Excellent game that will take many hours to complete, but unfortunately has limited replayability.
CoH boasts dynamic buildings that change as they are attacked. A damaged building (damaged "life" of building) could lose the roof, allowing enemy mortar shells to rain on the inhabitants. New windows appear as holes are shot in the building. Impressive, but it is still theoretical. In FoW, there is no such idea as the "life" or "condition" of a building. In fact, the only things with life bars are soldiers. Buildings are completely dynamic in that they are not actual entities on their own, but instead, the individual entities are the bricks (or other materials) that make up the building! To kill a soldier in a building, you actually have to hit that soldier somehow, not just "destroy building while soldier inside." That is because there is no clear line between a destroyed building and a non-destroyed one. You can blow a building apart by shooting at the walls and making holes in them, which eventually causes the frame of the building to weaken and parts of the building to collapse. This debris can kill soldiers if the rocks physically hit the soldiers. In essence, it is a highly-advanced FPS physical environment, but in an RTS!
That said, the tanks in CoH do feature some "realistic" damage. Gunners can be killed, turrets can be blown off (and repaired), engines can be damaged or destroyed, etc... But often, it is left to chance in CoH. In FoW, there is much less chance. Yes, there is a "chance" that a round will bounce off instead of penetrating, but this is mainly determined by the angle of the round, the angle of the armor and the round type. The rear of tanks is always weakest, while the front is strongest. The rear of the turret is probably the weakest point. if you want to kill a Tiger tank with a Panzershreck, you should aim at the back of the turret, as the rocket almost always bounces off from the front or side. The damage is also very well-done. Every wheel, track, turret, muzzle, engine or frame take damage individually. That is, if the turret is damaged, the tank does not take any "health" point damage. The turret simply does not rotate, and that cripples the tank. There are also two types of damage: permanent and repairable. Repairable damage can be repaired and includes dislodged turrets, torn tracks, flat tires and damaged engines. Permanent damage cannot be repaired. This includes destroyed tank frames (turret does not move and tank is immobile, but can still fire), blown off wheels, blown off turrets and engines that were blown out of the tank. Tanks also never really "belong" to any faction in FoW. They are simply objects that can be driven and used by soldiers (your own or enemy). Likewise, each soldier controls a specific part of the vehicle. To drive a tank, you need only one soldier. But that one soldier will be able to at one time only do one task. So, you can either drive, reload, fire or rotate the turret. Therefore, it is usually best to have at least 3 soldiers in one tank, with a maximum of 5. Soldiers can also be killed. A gunner looking out of the tank can easily be sniped. Crew members can catch on fire if the tank is critically damaged. You can even damage a tank with repairable damage, force its crew to leave, kill the crew, repair the tank and, in a way, capture the tank! This leaves many possibilities, since you can theoretically drive anything.
Each soldier in this game also has his own inventory. This is also true for vehicles. Ammunition and grenades exist in a quantity and can run out. Vehicles also have a fuel amount, and this is depleted as the vehicles are driven. Fuel canisters can be used to not only contain fuel, but to transfer it from one vehicle to another! Or , you can fill up a fuel can, set it on the ground, and shoot it to cause an explosion! Same for air bombs or heavy artillery shells. You can even demolish buildings by driving tanks into them if you want to conserve High Explosive ammunition for use against ungarrisoned infantry. The possibilities are endless!
Unfortunately, the game does suffer from one problem: replayability. There is no skirmish mode! if you want to customize a level, you have to use the map editor. This is truly a shame for an otherwise excellent game. The other problems mentioned in the official review are negligible. Yeah, infantry can be kind of stupid when you let the AI handle them. So, JUST TURN OFF AUTOMATIC MOVEMENT AND/OR FIRING! Direct control is great in this game, and you almost cannot win most levels without it. You need it to properly maneuver tanks to avoid hits, you need it to send in a lone infantryman to take out rocket artillery before your tank rolls in, and you need it to fire the anti-tank gun at the back of the tank's turret so it flushes the infantry while leaving the tank with no permanent damage. The game is also somewhat hard, but in a challenging way instead of a tedious way, which is always good. Campaign missions often revolve around saving often and trial and error, but it almost never gets boring or tedious, and is instead very rewarding when you finally capture that Tiger tank in a mission where you probably weren't supposed to due to the endless onslaught of enemy tanks and infantry. The reason for the large learning curve is that you really will need to play for a while before you learn the tank types, the strong points and the ammo they use. It's simply a very in-depth and detailed game.
A great game, but it is all almost ruined by a lack of a skirmish mode. So, play the campaign and then make your own maps!