Company of Heroes 2. Oh, how I looked forward to purchasing this! I had played, on disk, the Opposing Fronts standalone expansion from CoH1 and I adore it.
If that was such a great addition to a great game, who had the bright idea at Relic to take one step forward and then one step back? Now... Bare with me here. This is a review, not a bash, so let me explain, and don't worry. There is a TL:DR at the end, but I assure you the body of this review is more in-depth.

I only ever had the chance to play Opposing Fronts, but that alone was outstanding. There was diversity in the play-styles between Germany and Britain, and even more so with the different 'focus trees' you could go down, which there were three of and who had 7 unlockable abilities and perks within each (if memory serves me correctly. It could have been 5), really allowing you to explore a lot of different options in approaching a task.
To add to it, the cutscenes were a joy to watch. Even if you ignored the story, the cutscenes would pull away into actual gameplay, seemlessly. This was genius for immersion and made me feel a lot closer to the beginning of the action. Durring gameplay, even, everything was satusfying. The tanks felt like butter when you hit them and felt like rock when you bounced-- The ragdolls were all over the place, and were almost fascinating to watch, halftracks displayed the men inside the actual truck based on how many men you put in, and so on.
Why, then, would you take this all away?? In CoH2, you have cutscenes and ragdolls and tanks-- but none of the fun or feeling to them. Ragdolls are sometimes replaced with death animations, the bodies are still stiff after being blown to peices (which can't happen, really), and the tanks feel hard and not very satusfying to destroy in comparison to the CoH1 tanks. The cutscenes, too, look just like the ones from CoH1, but they ruin the immersion, I feel, with removing what made the CoH1 cutscenes special, being in-game rather than played over the game.
Of course, I understand these points are nitpicking at best, but what really dissapointed me was the lack of any and all focus trees. You have command points, but what is the point of racking up 32 in any given battle without anything to spend them on? You've already unlocked the three to five abilites you can use, and command points sit to collect dust. With that, teams are really only ever given one way to play, and for the Russians, that's conscript spam. I mean, who values human life, amirite? but seriously, it takes away the ability to taylor your own play-style.
Perhaps I've squabbled a bit too much for now. There is a lot of good to the game. Especially upon purchasing the Ardennes Assault expansion, which is just worth the price of admission for what it brings. The expansion does wonders with playstyle customisation through unit skill trees in between missions, the ability to choose a roster of your choosing being three divisions you want to fight with, and an active battle map, where you usher your units through to an objective, moving battle-lines and so on. This sort of action is what the vanilla serise needs, really. There's also this really interesting, intuitive and fresh concept with freezing to death. While I don't feel it was utilized to its full potential, being relegated to two missions each campaign if that, it certainly has an exciting future in the workshop, and if I can find out how, I'd like to build a map centered around an assault in a blizard.
However, I was very dissapointed in Fox Company. Fox Company is a DLC, locked off for a whole five dollars, and all of the annoying purchases that nickle-and-dime you really feel like a sham, and kind of buffeted my enjoyment of the game, feeling like a peice of the game had been taken from me for the money I paid for it, and left a sour taste in my mouth.
The stories are a what you'd expect, and the gameplay isn't too different-- perhaps just a tad more stale that the original game, but it isn't by any means "bad".

-TL;DR-
In short, the game isn't bad, but the profuse amounts of DLC left a bad taste in my mouth, and they sort of traded off with innovation with the Ardennes assault capaign (which has to be bought alongside the base game if you want to play it), but a few noteable advances and neat ideas are found in the base game, as well.
In comparison to the first Company of Heroes, number 2 is a bit number 2, but if you're content with more CoH, a few locked squads and a whole other capaign taunting you from the other side of the fence, I would buy this game on sale. I still got pleanty of enjoyment out of it, and the workshop really does make me happy.
So if it's on sale and you want the game, go ahead! Otherwise, I'd say stick with CoH1: Opposing Fronts.

