One promised that I could capture a town using spies, but after about 30 hours with the game, I either never got it to work, or misunderstood it completely. And in some cases, the text that did show up made certain mechanics needlessly confusing: espionage abilities, which you unlock as you recruit anti-fascist Italian partisans, are poorly explained to the point that I still don’t fully grasp what some of them do. Furthermore, many of the UI’s explanatory text boxes - which are essential in any dense strategy game - often didn’t pop up, making it a guessing game as to what effect an ability would have on the map. On several occasions, my company got stuck in an attack animation while trying to capture a town. It bears mentioning that I encountered a fair number of technical problems throughout the Italian campaign. By giving me control of the wider narrative, Relic has made the stakes much more apparent. Its turn-based overworld layer not only adds replayability to a genre whose campaigns are often one-and-done affairs, but provides compelling context for the action unfolding in real-time battles. It’s a bit like Total War, except you have more influence over the terrain it’s Civilization, if battles weren’t automated.Īs someone who fell in love with the strategy genre largely because of the original Company of Heroes, but who has since gravitated toward grand strategy games, I absolutely adore how Company of Heroes 3 has managed to blend both. When your companies clash with those of the Wehrmacht, the game jumps into real-time battles, on farms, beaches, and cramped city streets. Capturing airfields expands your ability to dominate the skies, and capturing ports allows you to land more companies on the peninsula, each with their own strengths and play styles. On this map, you maneuver individual companies, build defensive emplacements, send aircraft on scouting missions, bombard outposts with naval ships, and manage a litany of cities across Italy. Whereas Company of Heroes set the series apart with its focus on squad tactics in World War II, and Company of Heroes 2 incorporated weather effects, Company of Heroes 3 introduces a turn-based overworld map in its Italian campaign. These games’ influence is all over Company of Heroes 3, specifically in regard to the “completely new” third of its design tenets. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the aforementioned doctrine actually came from Sid Meier, the co-founder of Microprose and Firaxis Games, where he created Pirates!, Alpha Centauri, and Civilization, to name a few. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences.
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