Company of Heroes 3

Company of Heroes 3 is a real-time strategy game from Relic Entertainment, continuing the studio's long tradition of battle strategy games set during the Second World War. The player commands a column of units through the Italian campaign and the North African theater, with the game placing emphasis on making use of terrain, taking cover behind walls, and flanking enemy positions. Destructible environments also play a major role – buildings crumble under artillery fire, which changes the tactical situation from minute to minute during a battle and forces the player to constantly reassess where a unit can still safely take cover. Part of the campaign is a dynamic operational map of Italy, on which the player manages territory between individual engagements, replenishes supplies, builds up infrastructure, and decides which direction to push the advance – the game thus combines real-time battles with elements of turn-based strategy and adds a layer of long-term planning that was missing from previous entries.

The Xbox Series X|S version launched several months after the original PC release and brought a controller-adapted control scheme that tries to replace the classic keyboard-and-mouse combination with radial menus and smart target marking. Thanks to Series X's power, the game handles even larger engagements with dozens of units and destructible surroundings without major frame-rate drops, although controlling it with a gamepad is naturally not as precise and fast as on PC when micromanaging a large number of units at once.

Reception at launch was mixed – players appreciated the return to a tactical emphasis on cover and destructible environments, but some fans were bothered by the simplification of certain mechanics compared to the second entry, as well as by technical problems after release, which the studio gradually addressed in subsequent updates. Even so, Company of Heroes remains a major name in the war-strategy genre, and the third installment proves that even a demanding tactical RTS can work on a console with a gamepad in hand, albeit with certain compromises compared to the original mouse-and-keyboard controls.

Why play it: For fans of tactical RTS games who value cover mechanics and destructible environments, and who can accept that gamepad controls bring certain compromises compared to mouse and keyboard.