It was 1944… Again...

I never left the front.

The war continues boys! Let's win this for the Fatherland!

…erhm… I mean, for democracy or liberty or something like that.

I've been waiting for this since I filled out a survey from Relic, a few years ago, about whether I would like to see a Company of Heroes game set in the Mediterranean. A dream come true.

My wife’s boyfriend says Company of Heroes 3 is like a chinese Company tried making a knock off COH game. Like it has all the ingredients but none of the charm/soul that the original two had. Like the people making it had no clue what made them fun in the first place.

So, just how good is Company of Heroes 3 really? Well, besides COH2, there’s no other game where I’ve said “I f**king hate this game, Relic trash, f**k this game” and kept playing daily. The game has some interesting graphics, fun gameplay most times, a short but entertaining campaign, and it’s not Call of Duty so that already puts it above many games out there for me.

Like many others, I too was full of negativity when I started playing this game. But slowly realised there are both highs and lows. The North African campaign was fun, but short. The Skirmish was meh, but the "Total War style" Italian campaign was genuinely fun! COH3 was a flop on release and for good reason, but they’re making improvements and it is becoming a fun game. They've fixed a lot of issues, and the core gameplay is intense and better than ever. Still has a long way to go, but the factions and combat are starting to round out, though the sound of the mortars still make me cringe, sounds like a puffy pewpew baby toy.

The game is suffering the same issue as many other games today. It's unfinished. However, there are comparably few bugs and at least for 1vs1 and 2vs2 the game is very enjoyable. From a competitive gamers perspective this is an awesome game and I would recommend it for that. It's interesting and fun to me. I find the factions, tech trees and individual units in COH3 to be a little more fun than COH2 so I prefer it now. COH3 has something about it that is also just a little more satisfying that I cannot put my finger on. Better infantry play maybe? Base factions have more versatility than COH2 as well. Light armor and indirect fire is more accessible.

I'm a big fan of a lot of the other QOL features; like auto-reinforce, auto-vault and half-track recrew. And new gameplay mechanics like breach spice up building camping and towing allow you to exploit out of position AT guns, even if they are a little buggy. I think people are used to COH2’s balance; unit match ups and expect that of COH 3. Overall lots of tech and upgrade options. Movement is improved for troops too.

Sadly the COH2 diehards like my wife’s boyfriend will never like this game because they feel betrayed that it’s not more akin to COH2. They don't like that it's more of a successor to COH1 in terms of gameplay and feel. This game doesn't have the same tone as COH2 when it comes to gameplay, art, and atmosphere, and it never will. There is also a fair bit of rose-tinted glasses nostalgia about previous COH releases. Remember COH2 was barren at launch too. Only two factions and a campaign involving only one faction. People need to take their rose tinted glasses off for COH2 and realise that game took a while to become the beast it is today. I have no doubt that with time, after a few content releases and sales of 40% or more, COH 3 will overtake all previous iterations of the series.

Some also criticize the general “feel” of the game for being too vividly coloured and cartoonish, but as someone who’s spent a long time of his life in southern Italy I think it fits the actual place. Southern Italy during summer is a very beautiful place full of colors and green fields, how can you expect it to look as grey and dark as the Ardennes forests during winter? Or how can you expect Tunisian deserts, with white houses and sand under the scorching sun, to look like frozen Russia? Again, everyone has their preferences, but I just wanted to stress that CoH3 looks very different from its predecessor because they have very different settings.

As for describing this from a gameplay perspective, this is hands down the best multi-player RTS experience, especially when it comes to 1v1. This is where the game truly shines and if you really want to see if you'd like it, watch some gameplay casts on YouTube. The game is nowhere close to being bad the way my wife’s boyfriend and other people make it out to be. It's a good game that was released early and is being polished/patched slowly.

At the end of the day, I’d rather have a slightly undercooked third entry that doesn’t just try to make its predecessor obsolete as a “Company of Heroes 2 remake”. It’s prefectly fine to have preferences for setting and mechanics, actually it’s an amazing thing that all three games in the series can be appreciated and have fans regardless of their age. I just get annoyed at people like my wife’s boyfriend saying “CoH3 trash game Oh HoW tHe MiGhTy HaVe FaLlEn” without even giving it a chance. Even if the game isn't perfect, there is still so few games like Company of Hero's it demands a level of respect. RTS game genre just isn't as big as shooters, but for me all RTS games are great and worth it. This one is no different. I recommend it, just be aware it’s still has a couple things that need to be polished.

8/10

Like CoH2 started of badly, it's quite a bit better since then, but still very subpar vs coh2 (which I've got 1400 hours in) on all aspects (performance, graphics, content, gameplay, balance, fluidity, pathfinding vehicles and even playercount).

I'd have given it a positive review, if it wasn't for the absurd illogical non-existent balance regarding vehicles, which is absolutely gamebreaking online. For instance, dingo or humber spam cannot be properly countered given the same resources or even 1/3 less in 1v1, 100% win rate, even in 4v4 and only when you play with 3 incompetent teamplayers will it not work if they get at least 2x the resources you get.

Another gamebreaker is chaffee light tank can easily win vs any other medium or heavy tank in 1v1 at the fraction of the cost, even winning 1v1 vs p4 medium tank in frontal attack when vetted, WTF?! This is highly unrealistic, totally unbalanced and ruins immersion. Why not let a conscript with a revolver kill a tiger tank, if we go in this same spirit of nonsense. Likewise vs tiger tank by circling around, it moves faster than barrel of most tanks. Steel division (1 or 2) is so much superior to this fantasy in that you can NOT penetrate thick armor of king tiger or other heavy tanks with such small caliber.

Final huge gamebreaker are gameruiners and they come in all kind of forms, from maphackers, to chinese playing with double accounts where one account sits afk in your team, afkers, absolute imbeciles spamming snipers only, only to get wiped, toxic flamers, etc. So you want to surrender to go to the next game, only for them either not to vote or vote no. Then you quit and YOU get PENALIZED by Relic not able to find a match for n minutes. Then you start next game and guess what, the SAME ffing gameruiner is loading in your team again. You quit again and then you have to wait one hour for leaving match (YOU get penalized, NOT the gameruiner). Good job! Like CoH2, only legit players get penalized and nothing is done against gameruiners, like I've said, I played that game for 1400h, made with friends numerous reports of same cheaters and they always came in for over a year, week after week, so I know for a fact Relic does nothing against them.

Compared to SD2, this game is like SC2, little brains required to play, but need to be high on energy drink to get most clicks as possible to win. SD2 requires deep thinking, is slower paced, is massive and actually (way more) realistic, only downside is, many chinese cheaters playing with double accounts where they afk on one, but SD2 devs actually banned a few of them after reporting them on Discord. Maybe I'm getting too old for high rpm clickfest games, though maybe 1/10 of coh3 matches are actually good and if it wasn't for me growing up with coh (good game, nostalgia), I probably would have uninstalled permanentely already. Favored ww2 is still HoI4, followed by SD2, followed by CoH2.

I might change review if they address aforementioned issues, but I doubt it. Got burned once by same team with DoW3, bought it at full price day 1 only for them to ditch the game very soon, while DoW2 was even better than CoH2, amazing... But now SEGA ditched Relic, let's see if they can survive now they have to stand on two feet. Nothing personal is written here, just self evident experiences for anyone playing this and aforementioned games long enough to know. This is my opinion based on hundreds of hours of coh3 and collectively over thousands in the other games.

The negative response is totally overblown - it's a solid follow-up to the series with a lot of interesting new additions and fun singleplayer content.