Having spent a considerable amount of time playing Burden of Command quite recently for its review, it sent me on another World War 2 rabbit hole of documentary binging, book reading, and, the reason we’re here, game playing. As I very rarely review games I don’t consider to be up to reasonable standards to show my audience, Company of Heroes 3 just so happened to fall into this category when it came out. So, how is it, two years later?
- Genre: Real-Time Strategy (RTS)
- Developer: Relic Entertainment
- Publisher: SEGA and Relic Entertainment, after splitting from SEGA
- Release Date: 23rd February, 2023
- Price: $49.99/ 54,99€/ £47.99
- Buy at: Steam
- Reviewed On: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.70 GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 2080
The rushed release of Company of Heroes created a litany of problems that should have never seen the light of day. The graphics were unfinished and inconsistent, the sound design was atrocious, the grand-strategy campaign was downright broken, and the game lacked basic multiplayer features like vote to surrender, and in-game leaderboards. The fact that it had a perfectly working microtransactions store at launch only added insult to injury.
Despite all of this, Relic Entertainment stuck to its guns and for the last two years, it has been putting a lot of work into fixing all that wrong with Company of Heroes 3, with a moderate degree of success. It’s always hard to distance yourself from a bad launch, but if Rome 2, No Man’s Sky, and Cyberpunk 2077 managed to do it, I believe that Company of Heroes 3 can do it too.
But what is Company of Heroes 3, you might be asking? Well, allow me to explain: It’s the third installment of the titular fan-favorite series of real-time strategy (RTS) games set during World War 2, where players take part in fast-paced, intense, and gritty tactical battles at the company level. This means that you’ll be commanding 10 to 15 units, and those can be infantry, weapons teams, scouts, transport vehicles, artillery, light, medium, and heavy tanks, and all sorts of World War 2 we have grown used to seeing in Hollywood movies.
The first game was quite revolutionary and shifted the focus of real-time strategy (RTS) games from base-building and economics to the battlefield, and it did this by streamlining the two previous aspects, and deepening the mechanics of the latter. Relic Entertainment added a new dynamic cover system that allowed for units to take cover behind an ever-changing terrain and protect themselves, so this means that a worse unit could, if better positioned, beat a better unit out of cover. It also added suppression mechanics, tank armor, and a lot of active abilities for all of the game’s units. It worked so well that the real-time strategy (RTS) genre fans quickly fell in love and Company of Heroes is now considered one of the best strategy games of all time, and its Hollywoodesque approach to presentation mirrored movies like Saving Private Ryan, and the HBO miniseries of Band of Brothers. Company of Heroes 2 took the formula debut at Normandy and took it to the Eastern Front, and that was a move that made the series evolve to explore new mechanics, for a different kind of war set during the winter, but kept its base formula exactly the same, and it made Company of Heroes 2 the best selling game of the series, so far. Company of Heroes 3, in turn, takes the battle down to North Africa, and then to the soft underbelly of Europe: Italy. I’m glad to report that the basics are still here, and they’re still as fun, as engaging, and as spectacular as they were when the first title in the series came out, in 2006.
The most recent 2.0 update overhauled every aspect of Company of Heroes 3, and it would have taken a whole day to go through everything, but the basic gist of it is: a bunch of new maps were added, the graphics and audio were redone, the AI was improved, the dynamic Italian campaign was reworked in a major way, fixing bugs and the way companies work by making them more specialized, a new veterancy system was added, the unit had their abilities changed, the unit movement was tightened, and the game was balanced to allow for a lot more windows of gameplay during the mid game of any mission before the heavy units take over the battlefield. Quite a lot, right? You’re right it is.
So, what do I think of it? Do I love it? Do I hate it? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but the fact that this review is going to be on Strategy and Wargaming means that, at least, I think the game is worth considering now. I do think that Company of Heroes 3 is worth playing right now and that it’s a much better game than it was at release. My question comes down to: what sets it apart from other games competing in the same space and for the same audience? I’m talking about Call to Arms – Ostfront, Men of War 2 and Men of War Assault Squad 2, and even other military real-time strategy games (RTS) like the upcoming Broken Arrow, and the already well-established WARNO? I know these might not be fair and straight comparisons, but there’s no denying an audience overlap exists.
Company of Heroes 3 keeps the base mechanics of the series intact in every way, and if you’ve previously played any other title, this one would feel right at home. The game’s main mechanics revolve around the idea of the four F’s of combat, popularized during World War 2, which stands for “Finding, Fixing, Flanking and Finishing” your enemies. This means that you must employ scout tactics to gain the tactical upper hand of finding out your enemies before they know where you are. Then you must employ overwhelming firepower to keep them in place and with their heads down (or suppressed), making them unable to move effectively (or at all), allowing for your maneuver elements to find a way to approach and flank their positions to finish the fight. In other games, this might happen by killing the enemy force or by making them surrender. Company of Heroes 3 only allows for the former.
