Company Of Heroes 3: Release Date, Trailers, Gameplay, And More

Company of Heroes 3 has finally been given an official release date, with the next entry in the legendary real-time strategy franchise set to come in November. The first Company of Heroes released way back in 2006, and has since gone on to be considered one of the very best RTS games of all time. Since then, the RTS genre saw a big downfall as it faded from the gaming mainstream, but with the rise of PC gaming over the 2010s, the genre has seen a comeback in recent years. Relic Entertainment has somewhat spearheaded this with the release of Dawn of War 3 and Age of Empires 4, and look to continue it with the third CoH game. So check out everything you need to know about Company of Heroes 3, including the release date, trailers, gameplay, and more. 

Company Of Heroes 3: Release Date 

The Company of Heroes 3 release date was announced to be February 23, 2023, which came after a delay of the original November 17 release date. After its initial announcement in 2021, we didn't receive a release date or window, and this carried on through the year and into 2022. 

Company Of Heroes 3: Trailers

There have been quite a few different trailers for Company of Heroes 3 so far, and Relic have consistently released developer updates over on the official YouTube channel that details different aspects of the game. The first trailer to be released, was the official announcement trailer back in July 2021, which was a CGI trailer that showed Allied forces taking control of a Nazi-occupied town on the coast of Italy. It was a pretty standard showing of WWII combat, but had some of the staples of the CoH series, such as a scene where a tank blows up a building, causing it to fall on soldiers and kill them.

The second trailer came on the same day as the announcement, which was a gameplay trailer. It featured pre-alpha gameplay of a mission where American troops stormed a beach front before occupying a town from Nazi troops. It featured various stages of the mission, from the initial beach assault, to destroying anti-air guns, and even displayed paratroopers behind enemy lines who set up an ambush for reinforcements coming to defend the town. It ended with the Allied troops getting to the centre of the town and calling in a bombing run to wipe out the remainder of the Nazi soldiers. 

There were no major trailers for a while after this, apart from the battle briefings which showcased various game mechanics, and the developer logs which expanded on the game more. The next notable trailer was the North Africa trailer that came on July 12, which was a live action showing that showed a woman native to the area getting caught in the middle of a battle between the Axis and Allied forces, before seeing smoke coming from her hometown in the distance. This essentially revealed that the second major location for CoH3 was North Africa, and also announced the release date. 

Company Of Heroes 3: Gameplay

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Company of Heroes 3 is an RTS and in many ways will play the same as the previous entries, but it does come with a few notable additions to the formula to shake things up. One of the big new additions is the Tactical Pause system, which lets players pause during the chaos and issue commands that will queue up to be done once the game is resumed. This is likely a feature to help ease in new players that struggle with all the micromanaging of RTS games, with its tonnes of units, base building, and more. 

The destruction system makes a return, but it has been improved massively to be more granular, allowing for more specific destruction of individual tiles during gameplay. There are also NPCs in the Italian campaign, who are Partisans that act as resistance to Nazi forces. They can be used as reinforcements for actual battles, and play a role on the game's dynamic campaign map. 

The dynamic campaign map is a feature specifically added for the Italian campaign, allowing you to take control of the invasion of Nazi-occupied Italy. It gives you a chance to plan and execute everything yourself by controlling companies and detachments, which are the main units. With these units, you can start combat by invading an enemy-controlled town, take objectives and checkpoints, cut off enemy supply lines, and much more. One example of the types of choices this system gives, is that you can prioritise capturing air bases to increase your recon air support or bombing capabilities. There's much more to this system, so check out the developer breakdown above. 

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Finally, it's worth mentioning that the game is split into two different campaigns. There is the dynamic Italy campaign where your choices can influence exactly how Ally invasion pans out, including the overall narrative, which is dependent on how you interact with the various in-game commanders. Then there is a North African campaign where you take control of the Deutsches Afrikakorps, which is more linear and straightforward, taking you through famous battles in this theatre of war, such as Tobruk, El-Alamein, and more from the Axis side.   

Company Of Heroes 3: Platforms 

Right now, Company of Heroes 3 is only announced for PC, which makes sense as the genre has historically been associated with PC due to the nature of how they play. The original game did later receive ports for mobile devices and tablets, though the second game never did. It's unlikely the game will receive any console ports, and after release the developers will likely spend time porting it to other PC OS, like Linux and OS X.