Company of Heroes 3 PS5 review. I don’t think it’s especially controversial to suggest that the PS5 has been somewhat underserved by decent Real Time Strategy (RTS) titles, let alone those which take place in a World War II setting. Seemingly conjured into existence to address both of those points, Company of Heroes 3 does a commendable job on both counts and while it certainly isn’t short on flaws, it nonetheless succeeds in giving PS5 gamers an effortlessly involving tactical spectacle that more developers should be striving to achieve.
Company Of Heroes 3 PS5 Review
Relic’s Compelling WWII RTS Series Wages War On PlayStation With Impressive Results
Rather than thrusting players into either the ruined beauty of the battlefields of Europe or the sweltering jungle warfare of the Pacific, Company of Heroes 3 instead unfurls the battlegrounds of war-torn Italy and Egypt before them. Where Company of Heroes 3 was always going to sink and swim on console however, is in how well the developers were able to translate the notoriously sophisticated PC user interface onto console and happily, I can report that they’ve done a mostly great job here. Mostly.
First the good stuff. Without the benefit of the precision, cursor delivered interactions that a mouse would normally provide, the DualSense controller nonetheless is brought to good use here, thanks to a generous use of radials and dragging commands that allow you to select multiple units at once to aid in your efficient warmongering.
Elsewhere, you can switch from one unit to the next very quickly with just the press of a button, while the map can be easily rotated and zoomed in on with relative ease. Though pulled off well overall, the use of radials in Company of Heroes 3 on console can sometimes prove to be quite confusing, even after you’ve put more than 20 hours into it. This is because many of the radials are activated from different triggers and buttons and can often be the case that you simply forget how to access menus for say, upgrading units or using special abilities, slowing the whole affair down as a result. That said, I appreciate that of all the possible implementations, this is probably among the best that they could have chosen.
One of the biggest points of differentiation that Company of Heroes 3 brings to the RTS genre – and this is something that was largely new to the series on PC as well – is this notion of a branching, dynamic campaign into which the game essentially splits into turn-based strategy and real-time strategy portions. Essentially once you’ve chosen your campaign, picking from either the Italian or the Egyptian desert theatres of war, you’ll kick things off in an overhead perspective that provides a macro view of the conflict.
In this broader, high-level view of the battle that the dynamic campaign provides, you’ll get to move your forces around an overworld map, picking out key infrastructure targets to take over to support your supply lines, help support local resistance cells, or you could elect to harry the Axis forces as you attempt to force them into retreat, potentially making your supply lines vulnerable to attack in the process. Really it’s these high level tactical considerations that make up the bedrock of the dynamic campaign view, since you’re constantly having to perform a risk/benefit analysis on every single tactical decision that you make which can in turn affect how the entire war goes as a result.
The level of tactical decision making that you’ll do in this overworld view extends beyond just securing positions and infrastructure, too. Leaning on the historical fact that both incursions into Italy and the Egyptian desert were done so with the aid of distant allied forces and also local rebels that wanted to remove the Axis powers, Company of Heroes 3 incorporates this into its dynamic campaign through a loyalty system. Throughout the dynamic campaign you’ll be frequently presented with a number of decisions that must be taken and your choices, assuming you follow through with them, with affect your standing with one or more of the allied factions that are involved in the war.
For example, in the Italian campaign, the American general might want you to maintain your chase of the Axis forces inland, while the British general could instead implore you to secure the local ports to strengthen your supply line. Where things get interesting is that as you accrue loyalty for one faction, you start to unlock special bonuses, such as cheaper units, additional abilities and more; the importance of which will depend entirely on your chosen playstyle. As a result, the dynamic campaign structure lends Company of Heroes 3 the sort of ‘big picture’ view of the war at large that other RTS titles wouldn’t necessarily consider and in doing so, it really makes you consider each and every tactic as you would expect a wartime commander to do.
It’s when the individual battles and conflicts take place that Company of Heroes 3 zooms into the struggle at street level. It’s also here that the turn-based structure of the macro war gives way to the RTS beats that fans would largely be expecting and where Company of Heroes 3 does some of its best work. Unfolding in a fairly traditional manner as many other genre efforts do, Company of Heroes 3 RTS portions have you building bases, training troops, securing territory and completing a wide range of objectives in order to win the battle and thus push on with the overworld, macro war side of things.
