Steel Division 2 - Better Off Red

Steel Division 2 is an RTS for discerning armchair generals.

- Jonathan Bolding

A grandiose rendering of World War II’s Eastern Front, Steel Division 2 details Operation Bagration, the Red Army’s back-breaking push against the Nazi war machine. It’s an ambitious real-time strategy game, and though it ultimately fails to live up to a lot of that ambition— especially with its singleplayer campaign—the vastness of its battles captures the scale of total war with lavish detail.

Operation Bagration was the June to August 1944 offensive that threw a huge number of the Soviet army’s best troops against the German army in occupied Belarus and Poland. At the same time as the Normandy invasion thousands of kilometers away, the Soviet army surrounded and crushed Germany’s Army Group Center, signalling the end for Germany in the east.

The combatant divisions of troops in this game are weary veterans who have been at war for three years, many equipped with some of the most advanced weapons to be produced during the war.

Others are fresh-faced conscripts and raw recruits, or back-line battalions forced into frontline service by the onrushing offensive. You build your own customized divisions using the composition of these historical formations.

Tactical battles are the heart of the game, real-time conflicts pitting dozens of units against each other in conflicts that feel real. Battles with ten players on each team, each commanding a couple dozen units, feature prominently in online play and take place on a map so big you couldn’t hope to support your furthest ally if you wanted to. It’s warfare at a scale that inspires awe when you watch a replay.

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