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Feb 24, 2023 · Review. Company of Heroes 3 Is the Best RTS Game of the Last Decade. Inverse Score: 8/10. by Hayes Madsen. Feb. 24, 2023. The Italian countryside is a smattering of burned-out buildings and...
Feb 20, 2023 · Games. RTS. Company of Heroes 3. 82. Company of Heroes 3 review. Relic's latest is a failed experiment but a great game. Reviews. By Fraser Brown. published 20 February 2023. Comments....
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By Jon Bolding
Updated: Mar 5, 2023 8:40 am
Posted: Feb 28, 2023 12:33 am
This review exclusively covers the multiplayer mode of Company of Heroes 3. For thoughts on the campaigns, read our Company of Heroes 3 - Single-Player review.
For a lot of long-time fans, Company of Heroes is a real-time strategy series that’s more about competitive play than single-player campaigns, and we've logged hundreds more hours playing against other people than against the AI in scripted scenarios. That'll certainly be true for Company of Heroes 3, because while the single-player campaigns are trapped in a quagmire of a strategic map and bogged down in their storytelling, in multiplayer we can focus on what really matters: moment-to-moment gameplay, balance, and faction mechanics. CoH3 nails all of that thanks to a wide variety of factions, snappy unit controls, and great multiplayer stability.
I'll say that, as of a few days after launch, this is the most diverse, balanced, and stable multiplayer game in the entire Company of Heroes series to date. Sure there are specific balance issues – the M18 Hellcat's too tough! Those flamethrowers are OP! – but show me an RTS without balance issues at launch and I'll show you a liar. (It'll be you. I'll be pointing at you.)
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In fact, perhaps the single biggest disappointment in Company of Heroes 3’s multiplayer mode is that its sound seems oddly muddled. Individual sound effects, taken in isolation, are excellent, like the delightful blast and ring of a shell exploding against a tank. That nice bass explosion, however, can too easily fade into the background when other weapons are firing. There's something weird going on when sounds start playing over each other, as they often do in a battle. Something to do with not starting and stopping correctly, maybe? For example, the sound of a tank engine idling doesn't always play correctly if you weren't looking when the tank stopped moving. This would normally be a curiosity, but sometimes vital sounds – noises meant to alert you to units under attack off screen can vanish under machine gun fire – don't play or get totally lost in the background, causing you to lose a unit that would otherwise have lived if you'd retreated it. Likewise, a longstanding and fun feature of CoH is that you can hear enemy vehicles in the fog of war, but in CoH3 that disappeared idling engine noise lets tanks get a bit stealthier than I'd like.
The core of Company of Heroes 3’s pair of single-player campaigns is fun, tactical RTS action of the kind the series is well known for. Battles are often spectacular in their use of terrain and the series’ traditional mix of infantry and armor, and are consistently interesting despite the lackluster AI that loves to blunder its way into an unconvin...
Read the full Company of Heroes 3 Review - Single-Player
Despite those oddities that are most noticeable for long-time players, the general pace of fights has improved. The balance of damage and time-to-kill for units is much better than in the past, weighing the value of quick reactions with the likelihood of a squad getting wiped out before you can react at all. For example, infantry squads very generally have more protection from explosions while in retreat, so they can more reliably escape barrages of grenades or artillery with at least one or two members alive (preserving their valuable experience/veterancy status).
Fundamental balance changes like these also draw out the stages of a match, letting the early infantry and light vehicle combat flourish for longer before medium vehicles, crew weapons, and tanks move in for the kill. A lot of that is down to faction design, where – barring a few exceptions – every side can build a playstyle focusing on their choice of the triad of tanks, infantry, and support weapons. That's a contrast to Company of Heroes 2, where certain playstyles from the original just weren't supported due to resource constraints.
Elevation over enemies is treated as a bonus, too.
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CoH3 provides interesting new tools to use in your fights. Building on the series’ long-established tradition of garrisoning troops in buildings to use as defensive emplacements, some infantry units can now assault and enter garrisoned buildings to force enemies out of their strongpoints. Elevation over enemies is treated as a bonus, too, meaning height plays a greater role. Where normally red, yellow, and green cover have always had their own meanings, a degree of elevation over enemies now weakens or eliminates their cover. A stone wall that would've protected your men from machine gun suppression in the past is far less effective if that MG is firing from a house atop a hill.
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There's also a notable lack of obnoxiously designed maps with single strategic chokepoints that draw out matches, which were a series staple and are mercifully absent here. No, instead we get a pleasant selection of varied maps, all of which cater to a breezy style of 30 to 40-minute matches – though I could see a particularly hard-fought 4v4 stretching past the 60-minute mark.