It’s hard to criticize Company of Heroes 3 on the merits of its base formula because it’s still as good in 2025 as it was almost two decades ago. Where it’s easier to point fingers at is the lack of any meaningful innovation and the overall feeling of a shell of a game that could have been. I think this is, in great part, because of the chosen setting.
The choice of settings (North Africa and Italy) also strikes me as something rather odd. I get the novelty of the setting, and I love it, I really do. Medal of Honor: Breakthrough and Combat Mission: Fortress Italy are some of my favorite titles in World War 2 games of all time. But given the focus of the Company of Heroes in small-scale combat, the generous use of its cover system, and of small units maneuvering around the map, picking the desert, which is the polar opposite of the Normandy bocage of the first CoH and the Russian cities of the second is rather odd, the flat and open environment of a desert doesn’t lend itself very good to the formula. Maps feel empty, and opportunities for flanking maneuvers are few and far between.
Now, moving on to Italy, geographically it is the exact opposite of North Africa, with the península being known for its topographical uniqueness of large and sprawling mountain ranges, which was a major part of the reason why the Allies had so many difficulties winning what was supposed to be an easy campaign. This could have worked great if the team had shifted their focus on building tactical mechanics around the idea of vertical maps and vertical fighting. Take, for example, movement, which could have been greatly impacted by fighting uphill. Or weapon effectiveness being better for the force with the better positioning, counterbalanced by the implementation of a proper field of view mechanic which prevented the defenders from using their heavy machineguns and cannons against units at the base of a cliff, for example. There was so much room for improvement, it’s a shame no risks were taken.
So, on one hand, we have a real-time strategy (RTS) system built around navigating and fighting in complex environments, with an elaborate cover system that benefits a lot of limited fields of view and information, but we have the game set on a flat desert on one hand, and on a generic version of Italy on the other. Again, this isn’t to say I think the choice of settings is a bad one, it really isn’t. But I would much rather have them pick just one setting stick to it, and build the whole experience around it.
This choice, in turn, reflected on the limited innovation Company of Heroes 3 brings to the table, which is almost non-existent. If the open desert could have made way for more in-depth mechanics built around the usage of tanks or the creation of larger maps and longer range engagements, then the Italy one could have had mechanics built around its terrain and the fighting it occurred. What we end up with is the Company of Heroes formula awkwardly being itself (and don’t get me wrong, that’s not bad), instead of being something special once again.
If you know me, it should come as no surprise that I’m a single-player kind of guy. I like to play video games my way, for fun, and I don’t have the patience to go online and try hard or learn metas to optimize my gameplay. That’s not why I play strategy games, it never was, and I think it might never be. So let’s talk about the Rommel campaign and how forgetful and generic it was? Well, I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t recall any memorable moment of the whole thing aside from the fact that it is a bunch of missions strapped together with a couple of poorly acted voice lines sprinkled here and there during the mission for narrative flavor. It has no basis in reality, it does the North African campaign no justice, and it’s just that, generic. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either, it just…is. This should tell you everything you need to know.
Now, the grand strategy campaign. I have a lot to say on this one, so strap in. I want to start off by saying that I’m having a lot of fun playing it right now but hated it when it came out, so there’s that. The grand strategy campaign went from being the weakest part of the game to being the best. Why is that? Aside from the part that it was a broken mess when it came out, and sometimes the enemies wouldn’t even react to your moves, the whole revamp of the campaign did wonders to make it something interesting, instead of just pushing companies on a map painting adventure.
Relic Entertainment had the envious task of bridging together the grand-strategy aspect of World War 2 with the tactical one. That’s far from easy because unlike previous conflicts (before the 20th century), which tended to culminate in battles as a single event, confined in space and time, where two or more armies met and fought, World War 2 was a war of movement and of small unit tactics (at a massive scale). A more fluid conflict where battles could have a couple of platoons or companies fighting across dozens of kilometers, sometimes going days or weeks without ever seeing the enemy. The frontlines were ever-changing, and warfare was happening at a rapid pace. There are a lot of challenges and we need an operational layer to bridge the gap, something like Mius Front does that relatively well, but on a much smaller scale than what Relic was attempting here. To be completely honest, I’ve had an absolute blast playing the grand strategy campaign, and it is, in my opinion, the thing that justifies the existence of Company of Heroes 3 outside of its multiplayer component.
