Quick Stats:

• Developer: Tripwire Interactive
• Publisher: 1C Company
• Release Date: 13 September 2011
• Platform: PC
• Genre: First-person shooter
• Last played: 28 April 2020

Introduction:

I absolutely adore this game and have at the time of posting this spent 113 hours playing this game (and its DLC Rising Storm) on Steam. I actually purchased this game at a GAME Retail store very close to the original release. In fact I even have the illusive in B4 Reset achievement on Steam for playing this game during its chaotic launch and being around for when they reset everyone back to level 1.

I’m going to be playing through the single player missions on ‘Hero’ difficulty in order to give myself a challenge. This only covers the Eastern Front campaign as Rising Storm never had a single player element.

Playthrough:

Session 1: First three chapters of the German Campaign

Time: 1hr 16m

So I remember completing the basic training mission of Red Orchestra 2 on a laptop that could honestly barely run the game. To the point where the targets in the distance didn’t even render and I just had to guess where they were until the game let me progress. This time it was amazing to actually play the training in full HD and honestly great to be reminded of some of the basic controls that you kind of forget in multiplayer (i.e. pressing ‘6’ to change the barrel on an MG or to use the iron sights on a sniper)

Spartanovka is our first mission in the campaign. The lack of cover in this mission makes taking the housing blocks fairly long. Although after my previous playthrough of Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood, I am relieved to be back to modern shooting controls. One thing that was odd about this mission was that there were so many of the marksman class in the squad. Why would you need so many snipers to seize a small village in close combat? Also, the AI kept getting stuck in the first trench, which kind of drew out the mission a little bit.

I did however forget to record my result, but it wasn’t a great performance with more Germans being lost than Soviets in the end. I only thought of screenshotting the end screen once I got to the second mission.

Red Barracks was a totally different feel and this reminded me why I love Red Orchestra 2 so much. It genuinely felt like we were fighting for every inch of this map. The combat (particularly around objectives B and C) felt like room to room combat and flowed so much better than the sparse openness of Spartanovka. I also got through the mission much quicker this time, which I will put down to the game letting me use the MP40.

We then head off to complete some Squad Leader training. Honestly I had forgotten from playing multiplayer that the ‘F’ menu existed, which allows you to give fire teams specific location commands. This training took about three minutes, two of which were waiting for the artillery to hit the small house at the end to the point where the game was satisfied.

Station One is the next mission that the game introduces and this takes place at a heavily bombarded railyard. This was also the site of my first checkpoint load as my squad was lower on manpower than I had anticipated and I poked my head out at the worst possible time. Not much to say on this mission, but I have noticed the Soviet troops are spawning with MP40s, which doesn’t make any sense.

Grain Elevator is our next mission and this is a level in multiplayer which is notoriously scrappy due to the close quarters. I’m not quite sure the AI was done properly for this map as fighting for the first objective felt great and built on that room to room combat, but every objective after that had fewer and fewer enemies until we reached the 4th floor and only one Soviet soldier was there. I think the AI struggled with the building having multiple floors and there being different staircases to get there.

Then suddenly we find ourselves back in familiar territory with Spartanovka (Defence). I was genuinely scared for a defensive mission, considering the multiplayer AI tends to go into any cover it can find (even if that means facing the wrong way and providing basically zero actual defence). I was pleasantly surprised however that using the ‘F’ menu I was able to get people to face the correct way and we managed to defend without even losing the church! That’s one of the two flawless defences needed for the achievement 😀

Session 2: Completing the German Campaign

Time: 1hr 56m (3hr 12m)

Back to business after a short break, this time on one of the most notorious maps in the game… Apartments. This is a very close quarters map and honestly the initial getting across the bridge stage is the hardest part, after that it almost inevitably just tumbles. I was helped to a super quick finish on this map by the fact that C & D were captured almost back to back with no stoppage as all Soviet soldiers were dead.

Then once you’ve completed the previous mission, the game decides that you now need some practice at defending, therefore the next mission is Apartments (Defence). Now I had lots of oddities happen here. On one playthrough I lose A & B and the game decided to totally skip Portapova Park and put me on defending D. I don’t actually think it’s possible on Hero to defend A unless you are on an MG and kicking some serious arse. The AI randomly kept spawning at the wrong location too. So for instance I was defending C and the AI on my side was spawning at A making this really challenging.

