Which Men of War should I buy?

[Soviet Heavy]

Yo, RTS players and followers of Steam's Midweek Madness events, I have a question!

I've wanted to try out the Men of War franchise for a while, and now it's on sale. Which title do you suggest I start with? Should I try out the original, or jump right into Assault Squad, Vietnam or Condemned heroes? I have enough money to buy one of them.

Which one is the best to choose? For comparison, I intend to contrast the experience against Company of Heroes. How does it play compared to Relic's game, and with COH as former experience, would that influence me to buy any particular Men of War title more than another?

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Well, do you want to play multi player? Then you got to buy Ass Squad. No doubt about that.
But it has a bad single player part so if that's what you want get the first game or Red Tide. Don't bother with Vietnam unless you really like that theater. The engine is not suited for jungle and the campaign is rather shit.

I don't know what Condemed Heroes is like, but it seems to be SP only and a story based campaign like Red Tide.

 

[Andy Dittmar]

personally I think my favourite is red tide but I love single player so it depends, hope that helps

 

[flames09]

Ah, I have been meaning to ask that as well. However..

For modding, which MOW should I get, each one is usually incompatible with the last ones mods due to engine changes.

I am big on the modding on MOW but I have limited funds, could someone inform me which Men of War has the largest and most up to date modding community other than the original?

Thanks,
Alan

 

[Fat Hippo]

I thought Red Tide and Vietnam were total bullshit, but maybe that's because I don't like missions where you only have a few guys and have to take out dozens of soldiers and tanks with this tiny force. It's just a trial and error exercise in frustration. Condemned Heroes is supposed to be similar.

The original Men of War would be a good starting point, since it doesn't start out as obscenely hard. Assault Squad is pretty fun too, but I recommend playing the original first anyway, as this game is one of the more complex RTS's out there. Despite not being able to build buildings, I would rate it as more "hardcore" than COH.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I should add, by the way, that I consider the first Men of War game to be the best RTS game made. It's above and beyond anything else I've played. That's partly because it's damn fiddly and sometimes things will just fall apart. Your carefully planned assault may fall on its face due to one lucky shot on your tank, blowing a track. That can change the assault from a moving thing to a static defense situation where you got to keep the engineers alive while they fix the track in mere seconds. Nothing comes close I think.