the most direct route, use no cover and probably also get gunned down.
When a unit runs out of ammo, its not always obvious, so an infantry with an anti-tank rifle runs out of ammo and just stops doing anything. I did notice the indicator on the MG infantry when he was out of ammo, but not others.

To top if off, despite getting most of my men gunned down, losing artillery and having a tank effectively disabled, the enemy AI wouldn't just move in to finish me off already... so i was left staring at live battlefield where my troops had no ammo or anti-tank capability, and the enemy tanks wouldn't move in and just kill them to end my misery.

I wanted to like it, but after restarting 4 times just to figure out how to get initial supplies, and then spending ~20 minutes setting up defenses that should have taken less than 5 minutes to do in similar games, I'm kind of turned off.

compared to men at wars 1, has more moderned look.
unfortunately severely lacks QoL updates with interfaces and mechanics feeling incomplete.
community mods seem outdated with game engine updates breaking them.
i know mods would be dependent on versions to an extent but how bad would a game have to have been for them to even cause crashes from updates that can be barely felt.
cant even find mods that fix management aspects like the menus and ingame GUI.

6.5/10.
atleast its playable to an extent

The Hell Let Loose of RTS games, the direct control seemed like a gimmick from videos but controlling units is fun and you'd almost think you were playing warthunder when in a tank.
Slept on this and men of war for years mostly because it seemed too niche to maintain a player base but this entry has more players than Company of heroes and other mil sim strategy games like warno now.
Add matchmaking instead of player lobbies cause finding friends to play this kind of shit is hard.

I'm still learning how to play the game right and I'm loving the depth, the learning curve is engaging. I love how realistic it is; playing this game is actually war simulation, stakes are high, and errors are punishing, yet success is rewarding. I like company of Heroes and World in Conflict, and this game got the best of two worlds with added realism and the option to micro and get tactical :)

Honestly fun for 2 hours. I suck at RTS games but love playing them for some reason. Most games like Halo Wars or Warzone 2100 are on my level (with my serious skill issues). This game is really complex and I love it, but I struggle to beat the Ai on easy mode. I turtle shell a lot in RTS and im a firm believer in playing games the way you want to play them. This game does not support the way I want to play it. I struggle to react to more than one conflict at a time and the easy Ai in dynamic campaign is still quite punishing halfway through run. Yes i suck at these games, and no i dont want to change how i play them. Despite my skill issue, there are still quite a few EXTREMELY aggravating bugs, like highlighting vehicles and infantry and moving them to one place almost always gets them run over and killed. wtf. Also units have no descriptions and some research tree options dont tell you what they do. Poor attention to detail so far in CTE. Also game takes FOREVER to load. I have a fairly new gaming pc (Ryzen 7800X3D + 16gb RAM + Nvidia 3080) and loading a level takes 2-5 min each time stopping at ~90% and doing cache stuff. Phenomenal gameplay and graphics. The sound FX are my favorite part of this game. Hopefully devs can fix the gaps thought (also carefull selecting units as telling them to move on the terrain is a different keybind than telling them to move on the minimap and panning around the minimap is the interact button for units. Not very thought out.)

i like it but theres hardly any content you have to pay more for the rest... ended up refunding ..

A realistic WW2 RTS that does not hold your hand. Currently going through the Airborne campaign and it feels as hopeless as it might have in those days. The icing on the cake is the ability to direct control individual units through either 3rd person or overview. Allows for tactical decisions that you would be limited by in other RTS games.

A love project for old men of war vets and new comers alike.

Very good game for the price, I keep coming back to it for the satisfying gritty atmosphere which I credit to the sound effects of weapons and the visual effects in destroying vehicles. Game runs on an old and flawed engine but it's still fun, and the devs keep rolling out updates. Be mindful that vehicle path-finding is often awful

Honestly of all the ww2 rts games ive played this is the best one, the character control feature is super neat and the tank combat is great overall 10/10 game definitely worth picking up especially for 3$ on sale

absolutely amazing game and its safe to say it has basically all ive ever wanted from a WW2 RTS (or an RTS game in general for that matter.) very replayable, loads of content with more coming constantly, and its currently on an absolutely amazing sale. definitely worth the full price for the amount of units features and whatnot alone, safe to say its one of the games i can easily see myself having hundreds and hundreds of hours in

Probably the best modern ww2 RTS on the market, insanely complex mechanics, sizeable unit rosters for each faction (historically accurate too which is nice), and a really cool third-person control mechanic which is just the cherry on top.