You then have some training on anti-tank operations, but this kind of also acts as Engineer training as the game is teaching you that you can also blow holes in the walls to gain additional entry points to an objective.

Then you put this to use in the Pavlov’s House (9th January Square) where in the end a tank immediately blew up 10 of the 12 members of my team and the resulting anti-tank gunner had no chance. Okay so let’s try again and walk around the building, completely ignoring the enemy tank… oh wait that actually worked. Yeah, so the tank is very easy to avoid on this one and you can pretty easily make this battle a straightforward infantry fight. Although, spawning as an anti-tank rifleman when you are attacking in close quarters is an interesting experience.

Then the game sends you back into training again (boy am I racking up achievements through playing this). This time you learn about my absolute hands down least favourite part of this game: tank warfare. The tank play in this game is clunky and really didn’t seem all that necessary in order to make this a good game. People liked this from the original Red Orchestra: Ostfront game however so I can see why it stayed.

The next mission takes us to the Barrikady Gun Factory where you are tasked with driving a tank in order to support an infantry assault. Now two things about this mission: Firstly the enemy AI is totally broken for the tanks as they just kind of come at you and don’t even shoot most of the time. Secondly, the friendly AI is so incompetent at actually advancing and taking the objective, so be prepared to have to move in sometimes and get the tank itself on the objective.

I did however have an amazing glitch happen to me on this map. I spawned as a Tank Commander, but we had no tanks left. So I was someone who was lying down and could not use weapons at all. This did however enable me to advance to the final objective with the infantry and end up capturing it, which for me was a massive bonus as I hate the tank gameplay.

Now the game moves onto something a bit different. It’s a defensive mission, but actually a good one this time! You’re defending the Commissar’s House but in actual fact the line of defence takes place at objective A, which is a small building off of the main part of the map. The way I managed to beat this was by forcing the AI downstairs and then defending from the upstairs of the building with my scoped Gewehr 43. I did actually have an interesting moment where I totally ran out of ammo so had to run to a resupply and then fight my way back up the stairs in order to keep the Soviets from capturing the objective.

So after the high of a pretty interesting mission, we then come to my personal low point of the entire game… the Battle of Gumrak. This is a tank mission where there are hordes of enemy tanks coming at you in pretty open areas (the first objective is an airfield for instance). It was just not my cup of tea, but I managed to beat it losing only one objective and this was mainly because I worked out I could call in a rocket strike and the enemy AI couldn’t work out how to get past the burning shells of T-34s left on the battlefield.

Then comes another training course (and the final achievement for completing training which then gives you another achievement for completing all of the training). This time it’s about how to play the commander class and this is something I was already familiar with through the multiplayer section of the game, so this was fairly straight forward.

Curiously, whilst you are given the tools to use the radio, the previous training seems misplaced as the final mission Red October Factory does not even let you use most of the stuff you just learned. For instance no recon, no artillery, no rockets. This was actually a good way to end the campaign though as the factory levels are fun to fight on and back to that close range chaos that made the start of the game fun!

Well, there we have it, the end of the German Campaign on Hero difficulty! I managed to beat the German campaign in 3 hours 12 minutes, which is fairly good in my books with some losses on the Apartments defence meaning that this was over three hours in total. Still, that was enjoyable and I’m very much looking forward to the Soviet campaign.

Session 3: Soviet Campaign marathon attempt

Time: 3hr 47m (6hr 59m)

So I decided, in hindsight rather stupidly, that I was going to try and complete the entire Soviet campaign in one sitting. Like as if somehow I was going to suddenly enjoy playing games for nearly four hours in one sitting when normally I can just about manage a bit over an hour. I managed to get to the penultimate mission before absolutely giving up and feeling pretty majorly stressed out.

I won’t cover this mission by mission like the German campaign, mainly because the missions are virtually the same, so I feel like I’ve got across the basic areas of the game. However, a key difference is that the Soviet campaign includes none of the training missions as the devs would have expected that you completed this as part of the previous campaign (which is entirely fair).

