I have waited several years for the sequel of company of heroes. When coh3 was announced, I remember it being so exciting! IGN was putting it on front page, Steam was putting it on front page...
The day before release, the game was scoring 80%+ across the bord, preorders went through the roof, ...

There was material to be excited about it, right?

Well, yes. But as much as the hype and expectations were high, so was the downfall after people could finally play it.
For the context, the game, on release day, had only an average of 50% positive steam reviews aka "mixed" reviews. Metacritic votes gave it a 4/10. How could this happen? What on earth happened from the almost perfect score of the press to this?
Well there are many reasons, and some people may disagree with what I'm about to say, but these people are also giving a positive review aka "the game is good, you should buy it" when their comment is always the same fashion of "yeah it's not finished but I have hope" - so if some people are allowed to spit their hopium on the review board, so am I allowed to spit my hatred and frustration.

---

1. The overall design of the game. - There is none.
The entire game, from Steam store cover to units in game, looks like some mobile game. Everything looks so fake and feels like plastic, I would say it’s the same style as Fortnite. Everything, absolutely everything, lacks that “soul” the other games had. Every button, every unit portrait, every UI element, … doesn’t have anything remarkable, it’s just… there? The 3D portraits and look of abilities are so uncanny, they feel so gross and out of place.
So yes, patches may fix bugs, they might even make the game play better, but they can’t patch the art style the game went for, which is a total failure imo, unless you have only played 3 other games of your life and find this “beautiful” and “original”, in which case, congrats!

2. The sound design of the game. – It’s mediocre.
What I mean by this is: Yeah. The game has sound. You can hear “pew pew”. That’s all there is to it. All the iconic voice lines and accents: gone. All the weapon sounds that you can recognize from the other side of the map: gone. The ability to hear: soon gone since the mixing is so badly done and everything just yells over everything.
It's a constant cacophony, and everything feels so toy-ish in that regard. You guys remember that you could tell the difference between 2 weapons firing, right? Well seems like that level of polish and caregiving is gone now, but not to worry – Relic is here for us, and has instead put their effort… In a “audio profanity filter” … That’s right, if the “ f ” word is too mean for your soft ears while you’re reenacting one of the darkest period of humanity where millions and millions died in horrible ways (people with families) – You can turn it off now! Thanks Relic! I can invade Poland in a politically correct way now!
Seriously, the sound effects and audio mixing are bad. Really bad. If you come from an older company of heroes game, you’re used to some degree of audio caviar; something this game is but too happy to not care about.

3. The marketing – They placed themselves as the greatest, biggest, best, Company of Heroes game so far (lol).
I feel like a bit too much marketing was done with this game, and often not successfully. It’s great to tell everyone that it’s the best company of heroes game, invest so much in gorgeous 4K trailers; but RTS are a bit of a niche nowadays, and I don’t think that advertising it so much is worth it? Especially with animation trailers that are well done but don’t tell us / show us anything interesting? Like that red scarf trailer thingy? Or make showcases videos of the factions weeks before launch where you can see planes not having their rotors moving / artillery spitting shells at a 90 degrees angle and so on?
Also the whole “Every battle tells a story” thing… Idk not very catchy?

4. The new stuff – Lacking!
Despite being release 8 years after company of heroes 2, this game only brought 3 things: Height mechanic, dynamic destruction and breach mechanics. Height mechanic was advertised as some omg ultra-super new shiny stuff – it ends up being like a special cover when you stand on a hill that gives you bonuses. The dynamic destruction, quite good! Expect it affects gameplay in such ways that if you blow up a door – you can’t use it anymore, meaning that throwing only one grenade or hitting a building with a shell will render some buildings useless – or in my case, make my units leave the building on a side they get stuck forever on. The breach? It’s alright, it forces enemy to leave a building while yours enter it for free. So it’s not that bad, but when you consider they had 8 years to think about new stuff and these are the only things the came up it – it kind of hurts…