Voice acting is uhhhh not the best, but still lightyears ahead of MoW (lmao). Modding scene goes pretty hard too, but yet to reach the heights of original MoW mods (yet).

Multiplayer/co-op is awesome, the campaigns are fun (though some are CRAZY hard), and I definitely recommend this game for any ww2/RTS fan.

Desperately wanted to like this game. Started out good but after a couple hours I realized how scuffed the ai targeting is. Spamming attack on an enemy 50m from your tank only to have them turn towards something else near out of sight and get destroyed by what you were targeting.

Very realistic WW2 RTS game. Tank mechanics are similar to War Thunder, infantry gameplay is peak with many different type of equipment. Most fun is to play artillery, with many different pieces. Just perfection. 10/10

Endlessly replayable, also wish all games had such committed dev teams.

It's a pretty good game. It mixes RTS with the opportunity to control the unit yourself. It's a very cool and well-done game for people who like war games and RTS.

This game is very underrated and a hidden gem. If you like tactics, destructible environments, realistic vehicles and armaments, historically accurate missions (mostly), then buy this game. Every soldier has their own inventory and can find/equip/drive things found on the battlefield.

With mods is even better but base campaigns are great. Highly recommend the Airborne DLC because it's basically Band of Brother's simulator.

Cons: Sometimes very micromanagement heavy although the individual unit control is also best thing about game. There are also a few bugs and AI pathing issues that are highly frustrating.

Great game. Victory will be achieved mostly on a tactical level, but micromanaging my units is so cool!

- Unoptimized on a good computer. Lag spikes. I thought it was my old computer that made it lag but on this I can run Arma3 on top and also Arma reforger and including Stalker2...but NOOO not this game. I had to install it again and was really hoping it was my old computer that couldnt handle it..but no...

Not enjoyable.

Single/co-op player is not bad, overall a good time, but for online you can just cheese most fights with infantry and just win by playing fps with some rts elements overall kinda disappointment as I got a lot of this dlc. Other side note usa is overprice for not a lot of advantage.

Addition, it is buggy as sometimes shit don't work and when it does finally work, it goes nuts and cause massive casualties on your side.

The game is overall a lot of fun, and it has a lot of replayability with the conquest mode. Certain aspects of the game can be frustrating, like arty refusing to fire at will at anything unless it's within direct line of sight, and friendly AA guns being insanely inaccurate. I was trying to use a Soviet AA truck to clean up enemy gun placements, but I essentially had to be at point blank range to have a hope of the rounds laying anywhere remotely near them. If someone would make an updated weapon accuracy mod, it'd make the game a lot nicer.

This game combines 2 genres that doesnt realy work with each other, rts and 3rd person shooter, i does a pretty good job at it tho, hoever this game requires enormous amount of micromanagement and punishes you heavily for not paying attention your units die almost instantly in a large amount of scenarios, however this game is very fun in smaller scenarios and in slower paced games id recommend this game for casual play, but competetive is just hell

Easily the best WW2 RTS game out, I recommend getting all the DLC's for the best experience but it's a fantastic game

This game is so awesome. Please buy it if it looks interesting to you. I need these devs to keep cookin.

Perfect game. 10/10

Please make the DLCs affordable and not one KEBAB price... I know there is content to play and dlcs bring happiness, but kebab is kebab.....

