The Failure of Company of Heroes (And Why There Is Hope!) 

It's wild that the game was so undercooked that they couldn't even jam in the cash store on release

the AI not playing objectives has been a Relic problem since Dawn of War 1 ...

The "store in the first patch" move is very common, actually. You push the update AFTER the most important reviews and preorders so it has overall better reviews

“There were actually 2 world wars” -Grant This line is so funny to me for some reason.

The Red Alert 3 campaign was entirely co-op. It was one the better things about that game. Seems kinda wild they didn't learn from that game and team you up with a partner, AI or otherwise.

Your description of the campaign would be a near-exact summary of the American campaign from Company of Heroes 2, Ardennes Assault, which came out in late 2014. Everything from "The AI doesn't actually play the random objectives" to "one of the four Companies you can play as is locked behind a separate, poorly-rated dlc" (seriously, they pulled this crap then too). How did Relic look at Ardennes Assault and go "Yeah, We should release a full-priced game that's as bad as this dlc, and make a dlc for that game's campaign that is overpriced as all hell and also one of the very first things a player sees"?

I mean the montecasino mission could have a bear unit, so the lack of Wojtek is proof they dont have any idea how to have fun with it.

My only concern for Relic's future is 2 things: 1) Relic's leadership (they could have been responsible for all of the issues and if nothing else they are complicit with the issues) 2) Brain Drain (they have lost a lot of people and I doubt anyone from their golden age is still around).

That terrible audio is really unfortunate because previous games (especially CoH 1) had great audio implementation and balancing (including great music). They obviously spent ton of time on audio alone in older games. Even in 4v4 games it was never just a glob of sound like you showed in the video.

They mustve contracted little timmy to be the enemy AI.

When you came with those C&C nit sounds I thought "let's put it to the test, can I tell what every unit is from memory just by the sound." The answer, yes. Though I must admit I forgot what the jetpack guys are called. The lightning sounds are also so delightfully iconic.

I just wanted a CoH Pacific Campaign man...

Grant, I cannot compliment your work on videos like this enough. The retrospectives, the reviews, the challenge runs - the scripting, voice work, and footage editing all come together so well. The style of humor works for me so well, and the way you focus on the positives and optimistic angles while also not shying away from being critical where and when and how it’s appropriate works so well. The nods to the great experiences of hand crafted missions coupled with direct compliments to the devs who worked on those while expressing criticism and confusion about the state of the other parts of the game. I don’t know if you’ll end up reading this but if you do I hope you’ll know that your time and work and style is greatly appreciated. I hope for the absolute best for you going forward. 😊

The sad thing is, the campaign used to be you having to fight in battles, but instead of tailoring them to be mini missions, they were all skirmishes and they removed it to make gameplay faster, but in doing so it really hurt how campaign mode plays in general

Larian Studios with Baldurs Gate 3 has that a studio can be incredibly successful if the studio is not greedy and just gives the players a game they want to play, no micro transactions or locked content, a 60$ game with easily 100 hr of content. But the big difference is that game does not work with short term profit in mind but community building and longterm sustainability which goes against public companies having investors which in turn push for profit and dont care about the product of longevity of the company!

At this point, I want Grant to take a look at Relic's other games, specifically the original Dawn of War: WH40K games, from the first up through Soulstorm. All four were great games for the time, though I honestly believe that Winter Assault was the best, in part because it wasn't a bunch of skirmishes on multiplayer maps and then a number of scripted missions for each stronghold. Those scripted missions are always difficult and fun, with insane enemy numbers, extra objectives to find either bonuses or to take away enemy tech, and awesome set pieces, such as the Titan's gun on the Imperial Guard stronghold in Dark Crusade. Maybe it's not up Grant's alley, I understand not everyone enjoys WH40K. But I think it would be good to take a look at the games that lead up to this game, especially since you can see where Relic got the idea for the campaign in this compared to a more heavily scripted campaign like the first two Dawn of War games.

