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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Comments 22
ok so decent enough, happy days, might pick this up at some point down the road.
I don’t really play multiplayer, so that’s not an issue for me.
Looks like a decent port.
But I just can't play PC-Style RTS on console, I can't handle the "indirect" controls the controller sticks gives it, it's just too slow and imprecise.
Curious how this will play with a controller. Definately picking up, I've 100+ hours in both 1 and 2 each, so think I'll get £20 worth of milleage out of this
Companies need to stop releasing games 75% done. Remember the Nintendo seal of quality which means nothing anymore?
Has anybody played these before? I've been after an RTS in the vein of Command & Conquer, but they're not really commonplace anymore. I've been wondering if this is in that style.
Really liked this one back in 2006
No CoH2 in it is actually great (CoH2 literally had 1 good thing going for it - showing the reality of eastern front which caused quite a stir and educated a lot of people. Except that it was horrible)
@The_Elite_Institute its a great RTS for sure, but it is more complex than Command and Conquer (Im a huge fan of those). For example there is an emphasis on cover mechanics, units have secondary abilities which you need to activate such as throwing grenades.
I cant remember if armour on tanks is modelled accurately here i.e. you have to flank/attack the weaker armour at sides or rear
Another big feature which I thoroughly enjoyed at the time was the destructable environments. For example, if enemies are garrisoning a building call in an artillery strike/use mobile artillery to just level the building!
It was great on PC but I'm wondering how this will be with a controller.
@ozwally
everything correct plus veichle can be damage in specific points depending of distance,weapon used and angle like destroy engine making them very slow, or tracks(mobilized) or main gun , you will see depending of weapon/distance sometime shell bouncing off from the frontal armor doing no damage, IA is good enough to put up a fight in campaing and skirmish and the two faction (and the sub faction added from the first expansion) played very differentely, and there are a lot of focus on artillery(and it so satystaing to be able to build 6-7 heavy artillery manage to bring them in position and firing all of them simultanely at the enemy base)
controls they say it good and there is a tatical pause activaing when you open the unit skill menu or bulding , the game resume as soon you use it allow for same pace
https://youtu.be/Vim0LUlzqik?t=321
@ozwally ah ok but it is that style? I like that type of strategy game, but other styles like Civ or XCom I'm not fond of
@The_Elite_Institute
yes same is a real time strategic game old style like C&C but better , the only difference than pc is the temporary pause added in this specific switch version when you open the menu to build or to chose an ability to help with the controls , the game resume as soon you use the choose the bulding action or use the ability.
you can see everything in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vim0LUlzqik
@RasandeRose I'm thinking the same thing! Best played on a PC
Oh great another one to add to the backlog list If I remember correctly I played this a lot back in the day however I just played the multiplayer with a friend. He was a huge fan of it and we used to spend endless hours playing C&C Red Alert together (old school linking 2 Playstations with 2 TVs!). I always wanted to play the campaign because I heard it was real good so this may give me that opportunity. There's just too many damn games on my backlog AND coming out before year's end.
@aresius I saw that pause feature in the options menu and think that’s really handy, as you simply can’t move around the UI as quickly as you can with mouse and KB
@5th313ment
I think the seal of quality's purpose is to show that the game is not a bootleg but an official release approved by Nintendo and that the game would function when put into the console.
Wouldn’t mind this but the price point is a bit much for a 2006 game. The Switch now has so many games that charging a “Switch tax” is likely to get your game passed over. This needs a significant sale for me to jump in.
@5th313ment I don't know how to break this to you...
Accolades for the original game:
"93" on MetaCritic
2006 Spike Video Game Awards - Best PC Game of the Year
2007 D.I.C.E. Awards - Best Strategy Game of the Year
2007 D.I.C.E. Awards - Best Computer Game of the Year Nominee
PC Gamer - Game of the Year
IGN - PC Game of the Year
GameSpot - PC Game of the Year
Computer Games Magazine - PC Game of the Year
GameSpy - PC Game of the Year
Don't immediately dismiss Skirmish vs AI. As with most RTS games, it's a good way to learn the nuances of each map and practice some build orders and combinations of units. German mortar has a little longer range than US, so it's good to know where on the maps to setup to be most effect, or how to counter if there's good cover. I mean, this is really true of any RTS, but I found it more so for CoH and I keep coming back to it far more than any other RTS. If there was a remaster of Total Annihilation, that might be another game I would return to. But, it might not age nearly as well as CoH has. I played a ton when CoH was originally released as part of Games for Windows. Too bad all the ranking stuff was lost when they changed serves.
I knew how to spend days and nights with this game. I'll have to try it out on Nintendo as well.
When I saw this on the E-Shop as new game, this was an instant buy for me. I never played the game on the PC and the amount of content you get for only 25 EUR is enormous!
I just played the tutorials and the first mission but this strategy game is great, I cannot believe it only got a 7.
When you consider how few real-time strategy (note the real-time) games there are on Switch, how good this game is and how much content you get for only 25 EUR, I would at least give it a 9.
One of my favorite games on PC. Would love a physical edition on switch and really don't want to fall for the buy it twice on the same system thing Nintendo has going on. I'm gonna try to hold out for a physical release, but if it hits the right price on sale, I just don't know if I'm strong enough to not buy digital.
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