Theatre of War 2: Africa 1943

It's just like Men of War with erectile dysfunction

Pro Tip;
Spam LMB as soon as you launch the game, otherwise your ears will suffer. Trust.

Precursor to the Men of War series to some degree.

Gameplay has a very similar layout (start with a group of units, make them complete objectives), but the interface is more similar to "Combat Mission" than MOW. There is some nice continuity where your units gain skills and ranks from one battle to the next, giving you incentive to keep them alive. Overall the game is a slog, but it ultimately rewards your strategic thinking and bold decision-making.

If you are an avid MOW enjoyer and haven't checked out this series, take a look. Gives good perspective on where MOW came from.

Great in-depth Strategy game. Just a hassle to run on a modern machine.

A great game especially given it's age. I like the large maps and the ability to fight at long range which is realistic. When you zoom in the detail is very good.It is one of those games that you have to read the manual before you play, but it is very rewarding once you understand the mechanics as it has a moral system as well as realistic line of sight and armor penetration.

It is an excellent game, but only for those who are looking for this particular type of RTS. The only annoying aspect is the pausing when a unit dies, but that can be remedied by going to the steam configuration option of the game before you start, as the option is not available in the main menu of the game to disable it.

nope. even the tutorial is odd. go to a box and pick up an antitank weapon. big laugh when nothing happened at the unclickable box. no sorry thats not a tutorial thats just a waste of time.

first mission: you have 105 howitzer but no 76 antitank. yeah right... the tanks raid u like hell without no antitank. i would have headshotted the general if he sends me on a mission without a antitank gun. totaly inaccurate battlereplay. DEAR DEVS U SIMPS, THEY HAD MORE ANTITANK GUNS THAN TANKS.

I think this game has held up for its age in 2023. I'm not very good at RTS games as I can't multitask very well. This game allows the player to pause the game at will, slow down its speed of the battle, etc. so time can be spent thinking about the next move. My only real complaint about the game is that there have been two times now where I have defeated the enemy and the mission should end, but it won't because there's one or two random infantrymen hiding in a building, or have run away off the map, and I'm not able to pursue them and kill them to end the match. As others have said, this is for a niche player who likes a slower paced RTS.

I really love games where you get to pick out your units and outfit them with specific weapons and have tactical battles between your teams in neat environments and what not. Saw gameplay of this and thought it could be fun. It is not. The AI is just terrible.
-Had a german MP40 gunner pinned in a building, he ran outside and my entire squad ran around and took cover in different positions, crouched, stood up, all the actions they could possibly do except shoot. Dude ran into the desert and we never saw him again.
-Got a tank and an enemy tank drove up on us, phased in and out of visibility despite no obstruction, and then it drove into us and we couldn't see it again. Tanks have a minimum distance they can fire from, and the enemy tank kept charging us when we'd move away so we could never shoot each other.
-When telling a tank to move, you can't angle it like other strategy games, so it drives backwards towards enemies like anti-tank guns.
-My man with a rocket launcher stared down a tank and it stared back. Both kept moving and would not engage each other until they finally both shot and my guy won.

Keep in mind this all happened in the tutorial. I haven't played a campaign, and I don't think I'm gonna try. Bought the collection for $3 and I'm thinking of getting those $3 back. This game is a great concept; the environment, weapons and everything looks good, but the AI is worthless.

A great blend of simulator and arcade , great if you want more depth than the men of war series but without the complexities of simulators like graviteam tactics or combat mission

Theatre of War 2 is not for everyone. You either like it or you don't, as the game is more focused for young adults and above. It is one of those games that you have to read the manual before you play, but it is very rewarding once you understand the mechanics as it has a moral system as well as realistic line of sight and armor penetration.

It is an excellent game, but only for those who are looking for this particular type of RTS. The only annoying aspect is the pausing when a unit dies, but that can be remedied by going to the steam configuration option of the game before you start, as the option is not available in the main menu of the game to disable it.

Theatre of War 2: Africa 1943 is a sequel to the original Theatre of War; set during the later stages of the war in North Africa, particularly in Tunisia, Players engage in tough desert, canyon, and suburban battles either in one of three campaigns or in multiplayer against other players accomplishing objectives to achieve victory.

Being a Real-Time Tactics game, ToW2 features the management of divisions, regiments, and an army via pre-battle preparation, mission interludes, and post-battle debriefs in which players can assign stats to surviving veteran units and manage their deployment. If doing particularly well players may receive reinforcements from high command and then assign these new units to their army.