8:11 When the game released, encounters on the campaign map gave you the option to autoresolve or play the skirmish for bonus xp. Now it's autoresolve only, so one less option.

great video as always but a quick note - the ww1 rts (great war western front) had no involvement from paradox. it was made by petroglyph (of empire at war / command and conquer remaster fame) and published by frontier (of planet coaster / zoo fame)

Relic seems to have a problem with number 3. First it was Dawn of War 3, now CoH3 is crashing and burning.

Funny thing you've mentioned Sega firing a lot of employees: Relic wasn't the ones that got axed the most, that was CA. At least a third, 240 employees laid off, several of their studios closed, and Sega execs going in and pretty much dictating what they're gonna make. It was bad.

I am from poland. I remember in "Company of heroes 2", we had a great designed dedicated mission, where we played a couple of polish insurgents. This mission was briliant. We had dedicated special units with their own voice lines. There was a feeling of partisian war. I really loved this mission. When i seen that CoH 3 will be in Italy, i knew there will be something around Monte Cassino. Ittalians partisians had their own units and missions, so i thonk there would be somekind of dedicated mission here too, right? Nope! Against it, we just ran on the mountain by Tanks like Hussars or something out of screen and player did his job himself. I was so dissapointed by this mission. But this is just half of problem. Before mission we heard like 20 times that polish army will be there. At first time i had feeling like "Great! They didn't forget about us!". In next two times i had the same. But with each next repeat, i felt bigger and bigger cringe. It was like somebody took frying pan with inscription "Polish faught on Monte Cassino" and smashed my head... I feeled so bad when i seen it, and i can only imagine how ppl from the rest of the world could feel.

4:12 I'm taking this to mean Grant is secretly a big Genshin player and nobody can tell me otherwise.

I saw a comment on some video that the mechanics would work for a pacific, island -hopping campaignThis would not only fix the issue of the game having less exciting units, but also it could be cool seeing the fanatasism of Japaneese growing with more island you get, which would be like that game about czech legion fighing through all of Russia to get home

GRANT DOES GAMES WOOOOO

You may laugh at "Operation Coral Viper", but that one is based on a real Operation

A World War I Relic RTS game would be so good. We definitely need that.

I really wish World War I got explored more in fiction. My first few years doing RU-vid stuff, every Remembrance Day I'd showcase a game set in WWI and talk about the history of what's going on in the game, and just generally try to talk about it based on what I'd learned about it myself (not a history expert, education on WWI just became really emphasized in Canada when I was growing up). After about 3 years I basically ran out of games to showcase (granted this was before Battlefield 1 or The Great War), and it wasn't well received to begin with, but I was really surprised at how rare the setting was in games.

It's always the executives wanting to make more money. They don't take a risk the company that has to do as told does.

this game is going up against Gates of Hell as well

It's insane how cartoony and clean this game looks compared to the first CoH1, specially the particle effects and explosions; which tbh isn't that surprising coming off DoW3. The art direction in the first game was so good and satisfying + also the sound design and voice acting was absolutely top notch, it's sad seeing them fall off this hard.

A game that did the 4x, rpg and decisions that matter, and also good skirmish is Divinity: dragon commander by Larian Studios

Oh, so the campaign is Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, but bad...

To be honest, I think the best possible thing Relic could do at this point is to go back to GW on their hands and knees and beg them to let them to a Dawn of War 1 remake. It would be a trivially easy win and *as long as they don't fuck it up* would help win back a lot of the bad blood they got for the absolutle shitshow that was Dawn of War 3.

ww1 is also a goldmine for making a game series because it has so many fronts and theatres, and each one is different. the ww1 game series is a series of multiplayer shooters with each one being set in a different front and they all play totally different, and an rts series could do the same. the dug-in stalemates of the western front, the rolling plains of the eastern front, the mountain fighting of the italian front, the guerilla operations in east africa, etc. each front has a unique game in it.

