Published:
Verdict
Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand crystallizes the game’s best bits into bite-sized chunks of action. A great side-piece to the grand campaigns and skirmishes of the main game – this could be my lunchtime go-to going forward.
An RTS game that’s also a wave defense with roguelike elements? Someone somewhere came up with an idea so laser-focused for me that I’m a little concerned I’ve picked up a tail somewhere. A secret game developer agent, hell-bent on ruining my personal life with promises of bite-sized action and small elements of chance. The bastards have done it.
Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand is that potential life-ruiner. It’s the RTS game we all know: WW2 factions, little men running about, taking cover – that kind of thing. This expansion, however, tightens the scope a little; it’s me as whichever faction I like versus another faction of my choosing on a small, vertical map. The enemies come at me in waves, from different directions, and I have to defend myself.
The wrinkle here, I suppose, is that I begin each game with a small handful of recruitable units and must choose new units and abilities after each wave at random. As I begin, I could be offered the choice between an anti-tank squad or a group of lads who are amazing at fighting other infantry. This is where I build my army.
This grows in scale as the match progresses and I survive waves of enemies. Eventually, I have the choice of a couple of passive abilities, like extra healing on my troops or automatic reinforcements, with fighter strafing runs and naval bombardments coming later. I’m crafting a deck, if you’ll forgive the card comparison, with each unit and ability rounding out the edges of my capability on the battlefield.
Too much focus on anti-infantry and not enough explosions mean that I might get steamrolled whenever a squadron of enemy tanks appears. It works both ways, too. Enemy infantry can squeeze through the gaps in my defense, and without enough boots on the ground I can’t react to their numbers quickly enough.
Final Stand is an incredibly simple concept, really. It’s kind of all in front of me the first time I boot it up. Don’t die, scale with the enemy, good luck. Being simple doesn’t make it any less compelling, however; the subtle differences between each faction make for a fascinating exercise in strategy, and I have to adapt to not only what I’m offered, but what the enemy throws at me from turn to turn, and then the differences in environment.
No two games are quite the same, and as I ticked off each map with each faction on the lowest difficulty, I started to get a real feel for what I enjoyed and what works best. Multi-discipline infantry is my favorite; Jacks of all trades who can aren’t the best at anything, but can do a bit of everything. Posting them up in buildings across the front line gives me a baseline of fire, and my go-to strategy is to supplement that line with whatever I have in reserve.
It’s a bit hectic at times, but that’s where the other abilities come in. I’m not really a fan of the huge off-screen bombardments – as amazing as they look, they just take too long to arrive on the map, so the quick strafing runs are the preferred method of destruction.
Final Stand feels like the greatest hits version of Company of Heroes – while maybe not as nuanced as a much larger, regular round of the RTS game, it has most of the elements I enjoy, all condensed into around 40 minutes (if I don’t die). It doesn’t quite have that one-more-run compulsion of a Hades or a slay the Spire, let’s say, but it’s a really nice middle ground when I want to scratch the strategy part of my brain without committing too much time.
The roguelike elements of Final Stand ensure that no two rounds are the same, in theory. Realistically, though, the feel of each round doesn’t change all that much, and until I hit the much higher difficulties, my unit choice pales in importance to simply where my units were on the map. I feel like for some, especially those who aren’t going to go all the way in difficulty, this may come across as a bit same-y, but I could be wrong.
Although Final Stand is technically an expansion for Company of Heroes 3, it runs without the main game. Are we still saying expandalone? It’s one of them, anyway. At a budget price, it’s an easy recommendation for veterans of the series, those who want to dip a toe, or those who want to drag their friends into a forever war in the co-op mode.
I enjoyed my time with Final Stand; it fits where I am and how much time I generally have to commit these days. Simple but effective. I can be in and out and feel like I’ve ticked all the key strategy boxes – I thought initially that the hardcore RTS players amongst us may find this too simplistic, but it’s a nice spin on something familiar. An accoutrement to the epic campaigns and the hours-long skirmishes; a lovely bit of bite-sized action for when you need it.