I have some real issues with the Soviet AI in this game, which seemed to function totally differently from my experience of the German AI in the previous campaign. The key issue is that when you issue a defend command, often times the AI will not actually get onto the point, but rather shoot into the area. This means often that I will be overwhelmed on the point with no-one coming to my side unless you issue a “Follow Me” order, in which case they circle your position like sharks. This made the Railyard mission incredibly challenging (42 minutes on this mission alone).

Pavlov’s House however gave me a different kind of AI cockup. The German AI didn’t spawn a new wave for over two minutes, then suddenly the name of the mission came up and they spawned, but it was way too late to actually attack the point and therefore we held it… mission complete!

Gumrak was my least favourite in the German campaign and again I hated it here. Unlike the German campaign though I couldn’t be quickly done with it as you have to take all of the points. So I spent 32 minutes attacking (again mainly because of questionable AI decisions) but at least I got it done in one go.

The defence of Red October Factory is where I gave up for this session. I just could not hold the points with the sheer number of Germans attacking. The Soviet AI dies so quickly that you’re basically defending the point by yourself. You start with a Tokarev SVT-40, which works well, but losing that first character can almost guarantee you spawn with a Mosin-Nagant, unable to stop hordes of German attackers. Will give this another real go in the next session as I’m so close and can’t give up now!

Session 3: An epic end to the Soviet Campaign

Time: 43m (7hr 42m)

So in the last session I got the time down to 0 seconds on Red October Factory, but the last remaining AI died, therefore failing the mission at the last possible second. This meant that it restarted me from the next checkpoint but in actual fact upon reloading the game it had actually counted as completing the mission.

So I started with the attack on Red October Factory which was much more fun and the AI genuinely seemed to be way more switched on than the defence (although perhaps that was just me being less tired.

Then the final mission and oh boy was it good! Fallen Fighters (TE-FallenFighters as some may know it) is a map that was really missing from the German campaign and absolutely my favourite. It holds a special place in my heart as my first multiplayer game of Red Orchestra 2 in 2011 was on that map. I still remember it now nine years later defending the Political School building from advancing Soviet troops with my MG34. The Unimag Headquarters is also an incredible objective (and was the last one to capture of the entire game). Super close combat, multiple floors and lots of hiding places for enemy troops! Truly epic!

As I played this on the ‘Hero’ difficulty (which is the hardest on the game) I was able to score 100% of the achievements too and honestly I’m pretty proud of managing to plough through that whole thing without too many issues.

Some interesting stats are that only 4.2% of players have completed the Soviet campaign at all, which is a little sad. Especially considering that only 9.3% of players have completed the German campaign, which is basically the midpoint. I guess the point of the game is the multiplayer, but I absolutely loved this single player experience and am glad to have beaten it.

Game completed in 7hrs 42mins and you can find my entry on HowLongToBeat HERE!

Review:

Score 8/10

The main show for Red Orchestra 2 is of course its multiplayer and Rising Storm DLC, but the single player is honestly worth a go. This was something that was included originally upon launch as part of the base game but has subsequently been made out into its own thing.

In the campaign you get to play in the German campaign, which includes additional missions that act as training for the different parts of the game, and the Soviet campaign, where you build on what you learnt to face a much tougher enemy. This took me about 7 hrs to complete on the ‘Hero’ difficulty, so there’s about as much gameplay in this campaign as some full games on Steam. Unfortunately there is no single player for Rising Storm (which would have been amazing if it was given the care that the single player for RO2 itself was given).

In terms of the single player itself let’s be clear on something. You will have to carry the team for the vast majority of this as the AI is… lacking. They sometimes (often) get caught on the geometry and therefore are unable to advance. Sometimes their understanding of defend the objective means to stand absolutely nowhere near it and set up their machine gun facing the wrong way. I can however forgive the game for this because the combat (especially where it is so close quarters) is genuinely really fun.

The cutscenes and story are pretty cool if not a little overly stereotypical, but that kind of has some charm. I absolutely love the briefings that the game gives before a mission and think that they really do help you to learn the maps before jumping into them on multiplayer. Overall I really enjoyed this despite the frustrating moments and would highly recommend purchasing Red Orchestra 2 (in order to get this single player part) as well as the Rising Storm DLC.