I glanced around the UI and before the tutorial prompted me, my first thought was, ‘can I click-drag to select my units?’ As my hands intuitively moved to click-drag by holding down A and pulling back on left stick, I was rewarded with a blue highlight box selecting my troops – bloody awesome. I started with the tutorial which was helpful to be guided through the new user interface and giving commands to our army with the controller. Now here we are 17 years later playing Company of Heroes 3 on a console for the first time and Relic Entertainment have certainly tweaked the UI to ensure console gamers can react to situations as well as PC players, and I am having a ton of fun with the game. I then spent a lot of time in 2013’s Company of Heroes 2, playing co-op online with mates. My experiences with the Company of Heroes series go back to the launch of the original game in 2006, when the game came shipped with a new graphics card I bought at the time. The words ‘at launch’ still leaves things open for interpretation, but I am told that present plans are for a mix of free content drops, as well as premium content packs via first party stores. I saw this was a big issue for the PC version, but I am glad to see none of that in this console edition. One big thing I need to mention up front is that there is no in-game store on this console edition at launch. Graphically though, I had to settle for the lesser quality performance mode as the 4k resolution mode, while looking fantastic, just didn’t feel the same playing at 30fps which is a shame.

I am pleasantly surprised at how simple and intuitive it was to use the Xbox controller, and the tactical pause feature was also a great addition. I have been reviewing the game on Xbox Series X and I was apprehensive about how the game would play using a controller considering how intense these games can be using mouse/keyboard.

The game is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 4/5 in the form of Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition that launches on May 30, 2023. Company of Heroes 3 is an RTS from Relic Entertainment and SEGA, and originally launched on PC on February 24, 2023.

My controls for company of heroes 2