You control the combined Allied Forces of the Americans and the British as they fight their way across southern Italy all the way towards Rome. The campaign is played turn-based on a grand-strategy map, and as soon as you attack certain specific locations the game triggers a real-time strategy battle. If you were expecting to fight every battle on the map, this isn’t going to happen, and you’ll be glad that’s the case, because things would get repetitive very fast, fighting the same battles over and over again, on the same maps. Instead, the game saves its missions for the very important battles around major Italian towns. This isn’t to say that the game is just based around fighting in these towns, as you’ll still be moving companies across the map, but if they meet an enemy company, the fight will be auto-resolved, and it works based around a rock-papers-scissors mechanics of X company-type counters the other one, and this one counters the first. Not the most in-depth and fascinating of features, but it works well enough and keeps the pace of the game going smoothly, without becoming a massive drag.
Battles are either a skirmish against the AI or a unique mission, taking place at set locations. These later missions have set storylines and objectives that deviate quite a lot from the classical skirmish experience of having the biggest number of points or holding onto specific map points. They have a flow and a narrative behind them, and they are built to provide you with different and unique challenges. They’re quite good.
Aside from the battles, things on the grand-strategy map happen very similarly to something like Total War, where you conquer locations, that will give you specific resources and benefits, you’ll be able to spend those resources to recruit more companies, and so on. There are a couple of novel mechanics, like buildable defensive emplacements you can set (or face) around the map, to damage enemy companies as they move. These come in several ways, like machine gun nests, anti-tank positions, anti-aircraft, artillery, and naval batteries. The same rock-paper-scissors system still applies, with the machine gun nests dealing heavy damage to infantry companies, and anti-tank ones heavily punishing armored groups. These can be quite formidable and a pain to deal with, and it’s a great way to add some flavor to what was, essentially, a grinding defensive campaign from the Italians and the Germans. A couple of weeks ago I posted that the companies on the campaign felt a bit limited but silly I still hadn’t figured out that you were supposed to unlock more units as they accrued experience so that pain point has been eliminated, and in fact, it can be a source of tension and decision making, because you don’t want a fully upgraded (and formidable) armored company of yours to get killed, because they’re an essential piece to your strategy.
All things concluded the campaign is well worth a playthrough, at least once. It’s frenetic fun, and a nice change of pace from other more realistic and grounded World War 2 video games, and more brain-twisting hardcore wargames.
The game’s presentation is massively improved. At its release, the most flattering way one could put the presentation of Company of Heroes 3 would be to call it “flat”, and even that is nice. The graphics were blurry and lacked detail, the effects were horrible and had zero impact and spectacle, and the bullets hitting the ground and kicking up sand looked like they were hitting the water, it was so damn weird and broken. Oh, and don’t get me started on the game’s color scheme. It was so bad it could make a sailor puke. The sound design was even worse. It was jarring looking at a firefight and more than half of the weapons had no sound effects being generated, so you would end up with 50 guys firing at each other, but only hear a couple of shots. The weapons lacked “umpf!”, and if you pair that with the poor explosions and effects, it was the same as having Allies and Axis firing Nerf guns at each other.
I’m glad to say that all of that is fixed and battles look great! The units are detailed, with high-resolution textures and tight animations. The color scheme now looks colorful nicely and soothingly that’s fit for the Company of Heroes 3 Mediterranean setting. The explosions, oh boy, I think Company of Heroes 3 has some of the best explosions in the series right now, even being a bit too over the top, but I love that. As for the sound design, I still think that Company of Heroes 1 had more distinct sounding units and unit barks, but it’s clear to me that this area is also a whole new experience right now, having been completely reworked and weapons are now bassy and powerful, the explosions are loud, and the battles now sound like battles, instead of a couple of guys shooting at a range. It’s hard to fault Company of Heroes 3 in this regard.
So, how does it stack against other games like Men of War 2, and Call to Arms – Ostfront? Well, I think that if you’ve grown used to the Men of War engine, going back to Company of Heroes might feel like you’re playing a more limited version of a World War 2 real-time strategy. But if you’re looking for a single-player experience with that grand strategy flair that none of those games manage to offer, Company of Heroes 3 might be worth having a look at. I would say that if I was you, I would buy it on sale.
Final Score 7/10
Relic Entertainment has taken massive strides to improve Company of Heroes 3, and I’m extremely glad and thankfully they did. It’s an example of perseverance and hard work, and how this approach can wield impressive results. Despite everything positive I said about Company of Heroes 3, I still think that it’s let down by its desert single-player experience, one that had everything going for it to be one of the best ever, from one of World War 2 most famous leaders, Rommel, commanding the Afrika Korps, one of the conflicts’ notorious forces. I would love to see a massive new DLC creating a brand new, southern France campaign, which I think might work wonders, now that they finally managed to get the grand campaign to work as intended. If you’re looking for a competitive multiplayer real-time strategy (RTS), then Company of Heroes 3 and its community will keep you engaged and playing for years to come. If you’re a singleplayer guy like me, go into it with the expectation that you might be left hoping for a bit more, but at least what’s here, is reasonably good, hence why Company of Heroes 3 gets a 7/10
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