Focusing on realism above all else, this is not an RTS like Command & Conquer or Company of Heros, this is very different from Steel Division or Wargame, you will carefully place your military assets; moving them sparingly in the interest of a proper defense as not to interfere with ingame RNG/stats and attack at precise moments to inflict massive damage on the enemy for a smug Bernard Montgomery or ungrateful German High Command

ToW2 features three campaigns in the vanilla game(with the Centauro DLC adding a new campaign and faction: the Italian Army) centering around the exploits of US, UK, and Wehrmact Army forces; each campaign varies in length, some missions have decisions for the player to make, and each has a distinctly different play style making for good singleplayer replay value. US Army missions focus largely on the quick and active use of light and medium tanks during and surrounding the events of Battle of Kasserine Pass, UK/Desert Rats missions comparatively demonstrates the use of ambush tactics and anti-tank guns to make for 'swift and precise' battle also around the Kasserine Pass, lastly the Wehrmacht focuses on combined arms warfare in which the player will frequently use their Panzers in conjunction with Stukas and FW190s to overwhelm the Allies during the final offensive into Algeria. It's worth mentioning that Centauro has the longest campaign compared to the others or "Commander of a Stuart" which serves as a side-story to the US campaign. Italian Army missions take on a wide variety of objectives not to mention roles giving the Italians their own unique play style and I highly suggest getting it with the base game at the extra ~$2 it costs.

Compared to ToW; one will ask what the biggest differences are: for one the game's interface has been made more friendly and useful, there is less of an emphasis on keyboard strokes and more an emphasis on placing units and overlooking the battle play out, when units die the game will pause and allow players to quickly asses the overall situation and if a change in tactics is needed. The field of view has been augmented to better account for range and the addition of smoke rounds and more clearly defined classes make the game easier to pick up than it's predecessor.

At the same time ToW2 has an awkward status compared to the first in that it is more or less a game that after being cut up ended up as two games, which try to focus on their specific 'theatres' to greater degree than simply World War II as a whole. Despite this ToW2 simply does not compare to the degree of content found in ToW and have a clear feeling of dissonance between them when it came to the effort put forward to make Africa: 1943 vs Kursk: 1943. ToW featured campaigns from five armies(Polish, French, British/America, USSR, German) across multiple fronts and at the heights of WW2, each army featured full arsenals of units to throw at each other, with it coming down to how they were used rather than playing to the strengths and weaknesses of unit types and introduce a kind of 'meta' into the game as ToW2 tries to do and sometimes succeeds at but also sometimes fails at.

A:1943 lacks many units one would expect to find on the battlefields of Tunisia and this is not exceptional to any one side in the game. This seems to be in the interest of forcing players to play differently with each side and learn them but your personal mileage on this design decision may vary greatly for this game compared to ToW, ToW3, or even Kursk: 1943. For the record here is a list of units missing (by type) for the vanilla sides(not including things added in Centauro):

US - Any Anti-Tank Guns, Mortars(M7 Priest), Scout Vehicles (Centauro Adds: Assault Guns, Heavy Tanks).
UK - Churchill, Matilda II, Howitzers(25-pdr), Assault Guns (Bishop SPG), Static AA, PIATs, Boys AT (Centauro Adds: Crusader Tank, Daimler)
GR - Panzerfausts, StuG (Centauro Adds: Pz.II, Howitzers, Sdkfw variants)
Italy: Mortars, Air Forces, Howitzers

The move to put a meta in the game works very much in the games favor when wanting to learn the game(which even then can be described to have a steep learning curve) but on other hand it can make battles unnecessarily hard, particularly for the British, gameplay can feel very static owing to their lack of tanks and reliance on M3 Stuarts, if available , having only one real tank in the base game: the Valentine Tank, which does nothing to the Tiger I and will struggle against any model Panzer II+. This issue is also true for the Americans, who can only really play to limited aggressive styles due to a lack of unit variety(without the DLC they only really use M3 Grants and M3 Stuarts with the rare sight of an M4 Sherman being just that), and the Germans that can have their weaknesses exploited consistently to the point of defeat (the Italians are no different and can have the same problem in it's own flavor for their faction).

This imbalance is quintessentially demonstrated with how the game handles Anti-Tanks in which, besides tanks, only the British have AT that can destroy tanks from an exceptional distance and all other AT weapons in the game are largely infantry based and usually result in infantry death with the slightest miscalculation.

Partially I chalk this issue up to the fact the game took this brand new approach, the team lacking experience with the approach, and applied said approach to *four* different factions without a clear guiding idea of what 1C was going for; it results in nothing short of a storm at it's worst.