6:11 - I recently replayed CoH1's US campaign and I have to tell you I'm disappointed that Relic hasn't really improved its campaign combat AI. In CoH1 the way they made missions harder was to half your units' health and double the accuracy, health, and damage of your enemies. It made for a difficult campaign, but not a fun one. This was nearly 20 years ago, (fuck) and the fact that they haven't improved since then is depressing.

Great video Grant. I was just looking at this on steam. Thanks for saving my $60.

Battle for Middle Earth 1 not 2 had the campaign fully done in Conquest mode. Battle for Middle Earth 2 had it as a separate customizable sandbox mode kind of like a skirmish.

Hearing you mention empire at was makes me wanna watch you playing through the campaign, I would be sooo excited about that! Its a grant video as always :D

I’m an old school relic fan since homeworld. That said the crew that are the relic old guard is Blackbird Interactive, which I’m sure someone else has mentioned. I too want relic to rise again, but if not maybe their legacy can live on in BBI

Another great couple genres that no one does much; Vietnam. There's plenty of FPS games, not a lot of rts and strategy games. You can definitely name a couple but there's not 20k titles like WW2 has. Next. This one I dont think I've seen literally ANYTHING for. Korean War. No one talks about it in the first place. They have so many WW2 assets and its 1950s, they still used a lot of WW2 equipment and it would be extremely interesting to see. Doubt relic would do either of these and if I'm honest, I'd just be happy if they mass fixed DoW3 and CoH3. Was so sad when the launch of 3 was butchered, played CoH1 as a 6 year old kid on my dad's old external hard drive he got from his navy buddies. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

about the WW1 idea there is a reason why it isn't portraied as often. aside from it being known les, it also was a lot less mobile. cars and armor was less known and a lot was infantry being sent into their death because they tried to apply napoleonic stand and fire strategies and charges in times of trenches and machine guns. this caused a lot of stalemates where simple atrition was partly more a concern than enemy bullets. in contrast, car industry has developed which lead to blitzkrieg tactics and the fast and interactive gameplay which is so much fun in RTS.

CoH3 has a good foundation consisting of elements of CoH1 and 2. You can still see some of the love that went into those earlier games, and as my by far favorite series, I have bought each overpriced DLC in hopes they can turn it around. But that release was an absolute embarrassment.

The idea of campaign sounds really cool, like XCOM2 but RTS. Maybe player only have limited resource, and instead of just create any amount of units out from thin air with some rocks them mine, they only have access to whatever they can "bring" into that specific mission. So player have to choose how much they want to invest into every battle, adding another layer of strategy outside the normal gameplay. But listen from this video, this or something equally nice probably didn't happened.

WW 1 with Relic RTS mechanics sounds *perfect.* I'm actually shocked that we haven't gotten one.

Eyyyy, cool to see you cover CoH3! The video serves as a pretty good summary of a lot of CoH3's issues. Though I did find it strange you spent this long talking about the "dynamic campaign" without bringing up the linear DAK campaign. I also think it could've been great if you compared the Invasion of Italy campaign to CoH2's Ardennes Assault since it's where Reluc got the idea from and yet another thing that CoH2 just does better than 3. There's also some major complaints with the game you skipped, such as units being shown in marketing material and available in early test builds just to get locked behind battlebgroup DLCs, or the blatantly unfinished art assets. Though I can see why you didn't go into them, seeing how you basically covered similar themes with the ingame store and the sound design already.