This game has ALREADY glitched for the first few days, not allowing to play multiplayer, conquest etc. and the loading times were terrible, clearing 200gb of space made it work okay-ish for a couple days on the highest graphics (conquest still always crashed after loading). However after some time playing the game, it became EVEN worse, every single mode took 10x time loading, lagged TERRIBLY even on the minimal graphics. Unplayable. (I also never downloaded any mods)

Brilliant game i have a lot of the DLCs and they are all great and very fun to play and this is a game where you can play it over and over again without getting bored

Taking direct control of any unit you want doesn't make up for the AI's inability to do anything on their own.

This game is the perfect combination of RTS and 3rd person. You can organise perople as groups and select individuals. Good use of cover and applying military tactics. I think it's the perfect combination. Really enjoying this. Good missions and the campaign modes are great. Particularly enjoyed D-Day and having to scale cliffs and grenade gun positions. Skirmishes are also really great.

Haven't played a huge amount online tbh. So can'treally comment.

This game is hella fun, the only issue i have is the AI is morbidly painful, there seems to be little path finding when you're in a trench if you move up your units decide to get up and out the trench in the line of fire of anything n everything just to jump back into the trench instead of going through the trench itself.

When in direct control mainly 3RD person if you're with the squad when trying to attack the opposition the AI seems to get in your line of fire and more times out of non end up head-shoting your team as they like to take point and stand in front of you.

with the negatives out the way, it is a really enjoyable game, Liberation / Airborn DLC are quite decent the Main missions feel weighty and like you're actually completing it in stages yet its still the same mission.

If you played MOW2 its on the same lines as that, If you're looking for a COH experience this isn't that its worth a try, i would recommend getting it on sale in case you don't like it overall it a decent game, DLC is overpriced though in my opinion but def worth a try 8/10

too many dlcs and not enough base game stuff but amazing game way better than AS2

So I don't have that much hours to give a full review. I didn't touched multiplayer and most of the game modes except campaign and conquest, and I'm still combating learning curve.

However it's a great RTS game with clear love given to it by developers. If you are artistic to WW2 and would like to see the most obscure units and equipment which never appeared in mainstream games and played with them War Thunder by switching to 3rd/1st view, give it a go. I hope the devs will continue in exploring this less known frontiers of WW2.

Other then that, I would love little bit more QOL features for controlling the infantry (maybe I just sucks at it still), expansion on conquest mode and most of them AI which deserves some improvements. Friendly as well, it's little bit funny when your vehicle decide to maneuver around the wooden barrel to not hit it, just to run over your AT emplacement...

this game puts other strategy games to shame, one of the best I have ever played, with the ability to take direct control of each of your units, more RTS games should start doing that, it is the best feature.

CTA GoH Ostfront (Mouthful title that should probably change considering the scope of the game has expanded drastically) is the closest thing you can get to a true Men of War: Assault Squad 2 successor. The game runs relatively well considering whats going on during regular gameplay, its far less jank than its predecessors and the development team consistently delivers quality updates, hotfixes, etc. These people have a good understanding of what they're working with, being comprised mostly of modders.

My only real complaints with the game are some of the lingering AI jank (pathing and general behaviour lacking all common sense) and the fact that the game is only going to match MOWAS 2 in terms of sheer content if you opt to buy all the DLC, which gets expensive fast. I still think the DLC is reasonably priced considering the effort that goes into the extensive research, accurate modelling and general design put into everything (some of the missions in some DLCs do not reflect this though in my opinion) but its definitely something you need to consider with how barren the base game can feel. Workshop support is good as the game retains that healthy modding scene that the other games have seen, and its generally a fun time. Best experienced with friends on PvE with some DLC/Mods and difficulty tuned to your liking. Easily one of the best options for a WW2 RTS game, just wait for a sale as the game sees generous discounts often.

great game!! it's better if you play it in multiplayer with a couple of friends and make a last stand on some of the awesome maps the community has made

It's the Arma of RTS's. Destruction, lighting things on fire and having the fire spread, unit options are huge, direct control of any unit. This blows every other WW2 RTS out of the water and is a true labor of love.

they know how buggy the game is but refuse to fix it.

Gates of Jank: Ostclunk

The controls and AI in this game are fucking terrible, unresponsive and clunky. Trying to control infantry is a nightmare. What a joke.