Company of Heroes 3 Reviews
Outfoxing your human foes remains excellent in Relic's latest, Company of Heroes 3. The heart of this World War 2 RTS' combat and faction design is stronger than ever.
Company of Heroes 3's single-player campaigns remix the series' signature WW2 combat, but they wrap it up in a boring, buggy strategic map and a mismatched story.
Company of Heroes 3 is a spectacular RTS that manages to shine even when the main campaign doesn't.
Navigating a tonal minefield with just enough confidence, Company of Heroes 3 is a big, refined, and beautifully textured addition to an already brilliant series.
The real-time battles are better than ever but rather than being a highlight the main story campaign is a peculiarly dull experience, that exposes the lack of genuinely new ideas.
I’m a sucker for studios that don’t play things safe. IO Interactive kept toying with the Hitman formula until the very end, Supergiant reinvents itself with every new release, and there’s not a genre that Thunderful won’t touch. With Company of Heroes 3, Relic could have easily taken the safe route — or, to put it in Sid Meier-speak, ignored the “completely new” and “improved” pillars of sequel design in favor of something familiar. Instead, it looked outward, recognized what made the best modern strategy games tick, and adopted those factors into its own formula. Company of Heroes 3 is a great sequel, yes. But it’s also just an excellent game.
It may have taken 17 years and one disappointing sequel along the way, but Relic are to be commended here for somehow managing to take tactical perfection and redefining it not just for old veterans, but for a whole new generation of armchair generals as well.
Company of Heroes 3 is a splendid and rewarding RTS game. Tense battles, brilliant map design, and streamlined unit management make it easily one of the best in the genre, with the Italian campaign acting as an exciting blueprint for the series’ future. If Relic wants to use Company of Heroes to tell serious and significant stories, though, the team needs to commit to actually doing that beyond just giving them a surface treatment.
Company of Heroes 3 lives up to the reputation of both its development studio and the franchise. An ambitious RTS that is not satisfied with following the line established by its predecessors and that arrives loaded with substantial novelties. A candy for fans of the genre and a must for fans of the saga.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A very convincing return for one of Relic's more iconic series, that keeps the best features of the previous games while also bringing fresh new ideas that change the way players can play and enjoy Company of Heroes. Will it be the best strategy game of 2023? Only time will tell.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It's hardly an original setting or concept, but Company of Heroes 3 makes up for it with sheer charm and playability.
As I noted in an earlier preview, whether I was fighting against humans or the computer AI, I never got the sense that war was too easy and my opponent was too easy to be. And so there was always a cost to fighting, and that’s the way it should be.
After ten years away, Company Of Heroes 3 returns with two stonkingly good single-player campaigns and a bevy of multiplayer options. Its enormous Italian operation could have more tension in the way you conquer the map, but its RTS battles remain as compelling as ever, and the sheer breadth and variety on offer here will please new and veteran players alike.
With fresh factions, two campaigns, significantly more options, and a refreshed skirmish mode, Company of Heroes 3 exceeds the impossibly-high bar set by its predecessor by a shockingly wide margin. It's a masterpiece.
Company of Heroes 3 retains the gameplay of the predecessors while disappointing with the bizarre campaign decisions and lack of polish.
Given the excellence of the two earlier games, I wasn’t surprised that Company of Heroes 3 won me over once again. The addition of Total War-style campaign layer adds a little variety without being overwhelming. Even without it, though, the battles are still endlessly fun, chaotic, and challenging. Skirmishes and the Essence Editor will keep players busy until the next entry in the series. Company of Heroes 3 reminds us that there’s still a lot of joy to be found in the best real-time strategy games.
Company of Heroes 3 is a triumphant return to the game that raised the bar for Real-Time Strategy. With unparalleled action on the battlefield, that alone makes it work your while. The new grand-strategy campaign is a welcome addition, though it has some flaws, ranging from performance issues and bugs to simply being too easy. Despite this, it's impossible not to recommend Company of Heroes 3 for the excellent game that it is.
Company of Heroes 3 is a convincing new chapter in the beloved RTS series, and certainly a far cry from a certain, grim-future-related misstep. Four factions, a new dynamic campaign set in Italy, a classic, linear campaign where we command the DAK, and tons of units to go around, mixed with the classic gameplay we've come to love over the years. However, it feels like quantity came at the expense of polish – some animations are a bit wonky, there's some graphical issues here and there, and the AI… well, let's just say that the new (and welcome!) tactical pause feature might not be all that necessary.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Company of Heroes 3 is a fantastic strategy game regarding the basics. Playing with friends and mining the mechanics will be where most will spend their time, but it is a huge disappointment to see the campaigns fall so flat. The Italian campaign was the place where I expected huge innovations from Relic, but it feels like a paper tiger.
Company of Heroes 3 is certainly a solid production, whose path follows without particular deviations the path left by its two predecessors. But it is not a big problem that the gameplay has remained substantially unchanged, because that mixture between classic strategy (in greater dose) and simulation continues to work, to propose a delicious depth that never leads to the most rigorous complexity.
Review in Italian | Read full review