I enjoy CoH3 even to this day but I am still of the opinion that the scope of their campaigns was the biggest detriment to the development of the game. It is entirely a new system that's very much isolated from the core gameplay that is known from CoH. All that effort and funds could've been placed somewhere else and you can even see glimpses of it in the campaigns with the scripted missions. And I say this as well knowing they built the game from the ground up which would take even more time than just reusing old code and scriptbases. The Campaign is flawed because of old choices and issues that stemmed since launch (and the large scope); really they would need to heavily rework the campaign to get it feeling great. The campaign Skirmishes for example were originally bad because it was super repetitive and happened whenever you engaged another company; but that was when they had less maps to work with and less available resources/content compared to now A good example of a good rework was the Prologue mission, because that DRASTICALLY changed since launch while still keeping the original flow (just look at older videos on the prologue). This mission is the only time throughout the entire campaign that the COASTAL RESERVES are used by the Germans; because originally they used the Guastatori/Bersas instead to represent the enemy Italians throughout the campaign and the Coastal Reserves were added much later into the game. This shows that they can change and implement even newer features from the game into the campaign and I sure hope they continue to do so. On the non-campaign side of things, player vs player is pretty good all things considered now; and the AI for skimishes were given some touch ups to make them somewhat better (they still have a long ways to go). I would even say that it's really good with what it offers in that front which further makes it feel that the campaigns should need the same amount of love put onto them now too. On the topic of Post-Sega Relic, the devs are just now starting to show previews and proposed changes that would be coming in the next updates/patches before going through with them to get feedback on it too; The recent Coral Viper update was also well received not only because it added and did stuff that the community liked, but is was genuinely not as bug ridden as much like previous major updates. Keep in mind, this is the major update they originally delayed, had extra content added in to compensate, then after news of being separated from Sega, decided to cancel the delay and push out the update earlier.

Main channel video whoooooooooooooo! Grant, will you do a campaign runthrough of Red Alert 2 pretty please?

Trains? Last train home? Just finished it couple of weeks ago, after rewatching one of your videos, i liked it. And after completion, only question that i had is "I want to see what is Grant's thoughts about it" Cant wait to see it =))

21:20 Grant must have been fighting Sans at the time

Pretty much nailed on the head the issues the game and Relic suffers from and I really hope they watch this video. Hopefully they can turn it around now they are independent but I guess we'll all have to wait and see. Also what isn't mentioned in Grant's video is the fact that after the failure of DOW3, Relic knew that they should be listening to feedback as they alienated DoW's original player base by creating a RTS/MOBA hybrid for DoW3 that no1 wanted. So for CoH3 they championed the CoHDev program which focused on bringing in people in early to get feedback and test the game, years before CoH3 released. However it honestly felt like pure lip service as most of this feedback was ignored sadly.

Hey grant nice video you got over here It would be cool to see you playing some lesser known old RTS titles that focus less on base building and more on realistic combat like the sudden stroke series or the men of war series

Holy hell man! I wish I could like this video more than once. I had already liked the video from your well thought out and explained points. Then, whilst you were reitterating your point about them having to competing with their previous games, I caught myself thinking back to the Great War WWI mod for CoH1, wishing someone would make an official game like that, before you go right out and say the very thing that I was thinking about! Have another subscriber! I would absolutely adore a proper game set in the first world war, soldiers digging trenches and machinegun nests to defend chokepoints. Rows of fieldgun and artillery placements churning ground and soldiers alike, burning forests, blasting buildings apart, turning vehicles into slag, and leaving massive craters as the map deforms, to make new cover positions, as you try your very best to capture and hold objectives to get those vital resources and keep the war going, in a slow, exhausting slog across a withering map, with massive off-map call-ins, with slow timers to emphasise timing, working up to the very few armoured vehicles you can squeeze out, until you finally push through to the other side and win the battle. I adore that experience so much in the Great War mod. It's pain, it's a slog, it's really hectic at times, but the feeling of managing to hold the line, then slowly and meticulously scouring the enemy from the map before finally pushing through to a victory, after anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours, nothing compares quite so much to the mix of relief and thrill of actually having to put so much work into a virctory; even losing is strangely rewarding, since you know you made your oponent bleed for every milimetre of soil that they took. No other game has managed to capture that slow, yet exciting, world war one feeling for me as what that mod does, and I wish the devs would come back and add more nations, or at least finish the French which they teased. Better yet, I hope Relic can stay afloat and get their heads in the right place and make one!

