Company of Heroes 3 Review

The dead genre rhetoric has been repeated repeatedly in relation to RTS games. The idea has some merit, but it seems that, in most cases, the genre prefers to produce quality over quantity. 2025 looks to be a great year for RTS games, with many old games getting new titles, such as Anno 117, and new games, like Tempest Rising, that look to be excellent.

Company of Heroes 3 came out on the 23rd of February, 2023, to mixed reviews that somewhat leaned towards being positive. Yet, two years later, the game seems to be doing well on its feet with a new DLC and a new 2.0 Anniversary Update. To reorient ourselves, Company of Heroes 3 is a WW2 RTS game created by legendary RTS developers Relic Entertainment.

Company of Heroes 3, as it should be obvious, is the third game in a series and has almost all the elements of the previous games, with a lot of things carrying over. This is natural and obvious as there's only so much you can add to the World War 2 era.

The game sets you up on the southern front, stepping away from the likes of central and eastern Europe. The campaign focuses on the Italy and North Africa Campaigns of World War 2 and involves many of the historical events there. There is still a story to it, and all of it is great and enjoyable. In addition to the campaign, you also have skirmishes against AI and other players, as well as some scenarios.

Each match in Company of Heroes 3 takes place on a map of Italy or North Africa. Here, some focus should be given to the maps themselves, which are varied and definitely much more interesting than many of the Company of Heroes 2 maps. They are also much more vivid. Where Company of Heroes 2 really dove into the nitty-gritty nature of things, representing some of the bloodiest campaigns in the War, Company of Heroes 3 takes a much brighter tone, especially with its maps.

These maps are also very vertically varied, which adds a lot of depth to things. You have ramps, stairs, pathways, and so on, with the 4v4 maps being very big and diverse. Tactically, the maps retain their orientation and style from Company of Heroes 2, with many similar to or remakes of the original Company of Heroes maps.

You begin either in a 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 scenario, with each team placed on either side of a square map. There are several resource and objective points on the map that you need to take and hold. These points are usually mirrored for either side, with some variation to keep things interesting.

 

You begin with the basics, your HQ structure, and one engineer squad. Before continuing, it should be noted that the playstyle for each faction is different. Currently, there are four factions in the game. Two Allies and Two Axis. On the Allies' side, you have the US Forces and the British Forces, although the latter is more like the Commonwealth Forces since it also cleverly lumps in all the British Colonies and Dominions. This includes the Indians, Australians, and Canadians, each with their own Battlegroup.

The Axis meanwhile had Afrikakorps and Wehrmacht for the Germans. Sadly, there are no Italians, French, or Soviets here. The developers have also mentioned that there are probably no new factions coming in as future DLCs, so that's a shame.

So, each faction has its own way of building up and starting off. There are many different ways this was done. For the British, it involved starting with Combat Engineers and Machine Gun teams as the only squads that could be deployed at first.

So, you send off your first squad to take over the nearby resource points and then queue in a few more, trying to take as many points as you can. You naturally get to the middle, and it turns into a game of holding territory and making sure you have enough resources to get better equipment.

Again, for the British, this involves creating new structures, first for Infantry, then for Light Vehicles, and finally, for Heavy Vehicles and Elite Infantry. To deploy units, you usually need Manpower, which is your first and primary resource. It ticks up naturally, and the rate increases with the number of points you hold.

Next up is Ammunition, which relates to a lot of active abilities, like grenades, as well as a few upgrades, like arming your Infantry with AT rifles. Finally, you have fuel, which you use to essentially tech up by building new structures or getting upgrades. Fuel is also what you use to get vehicles.

The rate at which you get fuel is extremely slow, so it's important that you focus on the Fuel resource points. Usually, a lot of the matches are decided early on by who can take over most of the fuel points to get tanks out.

Now, in Company of Heroes 3, your playstyle can vary a lot. You can get yourself a lot of mobile Infantry on trucks and half-trucks, a strategy that is well employed by the Afrikakorps. You can dig in and create a bunch of emplacements, something that is ascribed to the Wehrmacht. You can practically pull off any playstyle with a lot of the factions, with some being more versatile than others.

In a standard match, your gunfights with Infantry will gradually escalate to lobbing some light artillery against each other and finally to big tank fights that'll make Kursk blush. Speaking of Tanks, Company of Heroes 3 brings a lot of changes to how things work, including directional armor being more consistent and stronger.

