Overview:
Estimated achievement difficulty: 8/10 (Prelude to War is heavily skill based)
Offline: 17 [315]
Online: 32 [655]
Approximate time: 120-160 Hours
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 3 playthroughs (1 as each faction)
Missable achievements: No
Does difficulty affect Achievements: Yes
Unobtainable/glitched Achievements: Yes (Dog of War is confirmed as unobtainable)
Extra equipment needed?: No (a headset is required for voice commands if you choose to use them, Kinect is not supported for voice)
Is there DLC? Yes
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Escalation Expansion Pack
- Difficulty: 3/10
- Time to 220: 50+ Hours
- Glitchy/Missable/Unobtainable: None
Introduction
Tom Clancy's EndWar is a squad based RTS with optional voice commands, based around a simple combat triangle where transports defeat gunships, gunships defeat tanks, and tanks defeat transports. There are three single player campaigns to go through, but the vast majority of the time and achievements will be spent in the Theater of War mode (ranked multiplayer). Some of the achievements can be unlocked in either single player, skirmish, or multiplayer, but tend to be much easier to obtain with a partner in multiplayer. Dog of War is confirmed broken and will not be patched.
Note that if you plan to get the 1190 as efficiently as possible, download the Escalation Expansion DLC prior to starting any of the multiplayer.
Walkthrough
The first step is to complete the training mission for Voice Command Trainer. At that point you can start Prelude to War (PtW) which is the scripted part of the campaign. If you are good at RTS in general, you will want to play on Hardcore to avoid an unnecessary playthrough of that faction later. On the other hand, the later missions in PtW are by far the most difficult in the game, so you may want to go through it once on an easier difficulty level to master the combat system.
At the end of PtW, you are then in a global conquest mode where you can choose from a variety of missions to achieve your ultimate goal of capturing an opposing capital. Use the approach detailed in this thread for the fastest - and easiest - victory. The key to success is to use two save files for each faction so that you have a fallback in case a wrong decision is made, and always reload if you lose a battle (especially when capturing a capital for the first time). At the end of the campaign, keep your save file for each faction as you may need to repeat the last battle on each faction to unlock OpFor.
You don't actually pick your faction at the start of PtW, but when changing which faction you are working on you DO have to completely start PtW over or it will invalidate OpFor. This is why it is critical you use different save slots (you only have six) for each faction. In case this isn't clear, each play through on Hardcore requires playing PtW, selecting the faction, and then winning the game in the conquest mode.
When OpFor unlocks, you should have 315 and will be done with the single player portion of the game.
Miscellaneous
A fair number of achievements can be unlocked in the campaign, skirmish against the AI, or online against human opponents. Given the number of online matches required, I recommend you focus on getting them all online.
Online
The online absolutely requires three dedicated boosting partners and will likely take close to 100 hours. Note that you can quit out of the match by evacuating your units, which counts as a win for your opponent. However, there are a lot of achievements you need to earn before you start just grinding through the remaining wins. Also, the online play does appear to still have dedicated players and is done through ranked matchmaking, so you may need to be flexible in order to find a time with fewer players online. If you and your partner have multiple Xbox's and Gold LIVE accounts, it is possible to do this with only two people as you are not having to manipulate multiple controllers at any given time.
The online achievements are straight forward as a rule. You and your partners have to be in different factions so that you can fight each other. Urban Operations is only rarely obtainable as it requires fighting in a capital and the availability of that is determined by the entire community, so it may be worthwhile to have one of you change factions to ensure you can play on that map if one comes up for a different faction. Read the description for Down to Size before doing this however.
Walkthrough
All of the achievements in the DLC can be done with a partner using the multiplayer in the Theater of War (ranked) game mode. Down to Size is a bit finicky in how it unlocks, but the guide gives specific and accurate information on how to avoid that. Gates of Fire is similar to Urban Operations in that it requires a capital map to be available, but other than that the achievements largely mesh nicely into the requirements for the original 1000.
Overall, the DLC is straight forward and and obtainable without any noticeable difficulty, presuming you have a dedicated partner.
Conclusion
EndWar is a lot of fun to play, although the sheer number of matches required can be daunting. The requirement of coordinating 4 profiles in a ranked environment is one of the hardest parts of the game, especially when going for win streaks. The single player has a few very challenging missions, but using the strategies in the guide it is quite achievable. Overall, this is one of the better strategy games available on Xbox 360 and is well worth playing.
[x360a would like to thank Creech and Eternal for this roadmap]