Company of Heroes: Final Stand Review: An Unusual but Fun Experiment

Tower defense is a concept that should be familiar to everyone who's ever played a game, but let's go over it for thoroughness' sake.

You have a headquarters, a way to produce new units using resources earned during the match, and the enemies start coming, and they don't stop coming. Survive enough waves, and you win. Lose the headquarters, and it's all over. The usual, really.

What is not so usual is to have a tower defense game tacked onto one of the most prominent and grounded historical strategy games of its generation, but that's what Company of Heroes: Final Stand wants to achieve.

I can understand why Relic Entertainment picked Company of Heroes 3, of course. It is by far the most balanced and refined game in the series in terms of interface and mechanics, so it was the obvious candidate for a mode based entirely on the shooty part of the game.

Company of Heroes: Final Stand launches from the base game despite having a separate launcher, which also opens the base game for some reason. All roads lead to Rome, or at least to Company of Heroes 3.

A Company of Limited Heroes

You get to pick between American, British, 'vanilla' German, and its Afrikakorps flavor. There are some cameos there from other nations, like Free French infantry for the Americans, Italian grenadiers for Afrikakorps, and Australian anti-tank gunners fighting for crown and country.

I'll use this intro to units to outline my biggest problem with Company of Heroes: Final Stand. Despite being based on a game that has a great variety of units from multiple nations, Final Stand isn't really interested in giving you access to them.

I kicked off my tower defense adventure with a single squad of engineers at hand. The barracks, source of all manpower and equipment during this final stand, offered them plus a weapons section and one (1) extra unit of my choosing. When doing British playthroughs, I found the QF 2-pounder anti-tank gun to be ideal given the static defense conditions.

Ahead of your headquarters is a single line of outposts, dugouts with a rifle squad outside of direct control that engages automatically. They're a brisk walk away from your barracks, but the prep time and the fact that you start with a single engineering team and no resources to speak of make the first wave awkward.

You get to choose between using the sappers as a second-rate rifle squad in direct support, or pray the outpost can hold the initial attack while you set up rear defenses. There's a tactical element there, sure, but it would be nice to have either an extra minute or an extra rifle squad to move about.

As you survive each wave, you are met with rewards. Time slows down, and a pop-up lets you pick between two additions. These can be passive boosts, on-call support, or new units.

The boost and support are pretty great, and integrate nicely with the gameplay. Saving the headquarters from a Tiger tank with a massive naval bombardment is one of the highlights of my Company of Heroes career. I just wish there were more grunts available to support.

It feels awkward to have your defensive team be primarily comprised of anything other than organic life infantry. Sure, the Free French riflemen are great, the Gurkhas kick ass, and you can unlock Rangers down the line, but would it hurt so bad to have a squad of average Joes with Garands, BARs, and Tommy guns to throw about from the get-go?

I know Relic was chasing a roguelike approach here, but what I really would have loved is a way to build your own deck before jumping in, giving you some strategic control over what already is, mechanically, a fun tactical experience.

A Time of Heroics

For all my misgivings about the unit selection, Company of Heroes: Final Stand is quick to find its footing. The enemy waves are very nicely balanced against the resources available to you, and fights feel fair for the most part.

Especially early on, the limited resources mean your units get plenty of cardio as they position and reposition against different attacks on the outposts.

I loved the map design in Final Stand, with good variety between them and also no clear natural chokepoint so you need to use your engineers and heavy weapons wisely to create them.

In that regard, the system with a single line of outposts feels like a wasted opportunity, because half the map realistically never sees any action unless you push your scouts all the way forward.

A mode that adds at least one extra line of defense would add some tactical depth to engagements, because right now, it only takes one outpost falling for the enemy to stage a breakthrough toward the headquarters. Having forward positions that are harder to reinforce and resupply but can give the enemy a black eye on the way would offer interesting tradeoffs.

You can artificially counter that by simply holding the line where the outposts were even after their destruction, and there's nothing stopping you from pushing all the way up if you dare, but it would have been nice to have some incentive from the game to do so, especially for RTS newbies.

I'm Tired, Boss

The average match in Company of Heroes: Last Stand feels like a refreshing twist on a standard defensive mission in the base game. The gameplay is crisp, the audiovisual experience is great for an RTS, and winning is deeply satisfying. Right now, the victory condition is to survive 12 waves, but you get the option to dive into endless mode once that's done.

In chasing the roguelike experience, however, Relic ended up making a bit of a cartoon moment that takes away a lot of the immersion the map, unit, and sound designers painstakingly work for elsewhere. We need to talk about the bosses.

I'm trying not to be a grumpy grognard, so here's what the bosses do well: they add unique enemy variety to waves, and often force you to adjust on the fly to tackle them. For example, a boss squad with flamethrowers requires pulling your infantry back and outside of buildings lest they be barbecued. A heavy tank boss mandates repositioning your AT guns and tanks to bypass the frontal armor. You get the idea.

Rather than make these elite enemy units embedded in waves, Company of Heroes: Final Stand tries to have some fun with it. Pioneers with flamethrowers become the Pyromaniac Pioneers, and an Italian assault gun is dubbed the Inventive Semovente.

I feel like a bad person for complaining because, as far as character design goes, the devs cooked with the wordplay and got a chuckle out of me just about every time. I just don't think it's a good fit for Company of Heroes, but that fits into my bigger issue with Final Stand being conceptual. The foundations are there for a brilliant, hardcore defense-in-depth simulator. That's not what the game is or wants to be, and that's also OK.

Relic Entertainment set out to try something new, a World War 2 real-time strategy roguelike. Within the scope of what was attempted, the team succeeded. Company of Heroes: Final Stand is a fun, refreshing take on a genre that is a repeat offender in lack of inventiveness. Sure, the balancing feels off for the first couple of waves, early unit selection is inadequate, and the bosses grind my gears. But once you get past that, the battles strike a nice balance of challenging and fair, with the map design doing the heavy lifting to allow for dynamic engagements in an inherently repetitive mode. This won't replace standard Company of Heroes 3, but it's a nice complement for when you want a chill experience with grounded mechanics.

Systems

Released February 23, 2023

ESRB m

Engine Essence Engine 5.0