Yet I come back time and time again to this game due to its commitment to the setting, the sheer attention to detail, and the mechanics that while initially seem difficult have their own built in rewards and give me a consistent feeling of satisfaction when having pulled off a victory or even just opening the turning point, this game is the beginning of ToW being more accessible and playable to a wider audience. It's still a niche war simulation but it's one you won't regret playing if you give it an honest chance and games set after it (Kursk, BfC, ToW3) only improve further on the solid foundation laid by this game's interpretation of series mechanics.

NOTE: While I hold this game close to my heart I compare it often to Kursk. If you are curious how they are similar, and how Battle for Caen weathers with the "meta problem" as a DLC, I suggest checking out my review of ToW Kursk: 1943 and ToW2: BfC.

Not bad, fun, buggy sometimes but still fun.

Note: you are going to want to turn off the smart pause in the config menu when you first start up, it is super annoying.

Its a bit difficult but you pretty much use tanks to do all the attacking and allow them to gain fire superiority and then run your infantry up to clear stuff out.

There's a good mod for this game to sort out how it plays.

An excellent balance between Arcade and Simulation on the North African front of WWII. Rating - should to try: (9.0 out of 10)

Pros:
✅Incredibly low price for such a good project.

✅The presence of Italian troops in the game, completely changes the gameplay, you understand that your troops are worse in everything, the tanks’ guns are weak, the armor is terrible, and there are very few armor-piercing shells for tank destroyers (only they can penetrate Sherman tanks). Sadly Italy wasn’t added to the first part; it would have been interesting to know how other countries fought and sometimes understand the reason for their defeat.

✅The landscape is very well designed, and the atmosphere in the cities is very beautiful, which makes them pleasant for defense (of course, they are also completely destructible), the only thing annoying is the trenches, in which the connection between them is visible.

✅Good sounds, especially the sounds of gunshots and the impact of their shells at a very high level, you can immediately feel the power of the shell itself.

✅Also pleased with the design of the weapon, its flatness, armor penetration, and accuracy depending on the projectile. (for example, a sub-caliber is more accurate than an armor-piercing one, and an armor-piercing one is, in turn, more accurate than a cumulative one)

✅The game is easy to learn, it also keeps a balance between the Arcade “Man of War” and the Hardcore simulator “Mius Front”. What makes it universal with minimal experience a person can play right away and doesn’t need to learn anything.

Minuses:
❌Identical sounds for weapons. (well, it’s too repetitive, especially on rifles and artillery)

❌Infantry problems, for example, visibility - an enemy soldier is shooting from a house at your people who took up defensive positions at the crossroads. But they can’t see him 10 meters away. (You need to bring the tank in and destroy the house with direct fire).

❌A small number of missions, and some of them are also short.

The note:.
⚡The game, if the developers had followed the path of the first part, would have become very popular. The game is what it should have been, first of all, due to the lack of support for the game and a normal editor (the game has the worst editor I’ve ever seen), I’m not even talking about Steam workshop, which doesn’t exist - this is one of those things that save games. Knowing people who love military strategies, they rate this game quite highly. But for some reason it did not develop as it should, the amount of content decreased, and the graphics after this part remained unchanged. But there were hopes, and we were waiting for its continuation, but unfortunately, it did not work out.

I really liked this game when I encountered it some time ago and it a classic realistic WW2 RTS for me. Eugen's Steel Division 2 did produce some associations with Theatre of War (while their Wagame series reminded me heavily of World in Conflict and I really appreciated that they filled this niche after WiC died for some reason). In general, ST2 is a superior game, of course, but ToW has some interesting campaigns with an option to keep your units like in Panzer General - something ST2 does not have, for example. If you liked Steel Division, Wargame series, World In Conflict or something similar, you may like this game as well. ToW 2 Africa was my favorite while ToW Korea was a really underdeveloped game, unfortunately.

One of the best war games/RTS I've played

• Realistic units, nice, detailed models, a ton of them.
  
• Interesting missions, all based on history.
  
• Different shells and calibers, shell penetration, line of sight, ballistics, it's a detailed and complex simulation.
  
• "Morale" system, soldiers will panic and refuse to follow orders, both your troops and the enemy.
  
• Soldiers will take a few moments to follow orders, which adds to the realism of the delay in giving/receiving orders.
  
• Micro/macro strategy, you can micromanage a single soldier picking up a machine gun or manning a canon, or macro manage a bunch of tanks and infantry squads.
  
• Uncanny level of detail.
  
• Good sound FX.
  