5. The monetization – Shameful.
The game released at a 60$ price. Alright. I guess CoH is worth a AAA game now, huh? Well at 60$, I have the expectations of a 60$ game! This game doesn’t have the quality to justify such a high price anywhere. It’s not even finished or will ever be. Half the icons of this game are still placeholders taken from company of heroes 2. Some animations weren’t fixed since the game announcement 2 years ago. Yes, units still throw their rifles as grenades (this is not what a “rifle grenade” is meant to be). Yes, the vehicle destruction animation looks worse than any other company of heroes game – there is non the tank just becomes black and there are few flames spawning on it. Yes, every time you build a vehicle, if it’s too big, it will start shaking like it’s electrocuted. Yes, on some maps, your base building engineers can bug and will get stuck forever and prevent you from building your tank factories. At a 60$ price, this is the kind of stuff that can’t be tolerated and despite being a huge fan of the franchise, I feel insulted and betrayed (but I still bought it because like many people I had faith). Also, instead of commanders, now you can buy cosmetic for your vehicles, base, infantry models, and yes they look totally out of place and bad. The “devil’s brigade” – aka make the USF looks like a Halloween party gone wrong.

6. The UI – OMG this feels like I have lost my glasses.
The UI always was a problem for this game, and some fixes were made, but it’s till meh at best. I will say it again, but the “fire discipline” ability button on my machine should not be the PTRS upgrade image from coh2; nor should the merge ability button image of grenadiers be the same as coh 2 conscripts – like it’s a literal Russian conscript running with a bloody medical icon next to it and someone green lighted this to the public ? It's hard to understand what is where on the UI, the upgrades and units building queue are totally out of place and so small it’s almost impossible to keep track of what’s going on.
The overall tone and feeling of the UI is incomplete, out of place and low quality.

7. The pathfinding – WTH?
My last game – I told my mg to enter a building; it started making circles around it while never getting inside. I told my Marder 3 to get in a position; it got stuck between two rocks. I told my Chaffee to go somewhere; it had to turn around a ridiculously small tree. The pathfinding of the game if exceptionally bad.

I could go on and on about things that this game did that are bad (like the community management, where the official server has 3 times more people than coh2 old discords but have 0 to none active people most of time because saying the word “ooga booga” will get you banned for raci$m) but you get the point – This game is almost a DoW III incident.
If you want the buy the game, don’t. Or wait a couple months for the most critical stuff to be fixed / get the game for under 30$.

I wanted this game to be good, I’m not winning anything by saying it’s bad, but it is what it is. If you are enjoying the game despite that, I’m happy for you.

