Company of Heroes 3 Mini-Review

Company of Heroes 3 Mini-Review | Xbox One X|S

5/6/2023

It's been 10 years since the second iteration of Relic's famed gritty World War 2 RTS Company of Heroes released and finally the third game is here with new features, factions and for the first time a console edition.

by Jordan Thomas

@james_parry

So what's new?

Well, the obvious change from the previous two games is a change of scenery, portraying the African and Italian fronts of the war, the latter being much less well covered in WW2 media. An added bonus of this is that it is quite colourful for a WW2 game with the abundance of sand and lush foliage, instead of the usual drab greens and grey often seen.

The setting also means that we see the Italian army show up, as well as units of Gurkhas and Indians - who seldom get represented. In terms of gameplay it's mostly a case of if it ain't broke don't fix it, but one nice new addition is the 'Tactical Pause' function for single player, which halts gameplay and allows you to issue orders to your units without worrying about the enemy bearing down on you – this makes it much easier to manage large battles and micro-manage individual units.

There's also a new conquest-style campaign - a turn-based map control mode with strategic decisions and different factions to support.

a PC port then, how's the console controls?

For the most part, it's a fairly successful carry over, utilising the 'press LT' to show options wheel that most RTS games use for console. We found nearly all the commands we wanted were easy to access and there weren't too many to remember.

That said, we did have some issues with selection as A both selects and deselects units (click on empty terrain), except in some circumstances when it's not and B deselects the order - it would have been simpler to stick to the normal A to select B to deselect formula. Relatedly we found unit selection could be oversensitive and a single click would select multiple units without our intention.

There's also no quick way to jump around the map for console either, and we couldn't work out how to chain orders when playing online or outside of Tactical Pause. One jarring act of laziness is that you can't remap any of the controller buttons, but a full keyboard remap option is available.

Well not quite ideal, but what's it like to play?

One thing this game has going for it is that it's an exciting RTS to play by virtue of the amount of work that's gone into the visuals and environment interaction (or more aptly, destruction). The graphics by and large are decent but the main focus is the chaos of battle: Explosions kick up huge amounts of dust and debris, almost all scenery can be reduced to rubble and after a lengthy battle the ground will be mostly craters and blood stains (the game does not shy away from showing violent deaths) which unlike most games do not fade so the end of a match is a messy sight. Infantry animations have been improved since the previous game and running, vaulting and such all looks pretty smooth and natural.

The AI performs fairly well for the most part, but some of the path-finding is a bit wonky and we frequently found our tanks advancing into combat facing backwards negating any armour advantage. With regards to the enemy AI it's not the smartest in terms of flanking but it makes up for it in aggression – even in a standard difficulty skirmish we found ourselves swamped with enemy attacks within minutes unable to break out or build up forces. Like most RTS games there is an element of RNG to combat which helps prevent instant death but can also lead to some almost comically long battles with troops metres apart missing constantly (think that Viva La Dirt League skit).

...there was a bit of dubious tone discrepancy with gameplay being us fighting for the Germans while the cutscenes tell us about the awful things the Germans are doing...

Is there much content?

There's three main gameplay modes to choose from: the newly added dynamic campaign for Italy, a standard story missions set for the Africa front and your typical skirmish/multiplayer map control modes. The dynamic campaign is an interesting idea combining an Advanced Wars like turn based top down strategy game with RTS gameplay battles for capturing points, and there's choices to make in terms of your route which will please or displease three faction leaders – however this feels a little tacked on as it's not like you're choosing your own route but instead essentially choosing which upgrade tree you want to go with which is basically what each leader is, albeit with more bickering than a normal upgrade tree has. It's a decent premise but we feel it would have worked just fine as a normal cutscene and mission mode.

Speaking of which there's the Africa Operation, in which you help Rommel charge his way through Africa, with decent mix of assault, defence and infiltration missions. It feels a bit short though, cutting off after a handful of missions at El Alamein – a missed opportunity to swap to the British side as they push him back to let us use some different vehicles and new scenery. We also felt there was a bit of dubious tone discrepancy with gameplay being us fighting for the Germans while the cutscenes tell us about the awful things the Germans are doing.

The two skirmish options are a capture all points or elimination mode for up to 8 players/AI (4v4), though it's a little disappointing how despite their appearance in the story the Italians are not a playable faction, instead we get the Germans twice (in grey or yellow flavour), and will presumably have to buy the Italians as DLC later. It's also exceedingly hard to come back from getting pushed back to base with little point in even trying when you have next to no resources coming in by default – speed and aggression is key.

And the verdict?

Overall we've enjoyed our time with this game, though we spotted a few control issues, visual bugs and minor historical quibbles it's a solid addition to the rather sparse console WW2 RTS market, and though PC is clearly the intended way to play it performs well enough and offers an exciting dose of visually spectacular war action. Though with Sega laying off numerous Relic staff post release we'll have to wait and see what new content it gets down the line.

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