Late into a match of CoH 2, I often found that there was really too much going on for me to be able to pay attention to everything and make good decisions on the fly, so I'd end up abandoning some control points simply so I could focus on others.

While Relic is billing this as a way to ease new players into the experience, even as an RTS veteran, I find it really refreshing. In single player, Company of Heroes 3 is introducing a new Tactical Pause system that lets you freeze the battle and cue up orders for all of your units, before hitting resume to let them play out. The campaign is guided by a character-driven story that involves local partisan fighters for the first time, and comes together as a mix of more traditional RTS missions and scripted set pieces like Avelino and Monte Cassino. In addition to being able to cut off enemy supplies by capturing territory, you can take airfields to gain close air support in RTS missions (or deny it to your enemies), bombard enemy positions with offshore warships, and fight auto-resolved skirmishes with smaller units called detachments, which play a supporting role to full-fledged companies.

Company of heroes 3 demo