I have waited several years for the sequel of company of heroes. When coh3 was announced, I remember it being so exciting! IGN was putting it on front page, Steam was putting it on front page... The day before release, the game was scoring 80%+ across the bord, preorders went through the roof, ... [b]There was material to be excited about it, right?[/b] Well, yes. But as much as the hype and expectations were high, so was the downfall after people could finally play it. For the context, the game, on release day, had only an average of 50% positive steam reviews aka "mixed" reviews. Metacritic votes gave it a 4/10. How could this happen? What on earth happened from the almost perfect score of the press to this? Well there are many reasons, and some people may disagree with what I'm about to say, but these people are also giving a positive review aka "the game is good, you should buy it" when their comment is always the same fashion of "yeah it's not finished but I have hope" - so if some people are allowed to spit their hopium on the review board, so am I allowed to spit my hatred and frustration. [hr][/hr] 1. The overall design of the game. - There is none. The entire game, from Steam store cover to units in game, looks like some mobile game. Everything looks so fake and feels like plastic, I would say it’s the same style as Fortnite. Everything, absolutely everything, lacks that “soul” the other games had. Every button, every unit portrait, every UI element, … doesn’t have anything remarkable, it’s just… there? The 3D portraits and look of abilities are so uncanny, they feel so gross and out of place. So yes, patches may fix bugs, they might even make the game play better, but they can’t patch the art style the game went for, which is a total failure imo, unless you have only played 3 other games of your life and find this “beautiful” and “original”, in which case, congrats! 2. The sound design of the game. – It’s mediocre. What I mean by this is: Yeah. The game has sound. You can hear “pew pew”. That’s all there is to it. All the iconic voice lines and accents: gone. All the weapon sounds that you can recognize from the other side of the map: gone. The ability to hear: soon gone since the mixing is so badly done and everything just yells over everything. It's a constant cacophony, and everything feels so toy-ish in that regard. You guys remember that you could tell the difference between 2 weapons firing, right? Well seems like that level of polish and caregiving is gone now, but not to worry – Relic is here for us, and has instead put their effort… In a “audio profanity filter” … That’s right, if the “ f ” word is too mean for your soft ears while you’re reenacting one of the darkest period of humanity where millions and millions died in horrible ways (people with families) – You can turn it off now! Thanks Relic! I can invade Poland in a politically correct way now! Seriously, the sound effects and audio mixing are bad. Really bad. If you come from an older company of heroes game, you’re used to some degree of audio caviar; something this game is but too happy to not care about. 3. The marketing – They placed themselves as the greatest, biggest, best, Company of Heroes game so far (lol). I feel like a bit too much marketing was done with this game, and often not successfully. It’s great to tell everyone that it’s the best company of heroes game, invest so much in gorgeous 4K trailers; but RTS are a bit of a niche nowadays, and I don’t think that advertising it so much is worth it? Especially with animation trailers that are well done but don’t tell us / show us anything interesting? Like that red scarf trailer thingy? Or make showcases videos of the factions weeks before launch where you can see planes not having their rotors moving / artillery spitting shells at a 90 degrees angle and so on? Also the whole “Every battle tells a story” thing… Idk not very catchy? 4. The new stuff – Lacking! Despite being release 8 years after company of heroes 2, this game only brought 3 things: Height mechanic, dynamic destruction and breach mechanics. Height mechanic was advertised as some omg ultra-super new shiny stuff – it ends up being like a special cover when you stand on a hill that gives you bonuses. The dynamic destruction, quite good! Expect it affects gameplay in such ways that if you blow up a door – you can’t use it anymore, meaning that throwing only one grenade or hitting a building with a shell will render some buildings useless – or in my case, make my units leave the building on a side they get stuck forever on. The breach? It’s alright, it forces enemy to leave a building while yours enter it for free. So it’s not that bad, but when you consider they had 8 years to think about new stuff and these are the only things the came up it – it kind of hurts… 5. The monetization – Shameful. The game released at a 60$ price. Alright. I guess CoH is worth a AAA game now, huh? Well at 60$, I have the expectations of a 60$ game! This game doesn’t have the quality to justify such a high price anywhere. It’s not even finished or will ever be. Half the icons of this game are still placeholders taken from company of heroes 2. Some animations weren’t fixed since the game announcement 2 years ago.[b] Yes, units still throw their rifles as grenades (this is not what a “rifle grenade” is meant to be). Yes, the vehicle destruction animation looks worse than any other company of heroes game – there is non the tank just becomes black and there are few flames spawning on it. Yes, every time you build a vehicle, if it’s too big, it will start shaking like it’s electrocuted. Yes, on some maps, your base building engineers can bug and will get stuck forever and prevent you from building your tank factories.[/b] At a 60$ price, this is the kind of stuff that can’t be tolerated and despite being a huge fan of the franchise, I feel insulted and betrayed (but I still bought it because like many people I had faith). Also, instead of commanders, now you can buy cosmetic for your vehicles, base, infantry models, and yes they look totally out of place and bad. The “devil’s brigade” – aka make the USF looks like a Halloween party gone wrong. 6. The UI – OMG this feels like I have lost my glasses. The UI always was a problem for this game, and some fixes were made, but it’s till meh at best. I will say it again, but [b]the “fire discipline” ability button on my machine should not be the PTRS upgrade image from coh2; nor should the merge ability button image of grenadiers be the same as coh 2 conscripts – like it’s a literal Russian conscript running with a bloody medical icon next to it and someone green lighted this to the public ?[/b] It's hard to understand what is where on the UI, the upgrades and units building queue are totally out of place and so small it’s almost impossible to keep track of what’s going on. The overall tone and feeling of the UI is incomplete, out of place and low quality. 7. The pathfinding – WTH? My last game – I told my mg to enter a building; it started making circles around it while never getting inside. I told my Marder 3 to get in a position; it got stuck between two rocks. I told my Chaffee to go somewhere; it had to turn around a ridiculously small tree. The pathfinding of the game if exceptionally bad. I could go on and on about things that this game did that are bad (like the community management, where the official server has 3 times more people than coh2 old discords but have 0 to none active people most of time because saying the word “ooga booga” will get you banned for raci$m) but you get the point – This game is almost a DoW III incident. If you want the buy the game, don’t. Or wait a couple months for the most critical stuff to be fixed / get the game for under 30$. I wanted this game to be good, I’m not winning anything by saying it’s bad, but it is what it is. If you are enjoying the game despite that, I’m happy for you.