Developer Relic Entertainment has created an admirable port for the Console Edition of Company of Heroes 3, which in spite of a rather intuitive control scheme tailor-made for controller, doesn't quite feel at home away from the mouse-and-keyboard it was originally designed for. Relic previously brought Age of Empires 4 to consoles in tandem with the Xbox Game Studio founded to head the brand's real-time strategy game efforts, World's Edge. As a second effort in converting the PC-centric RTS genre to a console experience, Company of Heroes 3 is more than functional, and while the game itself has both ambition and depth, the Console Edition never quite manages to shake the feeling that it's on the wrong platform.

Those familiar with the Company of Heroes series (or even RTS games in general) will feel right at home in the series' third outing. For beginners, the game's campaigns do an effective job easing the player into its many systems, but it will be largely up to the individual to explore the intricacies of each unit under their command. Company of Heroes 3 deftly balances its World War 2 setting on both a minute and grand scale, offering two separate single-player campaign experiences, customizable instant action skirmishes, online multiplayer, and co-op against AI opponents. Frequently satisfying and oftentimes tense gameplay is littered throughout Company of Heroes 3 on console, and while it feels as though few concessions were made on a technical level, it remains clear that - at least for now - PC remains the optimum domain for the RTS genre.

Two Single-Player Campaigns Of Unequal Scope

Company of Heroes 3's story content revolves entirely around the Mediterranean theaters of World War 2, a welcome reprieve from the ever-popular Western Front. One sees the player take command of Allied forces liberating Italy, beginning in Sicily and moving north toward Rome. The other focuses on conflicts in North Africa, putting the player on the side of the Axis and in control of Panzer divisions.

The latter is the more traditional RTS campaign experience, leaning on the infamous reputation of the Nazis' Afrika Korps commander, Erwin Rommel, to deliver a rather straightforward sequence of missions with interspersed cutscenes. The story makes a concerted and applaudable effort to push the wartime plight of Benghazi locals to the forefront, but this at times feels disconnected from the missions themselves, which often feature the Desert Fox himself leading the destruction wrought by his armored divisions.

The campaign depicting the Italian front is the much more mechanically interesting option in Company of Heroes 3. While historiographers may balk at the agency provided to players in executing the Allied invasion of Italy, it's a more ambitious, grandiose, and varied experience. One half of the Italian campaign has the player commanding Allied companies on a macro scale - a map of occupied Italy is shrouded by the genre's staple fog of war, with infantry, aircraft, artillery, armor, and naval vessels maneuvered as the player sees fit in an effort to liberate towns, cities, and ports from the Wehrmacht. The turn-based overview of the Italian campaign then leads dynamically into classic Company of Heroes missions and skirmishes, which constitute the campaign's other half.

The increased interactivity with the war at large in Company of Heroes 3's Italian campaign does not, however, extend to historical figures. The Allied invasion of Sicily is merely an introductory mission, glossing over the opportunity to use another larger-than-life WW2 figure, George S. Patton, to juxtapose the North Africa campaign's Rommel. Instead, as the player sweeps up the Italian mainland peninsula (at which time, following his victory in Sicily, Patton would have been training the Third Army in preparation for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France), they are advised by two fictitious generals - the United States' General Buckram and the United Kingdom's General Norton.

Although this does a rather interesting job shaping the war into a more personal narrative for the player, these characters themselves often feel like little more than caricatures. Buckram is the brash American, hellbent on kicking Nazi teeth in and conquering Rome as quickly as possible. Norton, on the other hand, is more cold and calculating, urging the player to consider a more cautiously tactical approach. Garnering and losing favor between the two does present a good back-and-forth as objectives are completed and new ones are presented, though.

A third figure is quickly introduced to Company of Heroes 3's Italian campaign as well - Eleonora Valenti, leader of the Italian partisans. Valenti presents what are essentially side quests, opportunities to win more support from the local resistance fighters, often at the risk of overextending the Allied front lines. All told, the Italian campaign is perhaps the most novel aspect of Comapny of Heroes 3, cleverly portraying a significant theater in the nearly unimaginable scale of World War 2 through many unique missions, even if the turn-based segments grow tedious at times.

A PC Game Brought To PS5 & Xbox Series X/S

Although a majority of RTS games remain exclusive to PC, Company of Heroes 3 is perfectly playable on console. Liberal use of radial menus helps the player manage unit actions, but it's the Tactical Pause feature (also available on PC) which really allows the Console Edition to function on a suboptimal platform. Pressing in the controller's left stick at any time freezes the action, giving the player time to issue any number of commands. It's practically a necessary feature, since the Console Edition lacks the ability to click on the mini map to quickly jump to another location, and navigation via analog stick is quite cumbersome and inexact compared to a mouse.

In general, Tactical Pause simply meshes well with Company of Heroes 3's gameplay. While the player is frequently in charge of a dozen or more units, individual firefights often demand tactical movement on a smaller scale. It's quite satisfying to muster a few units outside an enemy position, pause the game, issue a string of precise orders to each squad, and un-pause to watch the plan be executed. For those unfamiliar with or easily overwhelmed by the organized chaos that comes with RTS combat, Company of Heroes 3's Tactical Pause is incredibly helpful.

Although Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition has come to current-gen hardware exclusively, it doesn't necessarily impress at face value. Frame rate drops occur unsurprisingly in performance mode when a lot is happening on-screen, but more disheartening are the load times that preempt a mission or skirmish. Incredibly high production value isn't exactly expected from an RTS, since the genre's isometric, zoomed-out viewpoint undermines the need for incredible detail, but environmental textures in Company of Heroes 3 can be noticeably blurry.

Final Verdict

The most unfortunate aspect of Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition is the text size, an issue with no solution. The settings have an option to increase cutscene subtitle size, but the same is not available for the many, many text boxes in-game. It frequently makes for a frustrating experience when playing from a couch, and is a constant reminder that Company of Heroes 3 is first and foremost a game built for PC; it's perfectly playable and more than enjoyable on console, but is still often cumbersome and awkward.

Source: Company of Heroes/YouTube

Company of Heroes 3 is available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Screen Rant was provided with a PS5 digital download code for the purpose of this review.