Of course, this sort of makes tanks stronger, but it also means you can actually damage it with small arms. Just a little, though, and likely not enough. For most games, you'll need a combination of Infantry, Artillery, and tanks to get the job done. More often than not, it is done in tandem and at the same time. There are some Battlegroups that stray from this, however. Speaking of which, what are Battlegroups?

In Company of Heroes 3, Battlegroups are basically enhancements that you unlock gradually. It can also be described as a Tech Tree, where you get points the more you fight and kill things. As you gain points and levels, you can use those for different paths. All Battlegroups have two sections involving them, usually complementary.

These two groups also have two mutually exclusive options, where you pick between things. Through Battlegroups, you can unlock passive upgrades, recruit new units, directly recruit units on the battlefield, call down expensive but wildly effective aircraft support or naval support, and so on.

With Battlegroups, Company of Heroes 3 becomes a varied experience in that no two matches would be the same, should you want it. You have a plethora of playstyles to follow and ways to do things, even with a single Battlegroup.

So, you fight the enemy, push them back, and hold onto three key locations. The most common game mode has each team starting with 500 Victory Points. If you hold more points than the enemy, their VP will tick down. When one side's VP ticks down to 0, the game ends.

Company of Heroes 3 naturally draws many comparisons with the previous games. While the previous game is more refined, the third game does more things better. The biggest changes include the unseen ones.

Quality of Life. If you're a fan of Company of Heroes 2, playing 3 will make you fall in love. There are just so many quality-of-life changes, and they are nearly immeasurable. For example, you can double-click to let the game sort out construction locations. Now, it's done automatically, so you don't need to do it by bringing back a group of engineers to build it.

You also have a new auto-replenish button that does it automatically, so you don't have to constantly go back to the base for it. All factions also now have a much more consistent unit roster, with everyone having ambulances and half-tracks, which is sorely missed in Company of Heroes 2.

Hitting is also more consistent. In Company of Heroes 2, things appeared to have been like the lottery. Sometimes, shots will absolutely annihilate units; other times, they will do nothing. Company of Heroes 3 deals with it in a much better manner. Damage is more consistent, making engagements more calculable, instead of just having the bigger force and hoping it works out.  The 2.0 Anniversary Update also seems to have fixed a lot of the issues with pathing and improved a lot of the game's mechanics in niche ways.

Thanks to the new 2.0 Anniversary Update, many things are now more balanced, with a new DLC adding the heaviest units from the previous game. This is great here because armor in the new game feels a lot more consistent and satisfying, and it is actually strong.

The game is definitely more designed around light and medium vehicles, with most heavy and super-heavy vehicles only being accessible through battlegroups. This makes the changes to Anti-tank weapons way better. Infantry AT can no longer easily destroy light tanks, and numbers no longer erase medium or heavy tanks.

You generally need more strategy, either by flanking or by pairing units up with Anti-Tank Guns. Speaking of which, both Artillery and Anti-Tank Guns are much more consistent; they randomly miss less, and the spread of Artillery is much more realistic. The new DLC, while adding some incredible units and Battlegroups, still doesn't dominate to the point of feeling like DLC power creep or pay-to-win, which is commendable on the Devs' parts.

The new game also massively excels on other fronts. It looks much better, although the graphical changes aren't for everyone. As previously stated, the new maps look great, the units look brilliant, and everything looks smoother. The interactions with the environment also seem cooler, with shells deflecting off of tanks to hit nearby buildings, building destruction in general, and more. This is one of the games that brings the feel of World War 2.

The game previously had many issues with its sound design. The 2.0 Anniversary update fixed and improved this, as guns and weapons now sound great and like actual guns. You can hear the mortar rounds as they travel, the same with the artillery shells. Deflections on tanks, Infantry reacting to things—everything is much better now.

Of course, all of this would be preferred from the get-go, but in 2025, Company of Heroes 3 looks to be a great game. However, it isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as the game still lacks any CO-OP missions and much-requested mod support. There are also many issues with balance that persist.

The Campaigns are a hit and a miss, too, with the content being somewhat less, missing out on the single-mission scenarios, but the idea of the dynamic campaigns was executed well. That being said, individual missions do feel harder than they need to be, especially because they are plain unfair instead of having tactical depth. The game definitely could've used more creative reasons for the imbalance in a lot of the campaign missions. This is one of the RTS games with a good campaign if you're into the story side of things.

Overall, Company of Heroes 3 is a much better game than it was in 2023, and with the 2.0 Anniversary Update, the game now outshines Company of Heroes 2 in almost every aspect. It is a must-get for fans in the series who are still holding out, and for RTS fans, whether you like single-player campaigns or multiplayer combat, it is also a recommendation.