Company of Heroes 2. Oh, how I looked forward to purchasing this! I had played, on disk, the Opposing Fronts standalone expansion from CoH1 and I adore it. If that was such a great addition to a great game, who had the bright idea at Relic to take one step forward and then one step back? Now... Bare with me here. This is a review, not a bash, so let me explain, and don't worry. There is a TL:DR at the end, but I assure you the body of this review is more in-depth. I only ever had the chance to play Opposing Fronts, but that alone was outstanding. There was diversity in the play-styles between Germany and Britain, and even more so with the different 'focus trees' you could go down, which there were three of and who had 7 unlockable abilities and perks within each (if memory serves me correctly. It could have been 5), really allowing you to explore a lot of different options in approaching a task. To add to it, the cutscenes were a joy to watch. Even if you ignored the story, the cutscenes would pull away into actual gameplay, seemlessly. This was genius for immersion and made me feel a lot closer to the beginning of the action. Durring gameplay, even, everything was satusfying. The tanks felt like butter when you hit them and felt like rock when you bounced-- The ragdolls were all over the place, and were almost fascinating to watch, halftracks displayed the men inside the actual truck based on how many men you put in, and so on. Why, then, would you take this all away?? In CoH2, you have cutscenes and ragdolls and tanks-- but none of the fun or feeling to them. Ragdolls are sometimes replaced with death animations, the bodies are still stiff after being blown to peices (which can't happen, really), and the tanks feel hard and not very satusfying to destroy in comparison to the CoH1 tanks. The cutscenes, too, look just like the ones from CoH1, but they ruin the immersion, I feel, with removing what made the CoH1 cutscenes special, being in-game rather than played over the game. Of course, I understand these points are nitpicking at best, but what really dissapointed me was the lack of any and all focus trees. You have command points, but what is the point of racking up 32 in any given battle without anything to spend them on? You've already unlocked the three to five abilites you can use, and command points sit to collect dust. With that, teams are really only ever given one way to play, and for the Russians, that's conscript spam. I mean, who values human life, amirite? but seriously, it takes away the ability to taylor your own play-style. Perhaps I've squabbled a bit too much for now. There is a lot of good to the game. Especially upon purchasing the Ardennes Assault expansion, which is just worth the price of admission for what it brings. The expansion does wonders with playstyle customisation through unit skill trees in between missions, the ability to choose a roster of your choosing being three divisions you want to fight with, and an active battle map, where you usher your units through to an objective, moving battle-lines and so on. This sort of action is what the vanilla serise needs, really. There's also this really interesting, intuitive and fresh concept with freezing to death. While I don't feel it was utilized to its full potential, being relegated to two missions each campaign if that, it certainly has an exciting future in the workshop, and if I can find out how, I'd like to build a map centered around an assault in a blizard. However, I was very dissapointed in Fox Company. Fox Company is a DLC, locked off for a whole five dollars, and all of the annoying purchases that nickle-and-dime you really feel like a sham, and kind of buffeted my enjoyment of the game, feeling like a peice of the game had been taken from me for the money I paid for it, and left a sour taste in my mouth. The stories are a what you'd expect, and the gameplay isn't too different-- perhaps just a tad more stale that the original game, but it isn't by any means "bad". -TL;DR- In short, the game isn't bad, but the profuse amounts of DLC left a bad taste in my mouth, and they sort of traded off with innovation with the Ardennes assault capaign (which has to be bought alongside the base game if you want to play it), but a few noteable advances and neat ideas are found in the base game, as well. In comparison to the first Company of Heroes, number 2 is a bit number 2, but if you're content with more CoH, a few locked squads and a whole other capaign taunting you from the other side of the fence, I would buy this game on sale. I still got pleanty of enjoyment out of it, and the workshop really does make me happy. So if it's on sale and you want the game, go ahead! Otherwise, I'd say stick with CoH1: Opposing Fronts.