I'm starting to think COH caught lightning in a bottle with the first game, which I genuinely like a lot more than Starcraft 2 and wish more RTS games had tried to copy. I should point out that I quit COH3 before they added that hilarious $16.99 expansion, and most of those skirmish missions in the campaign, I just had my airborne company drop behind enemy lines and satchel charge all their production buildings for a quick win that didn't require following the objectives.

While it's very tempting, and often also correct, to blame the publisher for all the game development's ills, this is probably not true here. Sega has proven to be a very hands off publisher, giving the developers under its umbrella a lot of freedom to do their own thing, simply providing the money and asking very few questions, until things go terribly wrong that is(due to the developer's bad decisions)... This was famously the case with CA, in the whole fiasco that was Hyenas but also in their actual Total War titles that were god awful like the latest one: Pharaoh. All the problems with all CA games have been 100% CA's fault, not Sega's. While I'm not a Relic/Sega insider or anything I don't think Sega drastically changed their modus operandi and suddenly decided to force Relic to make all the terrible decisions that led to CoH3. The much more likely scenario is that Relic themselves decided to treat CoH3, perhaps their CoH franchise itself, as a cash cow, milking it for all its worth before abandoning it, selling it off, whatever. Or they were just incredibly tone deaf and thought this was somehow a good idea, which isn't out of the question but I don't think nearly as likely.

1:17 Ha! A Michael Bay grenade.

Man I love when Grant makes videos like these, especially about games I have no idea about - something about his voice just leans itself perfectly

A classic CoH but set in the Korean war could be cool. Still close to WW2 but plenty of options for units and cool new stuff.

5pm on a Friday night, what a perfect video to drop after work

Honestly I think that not having to look at another King Tiger or having to deal with tiger/panther spam in this game is a blessing.

Grant, i love seeing u play Starcraft 2, but your reviews are fenomenal and incredible, i would love to see more of your point of view of many other RTS games, both old and news. Thanks for the video, and keep doing your best, u are incredible

Your old video aged like fine wine.

Just yesterday, I reinstalled CoH3 and jumped into my mid-game campaign save, played it for about 10 minutes, and then uninstalled. I didn't even get into a proper battle. Three of my armies were destroyed in auto-resolves that I could have won by actually playing the game. Those skirmishes were kinda fun because I was at such a huge disadvantage and now... I'm not even allowed to have that fun. :/ The bloat of skirmishes was probably the reason I put it down in the first place. Now I don't even have a choice when I WANT to play them...

It's baffling to me that companies seem to not understand that having players WANT to spend money will earn them infinitely more than forcing them to. If I have a game I love, I will look for any excuse to spend more money on it to show my appreciation to the creators. I won't even care that much what I'm getting for it, and getting something cool just makes me want to spend more. Seeing games try to twist my hand and manipulate me into spending more, just makes me want to stop playing them altogether (or not buy them in the first place) If you make a game to make money, it'll fail. If you make a game to be fun, it'll make money.

Another sin of COH2 from a campaign/narrative direction, is that you don't play as one company as you have in the past. It is Company (singular) of Heros. Not "Hero Companies". Let us reinvision this campaign, as a singular company moving through a world map with a tighter focus and objectives. A sort of mothership moving carefully through a hostile land, sending out "teams" ( effectively a ranged action, not a seperate unit ) to deal with objects. Eg. begin a small mission to secure a bridge, up to starting a large base-building skirmish to capture an airfield ( for supplies/reinforcements ), or scouting. I think that could have proved a really nice, focused campaign with a different spin on things. While still facilitating all that COH needs.

Fingers crossed for Grant looking at Empire at War next.

I loved Relic's games up until Company of Heroes 2, it's sad to see how far Relic has fallen since Sega got their tentacles on them. Since they're independent now i have some hopes though.

One thing I would suggest as an alternative to setting the next game in WW1: new WW2 setting. Give us the Pacific Theatre.

I would like to see a Korean War company of hero's game. It’s relatively close to ww2 so it wouldn’t feel completely different, but still have noticeable differences from 1940’s era of combat. There’s also very little chance of market over saturation with Korea. Because just like ww1 Korea is over shadowed by Vietnam.

