izigame.me

Right, I believe I have played this game enough to be able to reliably comment on it. First of, I am a CoH series veteran, I was around long enough to have been painfully disapointed by CoH 2, a game that was so bad at launch it actually made one of my friends have an emotional episode over it and that speaks volumes about how passionate my friend group is about CoH. The first one, while amazing, has a great deal of issues, especially when you want to play multiplayer, be it PvP or Co-op, but has otherwise aged like fine wine and is worth the asking price for the campagin and mods alone. CoH 2 was released a piece of overpriced, unstable, unbalanced garbage, but was maintained until it just became unbalanced and messy (only so much you can do with an engine this bad) with a campagin that can only be described as 'buy the actually good single player content and sod off' (I am referring to the Ardennes Assault DLC, as base game campagin is so bad that it cannot be understated). I speak about these games because of the overwhelming number of comments that bring them up, though despite the near-perfection of CoH 1 and the messy and jank but popular CoH 2 I am willing to argue CoH 3 can finally stand shoulder to shoulder with them, even if it is far from perfect.
'But the reviews are mixed to this day' I imagine you asking in my head because I have an inner voice now, apparently, 'how can you prove that their arguments are bad/invalid and that yours are not?'. Well, let's take it from the top, shall we?
Exibit A): 'Game looks bad.' Now, lets think about this reasonably. Graphics are important for a game, yes, but when I say this I have stuff like visibility and readability in mind. Outside of that, stuff like aesthetics is purely subjective and can, thus, render a purely aesthetics-based argument moot, as when a game is readable, visible and well-presented, no matter how appealing the graphics are outside of that they do not really affect gameplay. I personally like the looks, especially the improved blood and gore effects, not to mention the game loads and runs immeasurably better than bleak and unoptimized CoH 2 or brown and drab CoH 1.
Exibit B): 'Campagin bad.' Yea, well, I don't really have a saving grace here, the dynamic campagin is a slog that made even the turtle extraordinare of our group, a seasoned Supreme Commander veteran say 'This is a bit much.' Good news is, Relic has been working on it and people have been saying nice things about it, so, hopefully, it gets better with time. As for the North Africa campagin, it is, for all intents and purpouses, simplistic and decent enough to play through once, but it lacks the punch of CoH 1 and the hilarious dissonance of CoH 2. You have no reason to play through it.
Exibit C): 'Balance bad.' Well, Relic, or Lelic as we call it in moments like these, is known for not knowing how to balance. Despite that, CoH 3 is far. FAR better balanced than CoH 1, where the brits could blow you up with artillery that had range that felt map-wide or could gain 100% map vision with some commando shenanigans, not to mention Panzer Elite and their shenanigans, CoH 2, where the SU-85 could spot for itself, thus removing the only real weakness of tank destroyers or the amount of clown-car based shenanigans most factions have access too, soviet fire spam, soviet instant-retreat propaganda artillery, brit sim cities, us rifle, pathfinder and jackson spam, penal and conscript ptrs spam, the magical Tiger II and many, MANY more examples of insane, unbalanced, absurd shenanigans that can decide the game for you 10 minutes in, CoH 3 actually has more in-deapth design with the battlegroups, allowing some flexibility and adaptablity, giving you a chance to come back with some strategy or double down on your advantage rather than leaving you in the dust as doctrines did in 2. Here lethality is higher at a distance than in 2 making long-range firefights less of a slog, all AT options are more lethal, thus making armour rush less dangerous that it was in 2, meaning a single light tank gotten a bit too early won't win you the game even if it costs it it's life and a single mass rout won't cost you the bulk of your army when they drive into your base and start rolling over your units (crushing was removed unless done to pinned units, a great change balance-wise). Do I think Italian Combined Arms is essentially a useless doctrine? Yes. Were Gustatori handled the wrong way since launch? Also yes. Brit infantry sections could tackle any issue, jaegers could too, so on and so forth, but these issues were adressed and are no longer. The devs care, they fixed strafes and loiters, they tackle bugs and pathfinding is the best it has been in any CoH game and don't even get me started on the UI, it's leaps and bonds ahead of the other games! True, CoH is still bad at explaining it's mechanics, but as people who did CoH professionally have taught me (people like Felinewolfie), that has been an issue consistently in every CoH game. This one lacks the levels and quantity of OP BS that the other two did and while that may change as battlegroups and, hopefully, factions roll out, at least all is fine for now, by comparison anyway.
Exibit D): 'DLC policy bad.' Do you hounestly expect me to defend 2 battlegroups for 17 euro as a DLC? Fat chance, people have every right to diss it and it should never have happened, I am happy the 2 new battlegroups released with 1.6.0 are not classed as DLC. I hope they learn from that and the next DLC is a faction or 2 with their own unique single player content.
TL;DR: Game runs very well, bugs are few and far in-between now and the rest are being squashed, saying the game looks bad is purely subjective as an argument and no grounds to hate on this game alone, balance is better than it has ever been with quality of life additions, but the DLC policy and campagin still need work. Give the game a try, you won't regeret it!
Old Man Henderson copied my review. Just sayin'