My RTS career begins and ends with Age of Empires II. I’m not a great multitasker and I get flustered pretty easily when too many things are happening at the same time; StarCraft legend I am not. However, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Company Of Heroes 3 because, although it is and can be quite a hardcore RTS, it’s also got some nifty features to help the helpless, like myself.
Featuring two unique campaigns, co-op and PvP multiplayer, Company Of Heroes 3 is a whole lotta game. Noobs like me will still find themselves somewhat overwhelmed while veterans will likely be right at home. Thankfully, any time I did find myself struggling, as though the game knew it, a tooltip would pop up to point me in the right direction.
Even better still, because I was able to play on the lowest difficulty, I could just about brute force my way through any scenario. Not always mind you and in those instances, I did need to learn (or re-learn) mechanics on the fly. For the most part though, even with my very limited RTS skills, I found Company of Heroes 3 to be an incredibly entertaining romp through two vastly different theatres of World War II.
Company Of Heroes 3 Review
Right off the bat, Company of Heroes 3 drops you into a tutorial to get you acquainted with the game. It’s brief and gives a high-level overview of much of the game, but it’s enough to get you started. You’ll learn about different unit types, movements, abilities etc and the main focus of your missions; capturing supply zones.
Once you’re done with the tutorial you’re free to choose how to proceed; Italian campaign, North Africa campaign or multiplayer. The Italian campaign is a huge, sprawling option that includes two different levels of strategy and gameplay while the North African campaign represents the traditional RTS narrative campaign. The Italian campaign is what developer Relic calls a “Dynamic Campaign” in that includes the ‘boots on the ground’ tactical gameplay of the series as well as a large, almost Grand Strategy map of Italy for you to play with.
Essentially, this overview map of Italy includes resources such as towns, ports, airfields and more, all for the taking. You’ll need to create units and send them ashore from your battleships to roam the Italian countryside, liberating resources and using them to push the Nazis back. Each of your units has one action they can perform per turn. By moving your units within range of a resource you can initiate combat or trigger a mission. Capturing resources on the Dynamic Map is often automatic and simply adds to your overall pool, however, when it comes to squaring off against enemy units on the map or taking part in story missions, you’ll need to enter combat for real. Some combat scenarios can be automatically computed but in doing so, you’ll take more damage and use more resources than if you fought the battle yourself.
You’re not alone on the Dynamic Map either. A support team of three generals — Buckram, Norton and Valenti — will be on hand to offer advice and suggestions as to how you proceed. Things get a little tricky and a bit messy here as choosing one general’s advice over another can have an effect on their loyalty. Choices you make will also affect the narrative and the options open to you later down the line. The Dynamic campaign offers a unique and different perspective on the narrative RTS and opens up the ability to replay the campaign any number of times to see how your different choices play out.
On the flip side of the Dynamic Campaign is the North African campaign which is a linear story focused on the Afrika Corps as they battle the British forces. The North Africa campaign is heavily weighted towards tank combat in wide open spaces and so is a fairly radical departure from the urban combat at the forefront of the Italian campaign. Both campaigns offer a unique perspective on the theatre of war and very different gameplay experiences. Having both on offer in one game is huge, especially because the Italian campaign has so much replay value.
As I’ve been playing pre-release and am well aware of how terrible I am at the game, I’ve not given multiplayer a go. However, based on the excellent quality of the single-player experience, I can only imagine multiplayer being just as good. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in, due to my previously mentioned failure at multitasking, but I’d bet those with RTS chops will enjoy quite a good time.
As for moment-to-moment gameplay, controlling your squads and leading them into battle is nothing short of thrilling. As you progress and unlock new and more powerful units and use them with new strategies in mind you can start to feel a little bit like a strategic genius. That being said, I did like to send all of my troops in one big group towards the enemy and hope for the best on occasion. Thankfully, the forgiving nature of the easiest difficulty meant it worked.
If you don’t want to be like me and you want to play properly, you can, of course, synergise your troops and use their differing abilities to your advantage. For example, recon troops excel at removing the fog of war and revealing enemy locations, while engineers can remove barbed wire and mines and riflemen make short work of vehicles with their stick bombs. The longer a unit sticks around and the more XP it earns, the more it levels up and can unlock new and more powerful versions of its abilities. Once you start getting your units 2 stars and above, you can really stick it to the enemy. Not to mention you can use support from your battleships and other units in order to turn the tide of battle.
The mechanics of actually playing Company of Heroes 3 couldn’t be simpler. You select your unit, direct them where to go or who to shoot at and watch the get to work. The UI cleverly shows whether or not your unit will be in cover (you want them to be at all times) and it also shows the direction of fire for mortar cannons, machine guns and more. Should things start to get a little too hectic, you can simply press the Space bar to enter the brand-new tactical pause menu. With the action paused, you’re able to individually give orders to your units, at your leisure, and weigh up the best moves for each. You can even give single units, multiple directives to make sure they do exactly what you want. However, due to the chaotic nature of war, sometimes you’ll issue what you think are foolproof plans only for the enemy to then do something unexpected and throw everything out of whack. But that’s part of the fun.
Visually, Company of Heroes 3 didn’t blow me away but it does look nice and never, during any of my playtime, did I experience a single hitch, graphical foible or unloaded texture. Even when the screen was absolutely filled to the brim with explosions, fire, bullets, soldiers and more, Company Of Heroes 3 stayed absolutely top-notch. The visual and audio experience goes hand in hand and while the visuals are decent, the audio is stellar.
From the music to the voice acting to the ambient sounds of Italy and Africa and to the cacophony of the battlefield, Company of Heroes 3 has a fabulous audio suite. I’m particularly fond of the antagonistic radio transmission from the Axis during the Italy campaign. I think one of the greatest achievements of Company of Heroes 3 is that it doesn’t trivialise war. Yes, it’s a video game, which is designed to entertain and yes it’s set during World War II, but it manages to walk a fine line between historical fiction, action blockbuster and respectful meditation on the horrors of war. You can, of course, skip over the story stuff if it’s not for you, but you’ll be missing out on a really important piece of the overall picture.
While I’m not an RTS player and I certainly won’t be heading online to face off against others in Company of Heroes 3 anytime soon, I can honestly say it’s an excellently crafted and incredibly entertaining game. It looks good and sounds great and it comes absolutely packed with gameplay to experience. There are tonnes of replayability in both the Italian campaign and multiplayer and it just about has a flavour of strategy for every player. If you’re a fan of the series or the genre, this one is a no-brainer.
Company of Heroes 3 was reviewed on PC using digital code provided by the publisher.