USA vs Japan for CoH 4. Water vehicles/gameplay, melee system and combat, tunnel system, day/night cycle, weather system.

It feels like they just did Dawn of War : Dark Crusade but worse. Kinda wild

I think it would work for them for the next game to be CoH adjacent. Like, the korean war or something. It's relatively similar to late WWII tech-wise, there's good potential for an old-school story campaign, and it's a setting that I don't think I've seen before.

Man I had a lot of fun with Company of Heroes 1. I played 2 though not nearly as much. The best WWII RTS that I've played is the Steel Division series, Normandy 44 and 2. Really great games.

Where is that genshin gameplay from Grant, tell me WHERE IS THAT GAMEPLAY FROM? Are you mayhaps a fellow gatcha addict????

The vehicle models look worse that CoH2, they also move worse. Everything about them is just worse. Considering how much DLC was released for CoH 2, thats the game that should have had a dynamic campaign.

another era I would love to see company of hero set in us the Chinese war front. (we got the soviet/german front). why not the Japanese/chinese or Japanese/russia or the Japanese/Pacific war. or heck even the Chinese warlords era. game set in that period/area is shockingly low. at best we get the US towards the end of the war island hopping campaign.

As an Italian I am disappointed that there is almost no representation of Italian troops with exception of few units

the first Dawn of War 2 (not the expansions) was basically Company of Heroes 2 in Warhammer 40k and it worked really well. I am not saying they should go back into 40k, but something like Sci Fi (issue is publishers see it as more risky if its not an established SciFi IP) or even something Cold War / First Iraq War could work fantasticaly. Give us some fresh units and new unit dynamics in a fresh new setting, and keep the good aspects of COH and you could make a game that draws from the Strengths of COH without directly competing with itself.

You say it has less content than the previous game, but don't mention that there is a second, more traditional campaign and that the game started with 4 playable factions instead of 2 for the past games. Unfortunately, I do think the problem is the leadership at Relic, since all of the games they released in the last while have been highly critized at release and were pretty unfinished. I think even AoE4 really only got it's second wind after another company took over.

CoH 1 & 2 have become timeless to me, especially with mods like spearhead and wikinger, they can either expand them to different fronts, adding new armies and generally more variety and those would be amazing as dlcs. I especially love the aesthetics of the first 2 games, dark, gritty, superior units voice acting. And on the other hand I completely agree with your suggestion, I myself have played many games with infantry only mods with WWI maps in CoH2. They just need to do it right.

Being older means more money and less time. So choosing to play a game in particular is more important.

I'm tired of seeing WW1 made into a tone deaf "fun zone" that has no basis on what a miserable slog of death and suffering with no clear bad guy and no clear winner that it was. Just because you can point to it and say "LOOK! VARIETY!" doesn't mean it should be packaged off and sold as entertainment. I just got done playing Last Train Home (Made by THQ who also worked on CoH1) and it was exactly what a Relic CoH done during WW1 would be like and it was forgettable and felt nothing like the subject matter it was supposed to be based on.

20:36 I'd like to point out CoH3 looks _worse_ than CoH2 and even imo CoH1.

I love seeing other fronts and earlier periods of WWII rather then constant "Panthers and IS-2 on every corner" as if only 1945 existed, but... that's why I got Gates of Hell and play finninsh dynamic campaign😅 Sadly the game so far doesn't support having two different factions as your opponents so you can't mix equipment too much.

Real talk my man, is there any chance for a StarCraft Retrospective that goes in huge huge detail like the Warcraft 3 one did? It genuinely was one of my fav pieces of YT content i consumed in t he past half a year.

“I feel like they’re out of touch with what people want.” This one sentence is how you describe every major development stupid + Disney(please Disney, let petroglyph continue work on empire at war)

relic should do a company of heroes on a fictional universe of our world, no super heroes or magic but just like man in the high tower shit etc

I'd love to hear Grant's thoughts on "Terminator - Dark Fate Defiance" which does try to be "Company of Heroes in a Terminator Universe"

I would like to see a COH1 remaster with the soviets, Italians, and the pacific theater officially added. Ik a lot of ppl like COH2 but 1 is just so simple but fun and great.

