I wrestled for about a week with the decision to purchase Theatre of War. A large part of my indecision due to the recent forum posts claiming that, as a title it is dead, and was not much good to begin with.
I took a chance, purchased the game, and I must say I disagree with much of the negative posts.
I think it is amazing, all things considered.
Yes, it has flaws, I've never played a computer game that didn't. No, it isn't a perfect simulation of the infinite complexities of reality, I've never played a computer game that was.
I think Theatre of War manages the knife edge balancing act of doing an excellent job at creating a very immersive, very "real" feeling tactical environment, that looks beautiful, and is incredibly fun and immersive to play. I have yet to play another WWII themed tactical RTS that even comes close to maintaining that balance for me. Theatre of War feels and plays much more like a polished simulation than an RTS, and I am enjoying it immensely.
Every computer game no matter the genre must deal with the same, necessary, abstractions of reality and balance of game play. Each dev team does this in their own own way, and I think Battlefront has done it amazingly well with TOW.
I sincerely hope that it is not, in fact, true that TOW is destined to be forgotten.