Much more in line with what can be considered a traditional RTS experience, these individual battles play out across a variety of different maps where all manner of buildings, bridges and other aspects of the environment can be used. This actually ties into one of the primary mechanics that Company of Heroes 3 leans into during these battles – cover. Whether it’s behind a building, inside a structure, behind some sandbags or a wall, having your infantry units in effective cover (handily indicated by green and yellow coloured markers which indicate the effectivity of that cover), greatly increases their life expectancy and can provide a useful breather for you to outflank the opposing forces with additional units and/or vehicles.
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Being a commander, you also gain access to a variety of different cooldown-based abilities such as bombing raids, scout planes and so much more besides. And again, it’s through the use of all of these different tools and tactical approaches that Company of Heroes 3 truly shines. There’s nothing quite like laying down suppressing fire on a group of enemy units on the opposite side of a bridge to keep them in place, just in time for an aircraft strafing run to finish them off. In another instance, I was pushing aggressively down an Italian town street with an armoured unit, devastating targets but also keeping that unit flanked with engineers to repair the tank and a scout battalion to provide an early report on any unseen foes. Armchair generals will absolutely be in their element here – not least because the nature of these dynamic campaigns means that there is much value to be had in revisiting each one after it has been completed the first time.
Another neat feature that Company of Heroes 3 boasts in its RTS portions is the ability to completely halt the action and view the upcoming queued up orders that have been given, not to mention a logistical overview of which units are moving where. It’s a boon for sure, not least because it provides the sort of immediate at-a-glance scan of the entire battlefield without being harassed and thus, can help inform whatever you do next.
Each unit can gain experience through combat and unlock new abilities too. This is actually both an incentive to keep using certain units while also doubling down on the risk/reward dynamic that Company of Heroes 3 employs elsewhere – encouraging players to use their more skilled veteran units more sparingly, rather than just throwing them head-first into the meat-grinder of confrontation. It’s just one more additional mechanic that helps to make Company of Heroes 3 feel more appreciably dense than its genre stablemates.
As to the sort of story that runs through these dynamic campaigns, Company of Heroes 3 doesn’t go all-in with high production values or a strongly written plot, but rather elects to link up each battle with a series of voiced dialogue and the occasional pre-rendered battle sequence. It’s pretty basic stuff and does little to make you care about what happens, beyond the already existing desire to be victorious, but it’s functional and that’s all it is.
Speaking of functional, the audiovisual presentation in Company of Heroes 3 isn’t exactly stellar. While the menus are performative and little else, the in-game visuals are also lacking. Though the expected performance and fidelity mode tilt the game towards sharper visuals or smoother framerate, the overall impression is still not great in either mode – with blurry, low-res textures, fluctuating framerates and other technical maladies that make me think the PS4 could easily have handled Company of Heroes 3 as it currently stands. That said, Company of Heroes 3 does boast some impressive destruction, with buildings being convincingly blown apart by shellfire, walls being busted down into rubble by aggressive vehicles and more. It’s a highlight for sure, it’s just a shame that the rest of the visual offering doesn’t ever really match it.
The audio side of things isn’t especially great either. While the numerous explosions, gunfire and other such incidental sound effects are decent enough in the service of the warring bombast that Company of Heroes 3 seeks to convey to the player, the various spoken lines of dialogue that each unit comes up with when you select them or when they complete tasks is, to be frank, really cringeworthy – with many of them sounding far too happy and cheerful despite the fact they’re in a hellish warzone with global stakes.
When you’re not taking the fight to the Axis powers in the dynamic campaigns, Company of Heroes 3 also provides a wide range of skirmish and multiplayer modes for players to get stuck into, but really it’s in the ever-changing and non-linear conflicts that the dynamic campaigns provide that will provide Company of Heroes 3 players with the most meaningful reasons to return to Relic’s PS5 debut effort after the credits have finished rolling for the first time.
Though Company of Heroes 3 might lack some polish and its implementation of a console-friendly control system takes a good while to get used to, Relic Entertainment has nonetheless crafted a layered World War II RTS that combines meaningful tactical choices and consequences with compelling street-level strategy that just begs to be revisited time and again. Armchair generals should rejoice.
Company of Heroes releases for PS5 on May 30, 2023.
Review code kindly provided by PR.