Close Combat: Wacht am Rhein

I used to like these games because I played them as a child, then I started to have mixed feelings and the more I played I started to realize that it is a really bad game. Aalmost as enjoyable as removing the skin from your backside with a cheese grater. The older titles are better, even though they are also not that good and time has moved on. The AI is so bad that they gave it some frustating advantage and now you can't target them but they can target you, and by targeting I mean every enemy unit that has LOS on your unit will lock on to it, instantly fire with all weapons from every direction often annihilating it immediately or if the unit doesn't get wiped out immediately then they will just become suppressed -> pinned -> panicked and annihilated. Only way to deal with the enemy is to shoot at the muzzle flashes with tanks and hope you get the enemy unit killed by targeting and shooting at different points of the building/trench/forest/whatever where the enemy is hiding and shooting you from. However enemy AT guns, even the light ones, can frontally pen your best tanks and they can't be located even after they fire at your tanks and even destroy them, so good luck! It is a r…

Still worth playing in 2025. The post 2008 (Matrix) remakes are better than the originals in AI, path-finding, animations, graphics and multi-layer options. they are usually better at joining the tactical and strategic maps to make the campaign flow as well. Buy them here or at Matrix whichever has a sale on (when you buy @Matrix you will will still get a STEAM key and an option for a physical disc).

Close Combat: Wacht am Rhein is a demanding World War II tactical wargame built for players who enjoy deliberate planning, historically grounded scenarios, and battles where individual soldiers matter. Developed by Strategy 3 Tactics and published by Matrix Games, it focuses on the Battle of the Bulge and gives players command of German or Allied forces during one of the most important campaigns on the Western Front. Instead of chasing cinematic spectacle, it emphasizes battlefield decision-making, unit preservation, morale, terrain, and operational consequences. Battles unfold in real time from a top-down perspective, with players issuing orders to infantry squads, armored vehicles, support weapons, and other combat units. Positioning is crucial because terrain directly affects survivability and effectiveness. Forests can conceal movement, buildings provide valuable defensive positions, roads improve mobility while potentially exposing units, and open fields can become deadly when covered by machine guns or anti-tank weapons. Successful attacks usually require reconnaissance, suppression, maneuvering, and coordination rather than simply pushing every available unit toward an obje…

The A.I needs improvement as it does in any game but it is still enjoyable.

Top down simple game. or is it? Real tactics work. Charge headlong into attack, without support and you will die. Takes a while to master.

Long ago CC player coming back with the steam releases. I had a BLAST with Cross of Iron. That one I really recommend. So I figured id try this one (completed all campaigns in Cross, and some of those are nail biters with a lot of back and forth. The fights feel like a real unit action over time). The campaign in this version is like playing 10+ operations at once with very little incentive to actually play them. You bounce from fight to fight with completely different units with no briefing and its just so disjointed. The programming is also MUCH worse in this version. Unit types feel like they dont do their roles well at times, and the units behavior feels bugged and doesnt make sense at times. Infantry dont move to get good vantages like in Cross of Iron and will "seek cover" but wont use the damn trench next to them you literally deployed them in. I played this version of CC for 4 hours and im uninstalling it after I finish this review its just so unresponsive compared to the older Iron Cross that had much better unit behavior and control. Even right clicking to bring up the menu (if your not using hot kets all the time) is buggy. The "topography" of this versions ma…