Nearly two decades after setting the standard for WWII real-time strategy on PC, Relic Entertainment’s venerable series comes to PS5 with Company of Heroes 3. This is another brave attempt to streamline the controller interface in a genre with a huge legacy. It’s partially successful, but the brilliant combat doesn’t go hand in hand with the weak campaign experience.
The setting of World War II has fallen out of favor in recent years, and this once prolific subject is now a rarity and may not appeal to a wider audience. The last Call of Duty to visit this era caused a course correction for the franchise. Team 17’s Hell Let Loose installed a server, but it remained in a niche area and failed to make much of an impact. So what’s intriguing about his third installment in a series that revisits gaming’s most explored war era?
First, Company of Heroes captures the frightening exhilaration of conflict better than most titles in any genre. Combat is a cacophony of destruction interwoven with the squad’s natural chatter. Enemy encounters often occur suddenly. Sneaking through occupied territory is unbearably tense, and firefights erupt quickly, rushing to cover. The map is dotted with residential buildings, where enemies will crouch and wait for you to stagger past. Snipers can kill quickly from high positions. A terrifying sound of gunfire is heard in the distance. Relic has created one of the best military strategy games out there, albeit marred by a boring campaign model.
The action is split between 4X-style turn-based maneuvers on the overworld map and strategic combat missions. Campaigns he has two varieties, one short and linear, the other free-form and more extensive in scope. Africa is the smaller of his two fronts. Approximately he commands Rommel’s Afrika Corps in a 5-6 hour scenario. Driven by a more personal framing device, it becomes more powerful on a purely narrative level. The Italian operation was massive, the Allied operation to take an entire country from the Nazis took him 20-30 hours, with land, sea and air attacks on the map, and missions in many urban areas. A shootout took place.
During the Italian attack, each allied commander will bark advice to you. Conversations change according to your choices, frequently giving you the choice of whose tactical clues to follow. As loyal patriot role-players, we decided to take General Northam’s opinion above all else. The stiff upper lip Briton is a little less exciting than the demanding US General Bukram.
Loyalty upgrades linked to these commander dialogues ensure your loyalty to the final push, so it’s worth spending time completing all requests and side objectives . However, gaining loyalty is the only tangible result of an overarching decision. There aren’t many paths that branch out on the way to the final goal.
Dividing the main story into tactical expansions and boot missions on the ground creates a fascinating ebb and flow. However, the enemy AI on the tactical map is less aggressive and less pressureful. Progress across the country will soon be linear, roaming companies will be resolved automatically, and you won’t be stuck in an insurmountable situation where multiple different cities are likely to fall. This is in stark contrast to Mission Combat, which can be a grueling challenge beyond standard difficulty.
The learning curve is steep, but where Company of Heroes shines most is in actual combat, where you’ll likely spend more time in custom skirmish modes than in chaotic campaigns. Missions involving both base construction and territory capture are multipurpose dioramas of nerve-wracking warfare. Build a collection of different units, crawl through destroyed cities, mow down enemy squads, and struggle to survive in a rainfall of heavy machine guns. Vehicular combat is also great, and hell on wheels can often turn the tide of a battle.
The controls and UI are cumbersome at first (a flurry of gunfire panics you back into cumbersome work), but switching between units and menus quickly becomes intuitive. Camera scrolling is smooth, making it easy to move between squads and bases on the fly. Area selection is imprecise as you’ll be grabbing something in the expanding square in the middle of the screen, so moving large squads around in a pinch isn’t easy.
Pathfinding and whole team actions are smart. Soldiers crouch and vault over cover to reach designated points. It’s up to you to get the right position, but if you suppress shooting and general crossing, you won’t be in danger.
You can use the elements of your environment to your advantage. Capturing high-rises gives you a defensive position from patrols and vehicles, and an impressive destruction system allows you to change your strategic options. This also applies to campaign map decisions. After a pre-mission bombing raid destroys an enemy hideout, the battlefield situation changes dramatically. Conversely, it often ends up defending territory while under artillery fire. A series of scenes where he builds a fort while waiting for the enemy’s advance and under artillery fire is one of the most tense setplays in the game.
All unit types and vehicles have progression trees that add evolving depth to combat and feel powerful in the late game (hello flamethrower engineers).
Combat is atmospheric and fun, but lacks polish in some areas of presentation. Textures look bad when zoomed in and shadows are a bit choppy. Elsewhere, frames drop during moments of congestion, even in performance mode. Perhaps this kind of game isn’t what it’s supposed to look like, and there’s a ton of content to compensate for the visual fidelity. But still, it’s a shame the looks don’t match, despite the sound design being very exemplary. In addition to the technical issues, there is also a frustrating connectivity check that returns you to the main menu if you try to put the console into rest mode during the campaign.
Aside from the single player, there is also an online suite for which the series is famous. These modes see different factions fighting to seize and hold territory, utilizing all the tools and units he types from the main game. Online skirmishes determine the life of Company of Heroes 3. There is also co-op play for those who prefer teamwork over pure PvP for him.
Conclusion
For those familiar with the series (and the RTS genre itself), Company of Heroes 3 is a solid but flawed entry. For a newcomer, learning how to operate and trudging across the patchy Italian front may not be worth the price of enlistment. However, once you learn its intricacies, you get some great, intense combat. Even with a problem or two, converting RTS to console is a lot of work.
