I had to think about it myself first: In fact, I last played Company of Heroes intensively eight years ago and had fun with the short but crisp campaign in the CoH 2 standalone add-on Ardennes Assault. The Canadian developers Relic Entertainment have not been idle in the meantime, turning their attention back to Warhammer 40,000 with Dawn of War 3 and getting Age of Empires IV off the ground. But now it’s almost time again for the scenes of the 2nd World War.
During the Italy campaign you will always have the choice of how to proceed. Your allies give you tips that you can accept or ignore. This affects their loyalty.
If you are fans of challenging real-time strategy battles, then definitely the most content-rich Company of Heroes awaits you. Instead of one, there are two single-player campaigns, in which you liberate the country from the Axis powers in the dynamic Italy campaign, and a more linear North Africa campaign, in which the battles of the German Africa Corps in 1942 are recreated. All in all more than 40 mostly long and complex missions with plenty of optional side objectives and nasty surprises, four playable factions and 120 different units.
At sea, on land and in the air: In order to liberate Italy from the Axis powers, you have American and British forces at your disposal at the beginning. You can only select the Wehrmacht as a playable faction in multiplayer.
A little bit about the factions: In the Italy campaign you can choose between American and British forces, with the British having clear defensive advantages at the beginning. The Afrika Korps is your faction for the North Africa campaign, and the Wehrmacht is only selectable in multiplayer. Over time, other associations from Australia, Canada, India and Italy will join you, which you can include in your missions and should definitely not be ignored in your strategy, as they often have unique abilities.
Whether you want to start with the liberation of Italy or the African campaign is up to you. I first had to get back into the strategic tricks and played the first missions of the Italy campaign. And it was as if I hadn’t taken an eight-year CoH hiatus. The common “mark left click, act right click” principle has become second nature anyway. After landing on the beach in front of the city of Gela, I order the US forces to attack and advance against the machine gun nests and nasty flamethrower squads of the defending Wehrmacht.
If you follow the tactical approach of General Buckram, General Norton or Eleonora Valenti from the Italian resistance, it increases their loyalty and you get valuable perks. You should not underestimate the support of the Italian population in particular.
A lack of supplies is not yet an issue, if I lose squads in a hail of bullets, reserve units are already available on the beach. With a few M4A1 Sherman tanks at the forefront, I take one supply point after the other, securing ammunition and other safe retreats for fleeing troops and pushing the German troops closer and closer towards the town center. A well-planned flanking attack by my Rangers and Riflemen knocks out a powerful gun emplacement that’s taking a toll on my armored vehicles, and brute force takes out snipers in the houses and towers.
After almost half an hour, I have also fulfilled all the side tasks that appear on the top left of the mission overview, I decimated the rounded-up opponents with a placed bombardment special, hoisted the victory flag on the town square and completed the mission. However, the AI, which is frighteningly clever even on the lower levels of difficulty, no longer makes it that easy for me. In the battle for the port city of Salerno that follows a little later, for example, it is first necessary to open the entrances to the city secured with barbed wire with an engineer squad and then, under considerable time pressure, to blow up three bridges with these units by laying mines. If I don’t manage that, German armored units will come in from all directions and the attackers will lose a lot of money.
For me, the full tactical break was the pinnacle of the fresh features. Pressing the spacebar and calmly selecting a stack of commands for the units is a better way to solve tricky situations.
In addition to the really varied real-time missions, a good part of the campaign is turn-based. The units advance on an overview map, liberating cities, capturing supply depots and fighting military confrontations using skirmish attacks. The forces of the parties and the probability of victory are displayed, the fight then runs automatically. As a rule, it is worth taking up the battle, because as a reward there are important resources that are needed for the production of units. If things don’t look good, retreat is also possible, but this costs 10% life of all units involved.
The loyalty system is not to be underestimated for progress. You will always be faced with decisions and will also get a tip from your allies: General Norton from the British 8th Army, US General Buckram or the Italian resistance fighter Eleonora Valenti. If you follow their suggestions for further action, loyalty increases and you get additional perks, such as support against air raids, combat divers or partisan espionage operations.
The Africa campaign, which you play as the German Africa Corps, is much more linear than the dynamic Italy invasion. You will receive the orders personally from Wüstenfuchs Rommel, but genuinely with an extremely hard German accent.
For a good three hours into the Italy campaign, you not only have infantry and vehicles, but also order an armada of battleships and cruisers through the sea and begin to secure air supremacy once you have captured the first airfield. By now, as you take on the battles on land, sea, and air, you’ll really appreciate the new full tactical pause feature. One press of the spacebar and you have all the time in the world to get an overview, rethink your strategy and make up to eight tactical assignments for your units. So I was able to save some of my laboriously nurtured troops with a strategic retreat before my heroes would have perished in the crossfire.
The mission I’m playing is a real strategy board even on the easiest difficulty. First, a small squad of German soldiers must survive a British onslaught for several minutes before reinforcements arrive.
That’s not the only exciting feature Company of Heroes 3 has to offer. Finally, a verticality has also been added, in which the differences in height of the battlefields really play a role. Houses are destroyed piece by piece by shelling, vehicles have side armor that is usually easier to penetrate than the thickly armored front and rear. You can mount infantry on tanks to get to the front lines faster and safer, and you can look forward to a whole new set of animations. Take the time to zoom in on the fray and see the sparks fly as repair crews go about their work with welders, grenadiers charge at tanks and plant mines, barbed wire is cut, or when a house is stormed, soldiers kick in the door and throw hand grenades throw in.
In the North Africa campaign you take over the faction of the German Africa Corps (DAK) and get the orders from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. I was able to try out a mission that was well into the campaign and failed miserably several times. The first task is to survive a concentrated British attack with a small group of German soldiers for five minutes before reinforcements arrive. After that, a mined area on the left and right of the extensive map is to be overcome, in which the opponents have taken up positions in the middle behind concrete barricades. Storming right through ends in a fiasco, only when air observers are eliminated at three widely scattered locations, who would otherwise cover the DAK with bombardments, is there any chance of surviving an advance. There was no way I would have completed the mission without a tactical break, but even so it was proof of the strategic challenges the game offers.
Both the Italy and the Africa campaigns are accompanied narratively between the missions. On the one hand, a GI tells about his experiences during the invasion, on the other hand you will learn details about the fate of Izem, a Jewish Berber and his family, who is fighting on the side of the British against the German occupiers.
Together with the 120 different units, most of which have individual abilities and special attacks, this results in bustling mass battles that are many times more tactical and require much more attention than was the case with the predecessors of the series. It definitely got me back into the action after the long CoH abstinence and I’m already looking forward to next year when I can start both campaigns. For those who prefer to play cooperatively or competitively: Company of Heroes 3 will bring a co-op mode and 1v1 to 4v4 multiplayer modes in which the Wehrmacht can also be played. There is also a thick modding package right at the start, in which you can create maps and scenarios yourself with an extensive editor.
