I have strong feelings for the classic real-time strategy game from Relic Society of Heroes. I’ve gone so far as to call it the “perfect RTS”.. So yeah, the news today that a third game is imminent was both a big surprise and a pleasant one.
If you’ve never played the games and are wondering why I’m saying this, you know this Society of Heroes wasn’t your average RTS. It wasn’t interested in mining crystals, building walls, or rushing with alien insects. It was a game about war that required the details of the battlefield action very Seriously, from cover to elevation to flanking, creating a free flowing tactical situation where every encounter in every battle felt like a new challenge, a little puzzle to solve with the right weapons in the right places applies.
Where the first game takes place in Western Europe and the second on the Eastern Front (before returning to France again via expansions) is the third Society of Heroes takes place in the Mediterranean Sea and takes on both the battles for North Africa and the Allied invasion of Italy.
That means we play the US and the British on one side (along with the Commonwealth Forces and the Italian Resistance) and the Germans and the main Italian armed forces on the other.
Here’s a big, fancy launch trailer:
But of practical interest could be this gameplay trailer:
So yeah, it looks a lot like it Society of Heroes! A new thing me Really like the look of, there is a greater emphasis on urban struggle. In previous games, taking control of buildings was important, but occupying them felt a little arbitrary. This is where your troops will break through and evacuate a house before moving in, which should hopefully make roaming the densely populated Italian cities a more interesting challenge.
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That’s very cool to see! That was a real shame Company of Heroes 2 was … such a bummer (although it got better with extensions), and after eight years of nothing, it was easy to assume that this series was dead in the water (or rest on perfection, depending on optimism).
Company of Heroes 3 will be released on Steam in 2022, but there is an alpha build that you can try right now via the game’s Steam page.
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