That said. Company of heroes 2 also had loot boxes and whole bunch of mxt.

7:00 Funny that the bridges we destroy in last mission are perfectly fine in this mission. 8:00 Yea skirmishes, if I want to do Skirmish against AI, I will do it in Skirmish vs CPU not play campaign. With lvl up Decision I end up rushing enemy with AA half tracks and base lock them. Its entire campaign until some scripted mission happened. - Sound ques, for first months of the game, and even now. I have issue hearing my units are under attack dying or have a grenade under their feet.

Bought this game Day-1. Saw that this is incomplete, but was silent. Played a bit - was dissapointed that there was no "civilization-esque" map for Germans, but still did not said anything. Then, this "patch" came in with storefront - I thought to myself - that did not took that long, but still kept playing. Then, played Afrika korps mission, where I got Ju-87 support. Oh, that's nice, I thought to myself... Called it once... Heard ">>>dzhay-yu

Man, Battlefield 1 still feels weird to me. The devs went out of their way to make it play like every other Battlefield game. Tons of automatic weapons and shit that the average soldier didn't even use.

I unfortunately gotta disagree with the optimism, Sega just kicked in creative assembly's doors for being ridiculous, it doesnt make sense to me for sega to be the voice of reason to CA while pushing relic to monetize. Maybe these are just very different scenarios being handled by different branches, but i just don't see improvement on the horizon left to their own devices.

Honestly I like the idea of choosing where to attack first. Imagine you take the port first but because you didn’t take the other town, the enemy brought in reinforcements. The whole open thing is. Idk the mechanics is kinda boring.

Now looking back at RA2 I've realize that the sound design is unique for every unit and the dev has made it unique enough that experience player only need to hear once to know the enemy composition without actually looking at the enemy themself.

CoH is a masterpiece, CoH 2? meh ..... CoH 3 is a cashgrab

I find it funny and sad that I was able to watch Relic's decline in the Dawn of war series. The first game was a dedicated narrative campaign built around the old RTS model of base building , and despite some obvious balance issues, was fun. The expansions immediately ditched the narrative element, instead making a Risk-esque board game that put you into normal multiplayer skirmish maps to play out the matches. It became quite repetitive and the balance issues only got worse. Then, Dawn of war 2 came out and while it brought back a narrative, controversially ditched all base-building mechanics, instead being designed more like Company of heroes, where you were meant to take a group of like 4 squads, some of which only had one unit, to eradicate the entire enemy fleet. The game was even worse balanced, with boring bulletsponge bosses and very grindy gameplay. Then, the expansions for that came out, which decided that now all the best gear would corrupt your squads, and in order to to not fall to evil, you'd have to make the game even grindier for yourself. Then, Dawn of war 3, which came out to fairly universal disappointment, as they tried to combine both styles of small powerful hero squads and some base building and weaker generic troops, with a more moba style gameplay of laned maps for armies to crash into eachother and just made a horrible mess that could not figure out what it wanted to be. It's like striking gold, mining out a small vein, and then deciding the best option would be to try digging somewhere completely different, instead of maybe digging around where you found the first gold to see if there was another vein just slightly behind a break of dirt.

Absolutely incredible analysis. Tha k you for this amazing work! 🎉💯🔥

As an FPS player this all sounds heinously familiar. I think I've seen this story play out before and I hope you're right about your optimism but experience lends towards doubting a return to form.

That's a bit unfair. My guess would be that releasing the store at the time that they did was unavoidable, financially. You might see it as "tone deaf" but from the company's perspective they may have been on the cusp of the studio being shut down. That doesn't excuse any false promises, to the extent that those were made, but especially with this type of strategy game, I think we can be a bit more understanding with respect to how challenging they are to make and finance.