  

If you are looking for a World War 2 game which takes place in the North African campaign then sure, this game is for you. The game offers 3 campaign modes: Germany which offers 6 missions, Great Britain which has only 4 missions and the United States with 5 missions, plus a DLC for 1,99€ which includes a Italian campaign. However, the AI handling is terrible. The game has multiplayer but it's very very hard to get it to work. You have to download some sort of software and have to set it up from there. I myself have not tried the multiplayer version of the game, but my friend said he has and that it's not worth it.


Infantry is pretty much useless and retarded. If you order a squad of infantry to move somewhere it will take them 6 seconds to start moving, furthermore if you order the infantry into cover while they are in the middle of a gunfight they will stop for about 5 seconds, aim their rifle very very slowly, and then fire a shot, and only then proceed to move to your intended objective. The only good use of infantry for me was to either have them in trenches and take potshots at enemies who are a kilometer away and occasionally getting a kill. Or having them set near stationary MGs or other support weapons and using the infantry as canon fodder in case the support weapon crews die and replace them with said infantry. Another good use of infantry is charging 1 or 2 guys who have Anti Tank grenades against tanks, they might actually kill them, that is if they actually throw them.

Tanks: Speaking of tank combat, this is where the game shows its's good side. The tank combat in this game does feel unique to some other RTS's. You can order a tank to fire at an enemy tank's specific part: tracks,turret,hull and so on. Tank crews use their vision slits to spot enemies for example, if the hull machine gunner of a tank is killed then the tank won't see any enemies from the front right side, this applies to each member depending on where their vision slits are located. The tank AI isn't much better than the infantry but it's slightly better. I myself mainly used tanks in all my battles, I only used the infantry to take control of trenches and hold down positions.

Support units: There are several types of support units, AT guns, AA guns/trucks, HMG's, Artillery, halftracks/transport trucks.

Special abilities: these are abilities you can use in the middle of battle, they can't be chosen or edited. You usually get a anti tank
bombing run, a regular bombing run, fighter planes who take out enemy plane call-in's. Then there are off map artillery strikes, you usually get about 40-130 shells that you can fire, depending if it's a mortar or a howitzer call in. Please note that these abilities are exclusive to the mission you are playing and can't be changed.

Reinforcement abilities: there are 2 types of reinforcement abilities, one is a tank reinforcement which spawns 3-5 tanks which you can use. And the second ability is a infantry reinforcement, which spawns some infantry squads either in halftracks or just on foot, sometimes field artillery is attached to the reinforcement ability. You usually get these abilities at mid/late game. These abilities are also exclusive to the mission you are playing.

Missions: Now, there is one thing to say about the missions. When you attack you get a very small amount of troops to attack, at most you get 4-5 tanks and 3-6 infantry squads, and then whatever support equipment you chose. And the enemies will always outnumber and outgun you. The same thing applies when you are defending, you will get smaller amounts of troops to defend with, and only a few support weapons. When I played defensive missions as the UK or US i noticed that the Germans will attack with say, 15-20 tanks and ~100 soldiers from several locations, and you barely will be able to cover all areas of the attack. In short the AI will be superior to you in numbers.

Bugs: One of the most game ''breaking'' bugs of this game is that, when a soldier dies the entire game is paused and you are teleported to the dead soldier and his name/rank is shown to you. This is a feature in the game and it can be turned off, but sometimes it bugs out and it still pauses your game, even if you have turned it off. I encountered the bug several but then it kind of just disappeared. One of my friends who used to play this game said that he enjoyed this feature but I found it to be annoying.

Closing thoughts: I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I will occasionally re-play missions, and sometimes use the mission editor to create some missions and try them out. The game may be hard at times but when you complete a mission you will feel like a strategic genius. I suggest you try the game out, buy it when it's on sale. If you like World War 2 games and don't mind that the game does look crappy and that the AI is pretty bad then try it. I wrote this review at like 3 in the morning so I'm sorry about any sentences that make no sense or are grammatically incorrect. It's just that my brain started working at like 200% and I thought writing a review for this game would be a good idea.

Very disappointing game, with a horrible camera and rather stupid AI and almost no environment to work with.
You also get thrown in different scenarios and can't work with the most of your units (you should at least be able to build some defences).

The idea behind the game is great tho, but the implemantatio is rather poor.

