There’s even a pseudo Diplomacy system, though it feels more like an RPG reputation system. Battles can be fought in real time or auto resolved. You interact with enemy armies and cities on the map. Just like Total War, you raise armies and move them across a World Map. But this feels like an Early Access version of a new mode, not the finished product. They aimed high for sure, and ambition should always be celebrated. And Company of Heroes 3 falls well short. But the masterpiece that is Total War: Warhammer III is a tough act to chase. A full sandbox campaign, combining a 4X map with real time battles. This game’s big selling point was a brand new Total War inspired mode. Your first Company choice seems important, but they’re ultimately the same as any you recruit later. It was the other campaign that had issues. A lot of strategy games have been getting away with having even less. I had no issues with it, and felt the game would have honestly been fine launching with just that. The former was a textbook example of great RTS map design, and really highlighted how fantastic the cover system is. The other one is the highly publicized Total Waresque campaign set in Italy. One of them is a traditional mission based campaign set in North Africa. I found both to be compelling and unpolished by the same measure, but for different reasons.

There’s the Singleplayer campaigns, and Multiplayer skirmishes. Like most strategy games, there’s two halves to Company of Heroes 3.

It makes for very strategic gameplay, where careful use of the environment matters and deathball rushes are suicide. It reminds me of older Battlefield games, where the map could change at the drop of a grenade. All in all, it’s a very fun system that sets it far apart from games like StarCraft. Buildings can be leveled and tanks killed and used to advance. Cover is dynamic as well, meaning it will be created and destroyed during combat. Any object, be it a bush or a building, provides some kind of cover for soldiers to use. It’s very similar to XCOM’s, but plays in real time. Company of Heroes is a real time strategy franchise set during World War II.

Company of heroes 1 or 2?