Among the allies, the Americans take a much more flexible approach while the British are a more rigid, if simpler, faction. Americans choose between air support, mechanized, and infantry abilities and upgrades on top of their battlegroups, giving a total of 12 possible choices for strategies on top of choosing the build order for your units and structures. It means that every match as the Americans brings in an array of possibility, giving you that powerful fantasy of being the Western powers' beating industrial heart.
Every match as the Americans brings in an array of possibility.
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The British have to advance linearly through their tech, making them the simplest faction to learn, but the core units they get access to are good at their jobs without exception. This lets them lean on diverse battlegroups that can be specialized into an artillery/infantry, air and sea power, or armored force. Unfortunately, while other factions are blessed with cool abilities as their units gain veterancy (when they level up, another series staple) the British have little in the way of incentives to preserve your units over raw stat boosts.
The Axis forces, meanwhile, are also two wildly diverse groups. The Afrikakorps (DAK) are the most mobile faction, able to call in halftracks carrying infantry or pulling guns as a set of base abilities. In return for that flexibility they have to be careful, shepherding their resources in order to be sure that none are wasted because accessing new units requires they build expensive buildings and upgrades. DAK players will need to make their chosen strategy work rather than adapting to what enemies are doing, as the wrong buy at the wrong time can mean precious minutes go by before you get the unit you actually need.
Finally, the German regulars, AKA the Wehrmacht, are slower-moving and defensive-minded but also flexible in how they execute that goal. They're most interesting for their big, mid-match choice between two playstyles: either going on the offensive with short-range Panzergrenadiers or transitioning to opportunistic, defensive ambush with tank-hunting Jagers. Having one big interesting choice based on what opponents are doing keeps the whole faction fresh each match.
I do have one pet peeve with faction design – and please forgive me in advance for how truly peevish this is – but I dislike the appearance of ahistorical or never-fielded weapons systems in what is otherwise a historically inspired game. Equipment like the Sherman Whizbang, which never actually fought in this part of the war, or the Churchill Blac...
Much like single-player, the framework around everything that isn't a match is almost barebones, and some interfaces and issues are really counterproductive in CoH3’s quest to being the kind of competitive RTS it has the potential to be. These range from basic features like the lack of a replay system – a must-have for competitive players who want to know why and how they won or lost. There's also the broader issue of stat tracking that's simply unavailable. How many matches have I played? How many have I won, or lost? Do I have an ELO or MMR? Post-game stats exist, but are anemic – they show infantry and vehicles, but not ubiquitous team weapons, and are padded by strange "damage dealt" metrics that rarely add up to their supposed totals for units or players.
That's not to mention in-match interface problems. Take the shortcomings when playing with a team as examples: If you’re playing with more than one ally, there's no way to tell which teammate owns a specific unit – same goes for if you’re playing with two opponents. You can also swap between Team Colors and Player Colors, but the player colors aren't separated by type or any color theory. So your allies can be red and pink and an opponent can be orange, all while you're blue and an enemy is green, rather than putting warm colors on one team and cold on another. You know, like Relic did Company of Heroes 2.
And there are little annoyances, like tooltips for your battlegroup abilities not having the cost of the unit or thing you're unlocking on them. How should I know if I want a unit right now when I don't know if I can afford it?
But! But! And I cannot lie, it's a big but: This game is fun as hell in multiplayer.
It doesn't have the bells and whistles that you might consider standard in a competitive RTS in 2023, but the core experience of Company of Heroes 3 is what really matters. What I'm saying here is that CoH3 has heart – it has that special something where moving your units to outplay opponents doesn't just look pretty or mean you've played more hour...
- Jon Bolding
Feb 20, 2023 · Company of Heroes 3 is a great sequel, yes. But it’s also just an excellent game. Company of Heroes 3 will be released on Feb. 23 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed using a...
Jan 9, 2024 · PC. Released. February 23, 2023. Developer (s) Relic Entertainment. Genre (s) Real-Time Strategy. Company of Heroes 3 is a very divisive game that, for many longtime fans, just did not live up...
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Feb 20, 2023 · The Company of Heroes series is near and dear to my heart – all three of them are real-time strategy games that cut to the core of the genre, focusing on overarching strategic decisions...
Feb 20, 2023 · Company of Heroes was a linear campaign that also had great maps (and AI) for skirmishes and multiplayer. Company of Heroes 3 has both of these things, but also something else: the heart of...
