Company of Heroes Collection Review - Screenshot 1 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Great games are great no matter how much time has passed, and that remains true of Company of Heroes. The RTS classic that robbed us of our evenings and weekends back in 2006 has returned to the Nintendo Switch in the form of the Company of Heroes Collection and despite an updated control scheme for the console, after a few hours, it became like slipping on a comfortable, familiar pair of boots.

Right from the beginning, we were reminded that this isn’t Call of Duty or another series that glorifies or sanitises warfare. The first mission of the core game drops players directly into the Normandy Beach invasion and treats us to a cutscene where entire platoons of soldiers are mowed down by German machine-gun fire. It is brutal and depressing, as depictions of war should be, and does a good job of setting up the difficult, tactical gameplay that you'll be dropped into.

Company of Heroes Collection Review - Screenshot 2 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

The cutscenes in Company of Heroes Collection haven’t changed a bit from their original 2006 version. The character models are stiff and angular, moving more like puppets than people, but they feel more fluid when you are zoomed out during the combat missions. It all runs at a solid 30fps and maps look suitably detailed when you’re playing, though there is a slight downgrade when playing in handheld mode. This isn’t a beautiful game by today’s standards but the gameplay is good enough that you won’t hold that against it.

The core of Company of Heroes has always been the strategy elements and that remains the focus in this modern port. How you move your units across the battlefield and even which units you choose to spawn will have a huge impact on how successful your campaign is. One misstep could spell disaster for your brave soldiers, so careful consideration before you commit to an offensive quickly becomes second nature. The tutorial introduces a handful of tactics you’ll use along the way so you’ll have to have a little creativity to unlock the full range of manoeuvres you can employ.

Company of Heroes Collection Review - Screenshot 3 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

The translation from PC to Switch is smoother here than in most strategy games, but there are still some wrinkles to wrap your head around. The joystick will never give the precision that a mouse does, but the biggest issue is sifting through the different menus via combinations of the 'ZR' and 'ZL' buttons. 10 hours into it, we found it more intuitive, but the learning curve is real and can be deadly. Once you’ve mastered grouping units and moving them around the battlefield, there is a grim satisfaction that comes with pulling off the perfect pincer manoeuvre to clear out a pesky enemy bunker.

Each of the maps provides a unique challenge, whether that is defending your base from incoming air attacks or protecting allied units from enemy fire. One of our favourites was piloting a German tank through a town and steamrolling through the destructible environments, which was a simple power-fantasy scenario. All three of the campaigns have enough variety that we never felt like we could employ the same tactics twice. The AI was surprisingly adept, countering our offensives at just the right moment to give us a headache.

The Company of Heroes Collection comes with the original Company of Heroes, which follows Able Company from the D-Day invasion through to the end of the Normandy campaign, and the Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor expansion packs. The expansions offered up more single-player campaigns, but their main contribution was the addition of more armies to play as in the game’s Skirmish mode. However, this also highlights one of the greatest shortcomings of this Switch port.

Company of Heroes Collection Review - Screenshot 4 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

The PC version’s greatest strength was the multiplayer Skirmishes. We have fond memories of weekend-long LAN parties with multiple matches of Company of Heroes or playing against online opponents, but neither of these options is available with the Switch version of Company of Heroes Collection at launch. Feral Interactive has said that multiplayer is "planned for a post-release update", but its absence at launch is noticeable and makes the game feel incomplete if you're a veteran.

In its current state, Skirmish mode allows you to set up different battles against an AI opponent, which can provide varying levels of difficulty. There are 52 maps to choose from, with larger maps giving the option for 2v2 or 3v1 set-ups. There is a lot of content here if playing against the computer is your thing. Once the online play patch is implemented, we can see this becoming the best part of the game. As it is, we found the Skirmishes somewhat stale and unimaginative. As competent as the AI was, it wasn’t quite the challenge we were looking for.

Company of Heroes Collection Review - Screenshot 5 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Even without this key feature, Company of Heroes Collection has plenty of content to keep you busy. The story campaigns from the base game and each expansion will take around 30 hours to complete, with the Skirmishes boosting that number to nearly limitless levels. There is plenty of content for strategy game fans to dive into here. If the promised multiplayer update does come out, then this could become one of the most exciting RTS releases on the system.

Company of Heroes Collection shows that great gameplay can stand the test of time. This grim, uncompromising take on war is just as good as the day it was released. The updated controls aren’t quite as smooth as the original keyboard and mouse system but work as well as we could have expected on the Switch. The only mark against it is the lack of online multiplayer, which robs players of one of the best features of the original. Once it is added, we look forward to losing countless hours to this game once again.

Conclusion

The gameplay and tone of Company of Heroes hold up wonderfully more than two decades after its initial release, but the lack of any multiplayer options a launch makes Company of Heroes Collection feel sadly incomplete. The updated controls take some getting used to but still let you feel like a general moving their troops across the fields of Europe. Even with these flaws, though, this game is well worth investing in if you’re an RTS fan looking to step back into a classic title. Fingers crossed for the planned multiplayer update.