Booting the game on my Core i9 12900K system paired with an RTX 4090, the maxed out experience hit 200fps at 4K resolution. In fact, Company of Heroes 3 is really light on the GPU. For example, ray tracing is nowhere to be found, and something like ray-traced shadows would have been a computationally cheap and amazing way to solve the visual issues with shadows in this game. Even though the new game has transitioned to a new DX12 version of the 'Essence Engine', there's no real indication that the new API is being pushed hard in any obvious way. This kind of graphical newness is missing in Company of Heroes 3. Company of Heroes 2 was infamous in 2013 as its DX11-powered graphics were similarly heavy when set to their highest. The original Company of Heroes was one of the first DX10 games, using the new API to improve shadow and lighting quality while punishing GPUs at launch with the highest settings. The new details to geometry and textures are not so noticeable because they are not shadowed correctly.Īnother indication of a more conservative approach to innovation is the novel use of the latest cutting-edge technology.
The new sequel is more highly detailed, but with its odd shadows, it looks oddly sterile in comparison. The older Company of Heroes titles did this better - even the first game from 2006. One of the best examples can be found with the game's shadows: the game uses shadow maps and the transition between different quality levels is jarring at close range. However, there's plenty that could benefit from further improvement.
#1440P COMPANY OF HEROES 2 SERIES#
When combined with the granular destruction that the series is known for, where buildings explode and where every piece of cover you see can be destroyed or flattened by vehicle, then yes, Company of Heroes 3 looks quite beautiful. The detail is now driven by material properties, like a modern game.Īnimations are also of a high quality - zoom in on some infantry in combat and you can see them working the action of their weapons, showing obvious recoil on firing - and there are also bespoke animations per unit when reloading occurs as magazines are switched out. Textures are also generally authored at a higher resolution than ever before, and importantly, without a lot of the detail pre-painted in the diffuse texture, so they do not look overly noisy. Similarly, Company of Heroes 3 sees a unified push to make all textures and materials authored in a physically-based manner: the metals of tanks have a really great look to them and look very different from the stone or dirt around them in terms of material quality. Geometric detail is higher, to the point where zooming in on a fruit cart in the battlefield shows each individual fruit. Let's be clear - the game still looks great and has a lot going for it. Watch on YouTube Alex Battaglia presents the Digital Foundry verdict on Company of Heroes 3 in this video review. That's what made 2006's Company of Heroes so compelling and it's in revisiting the original release and the 2013 sequel that I began to realise how technologically unambitious the new game is by comparison. In short, this is a different form of RTS with a smaller, more tactical nature. New troops are not as effective as experienced veterans, so the winning commander typically has good micro-management and positioning skills. There's no Starcraft-style building queue and you aren't churning out units in their hundreds to send to their deaths like Command and Conquer.Ĭompany of Heroes is all about keeping each individual unit alive for as long as possible, adhering to cover, utilising special abilities and gaining further experience that translates into new advantages on the battlefield.
There are no vast armies here, just a company of troops, where infantry are moved and requisitioned as a squad. The point is to capture and hold territory, which then furnishes you with resources to equip and expand your small force. The goal of the game is not just to overcome the enemy while micromanaging your base and resource gathering. I was really eager to cover this one because it's an RTS with a very different spin, putting you in command of an allied or axis force from a top-down perspective. So, on the one hand, it does feel like a missed opportunity to a certain extent but the flip side is that it's very easy to run on very high settings across a range of hardware. I'm enjoying the game but I don't feel it's pushing boundaries in the way that its predecessors did. If I had to sum up Company of Heroes 3 in a single sentence, I would say it is an excellent real-time strategy game that is technically sound - but also unambitious.
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