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Still a good WW2 RTS, but an upsetting sequel | Full Review - Company of Heroes 3

3K View2023-03-09

Company of Heroes 3 is a WW2 real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by SEGA, and continues the critically acclaimed Company of Heroes series of games.

🟩Pros

+Immersive RTS experience

+Deep tactical gameplay

+Decent graphics

🟥Cons

-High price for what it brings

-UI and camera work needs polishing

-Buggy game overall

As someone who extensively played the first Company of Heroes game as a kid, playing it as a sort of sandbox game with countless skirmishes matches on top of finishing the campaign; and as someone who has played Company of Heroes 2 multiplayer extensively, I was very excited to finally try the latest installment in what is now a trilogy of WW2 RTS games.

Does it hold up?

Good news is, if you loved both Company of Heroes 1 and 2, then you’ll feel right at home with this one. However, the first two are such great games in their own right that it felt like the third game had no room for improvement or evolution. In some aspects, it even felt like a step backwards.

The first game had such unreal graphics during its time and as a result, the graphics have not significantly improved aside from minor realism improvements like better lighting and higher resolution textures. This was the same case with the second game, but now even more notice-able with the third game. The graphics have continuously improved, yes, but the diminishing returns are quite obvious.

Taking it at face value, the graphics are still amazing for an RTS game. Everything is jam-packed with detail: the infantry units, the tanks, the structures, even the terrain and animals in the map could actually pass as a third person view graphics.

Gameplay Analysis

Company of Heroes 3’s two main campaigns take players through a series of historical battles, with each mission providing unique challenges and objectives like capturing, rescuing, defending, or halting enemies. The campaigns are set in Italy, following the Allied Forces as they push through the country, facing off against the Axis Powers at every turn; and in North Africa, at the perspective of Germans fighting the British Army.

The gameplay mechanics of Company of Heroes 3 allows players to command a wide range of military units, each with their own strengths and weaknesses that is fairly balanced to make you utilize each and every available unit, from infantry, artillery, air support, tanks, and trucks; everything has use.

Compared to the previous games, the balancing of the units are more lenient now with the damages, strengths and weakness. For example Anti-tank support groups are now also useful against infantry, instead of being strictly for tanks only. This hard counter system has gone soft and it makes for a more accessible game, at the potential cost of losing competitive depth and being imbalanced in highly competitive play.

The terrain and environment also play a significant role in the gameplay, with players needing to carefully navigate the battlefield and use cover to their advantage.

The environment is highly destructible, dynamic craters resulting from barrages and explosions that your units can also utilize as cover, enterable buildings that can be destroyed to flush out people taking cover, and bridges to destroy to stop hostile enemies from advancing.

Resources are also integrated to the maps as control points scattered that you need to capture and defend. The more control points you take, the better the resource flow you’ll have. Providing a tactical element when it comes to territory and resources. Leading to some nice back and forth between opposing fronts, as well as naturally giving risks to the player whether to establish a chokepoint, turtle up, or stretch their forces beyond to capture more points.

In addition to the campaign mode, Company of Heroes 3 also includes skirmish mode, where players can battle against player or AI-controlled enemies in custom matches. Skirmish mode provides a sandbox-like experience with traditional RTS building mechanics, allowing players to experiment with different units and strategies without the pressure of a scripted setting or predetermined gameplay conditions. You can even play with friends and pit yourselves against AI enemies in a cooperative fashion, which is a whole other layer of fun on its own.

Best-in-class WW2 RTS action-simulation

While it is a competitive RTS game at its core, Company of Heroes 3 is a highly immersive game with realistic bits and pieces of world war 2 action. The animations are more dynamic and lifelike than ever before. The physics simulation, the destructible buildings, even the explosions are realistically made, complete with shattering windows that highly immerses the player like they’re controlling a real company in a real world war 2 setting.

Company of Heroes goes turn-based

Aside from the faction and setting, there is a key difference between these two campaigns. Italy has a brand new game mechanic to it, an overworld turn-based mechanic that takes pages from popular grand strategy games like Total War where you take turns moving your different units across a macro-scale campaign map, while the battles are settled in an micro-scale RTS manner. On the other hand, The North African campaign is more of a traditional campaign with linear missions and objectives only.

The addition of turn-based to the is a welcome feature that hoped to revolutionize the series’ gameplay, including various elements such as capturing cities, building reinforcements, and unlocking new abilities, units, and upgrades.

However, not everyone is a fan of this. Although I do love the Total War games, turn-based is not something I am expecting for a Company of Heroes game, especially with the excellent linear campaigns of the first two games. The inclusion of a turn-based campaign can detract from the overall RTS-focused experience.

The AI in Company of Heroes in general is also formidable, with enemies providing a decent challenge even on lower difficulty levels. The AI adapts to the player's tactics and strategies, meaning that players need to stay on their toes and adapt their approach as the battle progresses. The game also includes a variety of difficulty levels in both the campaign and skirmishes, ensuring that players of all skill levels can find a challenge that suits them.

However, it seems that the AI is not as good as I remember with the previous games, with units consistently unnecessarily running towards the line of fire, tanks and vehicles suddenly reversing for no good reason, and units hideously clipping constantly with each other.

Technical Performance

Playing on a i7-8700k, 32GB RAM, and RTX 3080. This game ran decently, never dropping 60 fps at 900p, but the performance is a bit choppy at times due to unstable frame timing. There are also various UI and control annoyances, with the standout being the camera controls; even at its lowest settings, panning around using the keyboard is too fast, and zoom levels are lacking. Also, even though the game is scheduled to release on console platforms, I find it disappointing that there is no controller support for the PC version.

Conclusion:

Compared to Company of Heroes 1 and 2, Company of Heroes 3 only felt like an overdue expansion in terms of both quality and content, sometimes even stepping back in some aspects like performance and polish. It does not revolutionize itself enough that it’s a disappointing sequel by series standards.

However, as a game on its own, Company of Heroes 3 is a decent game with its detailed graphics, engaging realistic battles, and rewarding tactical elements. Still, if you haven’t played the first two yet, I suggest starting with them, especially if you can get them on a sale. Only purchase this if you have played the first two games and are intensely itching for more.

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