So here's the thing I've played several Men of War games already right like the older, classic ones and I even played Faces of War which as far as I know came out even before the Men of War series truly became a thing right. In those older Men of War games I thought the difficulty get annoying at points but you could still win either by spamming ♥♥♥♥ out until you overran the enemy defenses or by getting a big enough cannon and blowing ♥♥♥♥ up from far away. Faces of War was the only one where I thought the difficulty was annoyingly stupid and felt like I had to save scum to get past the levels which is why I ended up not finishing that game and just wrote a review when I thought I was comfortable enough with it. Now here's Men of War Assault Squad and it is, for me at least, pretty much a direct copy of Faces of War.

+The graphics look wonderful. Sounds are great. Controls are great as well, easy to use. The game ran without any issues, any crashes nothing.
+3 missions each for the Americans, Germans, Commonwealth, Soviets and Japanese. Each mission even on the easy difficulty can be very challenging and can take up to an hour to beat. In the campaings generally you're just put on a map with a ton of places to capture and you're given command points with which you can buy more units. Capture more points, unlock better units, buy them, use them, capture every point on the map and win the mission. Repeat for every faction, every mission.
+Tons of units, tons of vehicles, in the classic Men of War fashion not only are you ordering your units around like a real time strategy game but you can take direct control of them as well. Bought yourself a Panther, Tiger, Sherman, some random Japanese tank, maybe a half track full on infantry, maybe one of those late war German Goliath remote detonated bombs you can just take direct control of them, drive them around, shoot whatever. You can take direct control of single infantry units as well, run around with a machine gun in your hand if you want.
+Another thing I love about the Men of War series in general is the damage models on the vehicles. Your little AT gun is up against a Tiger and you can't pen it? Just shoot its tracks and immobilize it. You're in the Tiger and you saw that AT gun? Just gun down the crew and order your own infantry to man the gun, this way you'll capture the enemy AT gun for free. You're idk in a Sherman and you fired a shell at an enemy tank aside from the tracks you can damage its gun, turret, hull, engine and obviously blow it up instantly with a well placed shot. If it hasn't suffered some serious critical damage it can be repaired and put back into action.

-In pretty much every single mission you're going up against well entrenched enemy forces with a very small army of your own. If that wasn't enough the enemy can and will call in reinforcements just like you so every now and then you'll have a sudden wave of enemy infantry charging and recapturing the points you already took some other times they'll send random tanks towards you which can cause quite the headache. Running out of points to buy more units and having your own units massacred by tons of machine guns and tanks is pretty common. Even on easy. I'm not a good player sure but holy ♥♥♥♥ do you really have to make me run across an open field covered with 3 different heavy artillery guns, 3-4 other really damn big AT guns, infantry all over the place... I send my most heavily armored vehicle in, AT guns and the artillery ♥♥♥♥♥ it up. I send the infantry in well guess what its an open field they're crossing and at the end is a bunch of sand bags, machine guns, AT guns, artillery and tons of infantry why would they ever succeed in that situation? I send both the vehicles and the infantry at the same time, combined arms warfare ♥♥♥♥ and EVERYONE dies. I'm not joking the only reason I won one of the missions is because some enemy AT and artillery pieces friendly fired each other so I got to cross the open field and capture the point with just overwhelming numbers. It was silly. This was the first mission in the German campaing. On easy. Again call me stupid if you want but ♥♥♥♥ me this game is so hard that I failed the American training mission against the Japanese several times. I had to switch from normal to easy, fail again and THEN I won the training mission. Moved to the Japanese campaing, got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the first mission. German campaing, got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the first mission still won by pure luck but that should not have worked.

If it wasn't for the absurd difficulty I think I'd enjoy it a lot. I mean I still did enjoy it but definitely nowhere near as much as I could have. Winning too easily, crushing the enemy isn't fun. Losing too easily, being crushed isn't fun. It has to be in the middle where it feels like luck or a really good decision in a bad moment turned the tide you know? Thats not here, its just an uphill battle and while coming out on top does feel good after fighting against a ♥♥♥♥ ton of enemies its not the same kind of fun you'd get, not the same kind of good feeling you'd get from a better, more balanced mission right? I'm pretty sure I gave Faces of War a thumbs up which, looking back on it after a long time, was probably not a good idea. Similar to Faces of War I want to give this game a thumbs up too they were both incredibly difficult, overwhelming and annoying but the core gameplay is so cool that I wanna ignore it but I did that mistake on the Faces of War review and I feel bad about it and I think I should change it to a negative one instead so I'm gonna learn from my mistake and just give this one a negative review instead. Which isn't fair I don't think I wish I could give a mixed rating but I can't. The core gameplay is really fun and nice but the campaings feel incredibly unfair to the point where it makes the entire thing annoying. Either way negative it is, we'll see if Assault Squad 2 is any better when I someday get around to reviewing that one.

it's a fun game for history lovers

such a good game