As some people have said, previous steam versions seem better then earlier non steam versions. Not surprising really, all fully patched etc. I am coming (back) to this from Graviteam games, which i have to say are better IMHO but direct comparisons are perhaps unfair as Graviteam are not strict RTS more war simulators. However, i now better understand the trickle down chain of command and fog or war aspects better coming from Graviteam rather than say CoH type games which are very different in feel and gameplay. My inner grognard is enjoying these titles all over again as i try to understand the influence individual soldier's skill plays in spotting, accuracy, driving and moral etc and the time it takes for commands to reach front line soldiers from commanders not to mention sheer random variables due to act of god or just lack of moral fiber! I say enjoy them for what they are in a suite of similar games and avoid making direct comparisons as they all have plenty of merit. Only criticism i would say is the lack of dynamic campaigns but editors do allow custom or historical scenarios to be designed and shared. Try buy in a sale then you definately won't ♥♥♥♥ off your wallet. Enjoy and don't think about COH, MoW, or even Graviteam.

This game is STILL incredibly good for it's time. I recently purchased the battlefront Combat missions black sea and red thunder, and to MY taste, I still like the theater of war games a little bit more. And yes, you can't beat the price on theater of war series, compared to the almost $100 I just paid for black sea and red thunder.

I recommend this game for tank lovers (like me), and military history Fanatics.

Pros

*Intensely detailed Units and Environment

*The most Realistic Tank Physics I've ever seen

*Has a lot of tactics and strategies to defend and attack

*Pretty Awesome graphics when maxxed out

*There is a map editor

Cons
*Lacks replayability, like skirmish maps

*Needs more players in Multiplayer

*Some infantry are wusses

Recommended price- If you can get it at 50% or below, buy it!

8.5/10

This is the game to buy if you are a WW2 maniac like me. Though there isn't that much hardware that you can get your hands on the stuff that you do get is very well modelled. M3 medium tanks are my favorite because it's so fun to see them roll down a hill mowing down infantry with their MG turret, shooting an armored car with their 37mm, and shooting a pzIII with their 75mm. It is a shame that there aren't more vehicles. The only British vehicle that appears is the valentine (Only one that appears in campaign idk if more) but if you are expected to see the iconic british vehicles that ruled the desert like the churchhill, matilda, or the crusader, you will be kept waiting. Most American vehicles make an appearance including two variants of the M4. The only iconic vehicle missing from the germans garage are the spgs based off of the pzIII chasis like the stug. The Germans have by far the most complete arsenal as they have multiple variants of the pzIII&IV, multiple armored cars and apcs, and the famous Tiger.

GAMEPLAY
All combat is fully modelled. This is not COH where the max range of a tank gun is a 50 meters. In fact, most cannons can shoot across the entire map (though they won't penetrate armor very good that way). Any thing your units can see they can shoot assuming that their target is not outside their maximum range which will be a problem with smgs but will rarely happen with anything else. A tricky part of commanding is putting your assets in places where they have fields of fire. In most rts if a bump in the terrain or part of the crest a hill is blocking the fire the game will let the bullet travel though the obstruction. This is not a game where you can micro manage things other than the major assets. The major flaw in this game is control. It is how you say, not very good. For starters the default move order is a fire and move drill which is useful for tanks which don't have to stop to fire but will get your infantry killed all the time as they stop to fire for a few seconds, move a couple of meters, then repeat instead of just running into their trench. There is also an incredibly irritating latency to orders given to infantry and sometimes they simply ignore what you are telling them to do. Try to tell them to get in cover while they are in a fire animation? They will spend 3 seconds getting fired at before listening. The controls of the vehicles are passable at best. There is not way to tell vehicles to orient their armor without telling them to advance and sometimes they will stop firing for no reason or repeatedly fire at a target they have no hope of penetrating meanwhile infantry are right next to them lobbing AT grenades. The biggest negative is that there were FAAAR too many defense missions. More than 75% of the were defensive missions and half of those were pure defensive which means that you don't need to move your troops around at all. Some of them however required skillful use of vehicles to reinforce sectors and skillful placement of AT guns to maximize their effectiveness.

The choice of deployable units is somewhat limited, the vehicle, terrain and building damage physics are pretty detailed (tanks can be disabled in a number of ways, buildings can be either partially or completely destroyed, aircraft bombs, artillery and tank rounds leave craters in the terrain), the only downside is the length of the campaign (there are quite a few campaign choices) but they're all less than 10 missions long. By far though this is a very decent game and i would recommend it to anyone who used to enjoy the close combat series of games.

This game is great. Good mix of Empire Total War (controlling AI), and CoH [Company of Heroes] (Independent AI). Good game for anyone who loves hardcore strategy, realism, or just having fun with history. Graphics are stunning and the realism is mindblowing, this game going all the way down to naming each and every bot, with non repeating names! Highly suggest for anyone, worth the money.