Recent reviews by Reno Reigns

I'm editing this review as an act of good faith - Relic has decoupled from Sega, has released some critical updates and has listened to the communities feedback.

I will maintain the original text of my review below and if positive changes continue, I will likely update my review text!

***Original Review Below***

This game is a buggy, unpolished and incomplete mess. There are so many things wrong with it, it's difficult to know where to begin: Awful User Interface, offensively bad graphics, muffled/bad sound design, zero meaningful innovation, janky camera movement, lack of zoom, poor multiplayer support, overall "meh" playability - it's simply not enough fun or quality to justify a price tag over £10, never mind £50!!!

This plays like a cheap knock off or an approximation of the Company of Heroes I know and love (2.8K hours on CoH2!) - it's like the original Relic team is gone and some newbs have tried to reverse engineer and rebuild the game, but haven't even been able to make a game on par with the first or second games in the series.

CoH3 is being released 17 years(!) after the original, 10 years after the sequel, and the lack of progression and positive development in all areas of the game is mind-blowing, in fact it's taken multiple steps backward.

There's been continuous and consistent feedback from the community to fix things after pre-release open testing sessions - requests improve QOL features, graphics, sound and add missing features, all have been ignored by Relic - for them to deliver a product they think their audience wants and not what their audience actually wants.

This look and plays like a fan mod that isn't very good and is extremely limited in features and scope, to have the gall to charge £50 is laughable. Relic needs to get a team that understands this franchise and what makes its player base tick.

Take a look at what other games in the RTS sphere are doing - particularly with graphical fidelity, scale and breadth of available units, and Relic are completely ignorant of it. Even look at some of the mods for CoH1 & CoH2 - there's elements of the fanbase doing a better job of delivering what the community wants than a group of paid professionals who do this for a living... and maybe that's the problem, zero passion for this at Relic, simply phoning it in to collect a paycheck. Maybe you should sell the franchise and engine to someone who "gets it".

Graphically it's astounding to have a game that looks this bad in 2023 coming from an established dev like Relic and charging AAA price for it. My first point of reference was something like 2003's Blitzkrieg, it really is that bad - the vehicle models are just about OK, but the overall scale, UI, HUD, textures etc. - basically everything, awful. The art director needs to find a new job.

Audio wise i've a great set-up and it only hammers home the inadequacy of the sound design. Tinny, under-powered and simply bad are the only way to describe it - no sense of being "at war", more like watching a B&W 1950s war movie on a an old CRT television at your grandmothers house on a Sunday afternoon. That's not to even dissect the voice acting which is the worst in the series, the bar was set high with the second game (particularly the British Forces!) but it's like the team aren't even aware they need to do it at least as good as last time as a bare minimum.

There's some very telling things on the game's store page - the lead review is from NME, the New Musical Express - not exactly a bastion of game journalism (never mind good music journalism!). If that's the

They've also changed the title of the game twice since launch - firstly to "CoH3: Early Adopters" then to "CoH3: Launch Edition" - Relic knows their product is still in Beta/Early Access - but they are still charging AAA pricing, an absolute travesty.

I would love to be a fly on the wall this Monday in Relic's office - when the team are reviewing launch performance and looking at core KPIs like negative reviews and refunds and how they'll finally have to address "genuine user feedback" when it affects the commercials!

Few things you should know before buying this game:

Saving system is antiquated - you must be near your motorbike or a bed to save you game. The game will also provide positive feedback that your game has been saved, when in fact it has not been saved due not being close

Refuelling your bike is a total chore - for an open world game i feel this really hinders exploration. I appreciate this scarcity mechanic is to make it feel like resources are rare, but it's just a negative feature that impedes game-play and exploration.

Combat is extremely clunky and when you're used to playing Far Cry, GTA, Arkham or Dishonored - it feels like a real step back.

The story etc. is great, but the above points render the game fairly un-enjoyable. I'd love to keep playing and see how the story progresses, but i can't really be bothered putting up with the issues above - it's a real shame, a lot of wasted potential here.

Buy it if it's less than £10/$10 - but give it a miss unless you really wanna see the story develop, 'cause the game-play is weak. Hopefully some community mods might make it a little more playable than it's current state.

It took a long time to get there, but once the Relic team balanced the game and provided some new content, this game became the finest WW" RTS of all time.

Still very playable in 2023 - tons of content and a very active multiplayer community - definitely worth picking up if you're a newcomer to the series, forget about CoH3 - get CoH2.

Wow, been looking for a game like this for a long time. Door Kickers harks back to the classic days of late 90s PC gaming, specifically games like Rainbow 6 & SWAT - "tooling-up" a hit team with your own unique load out of weaponry, formulating a plan to take down the bad guys, and executing that plan in syncronicty with your various teams. I love devising new strategies for maps, and the ability to change you orders rapidly and easily on the fly is what makes the game special. There's challenges and a tech tree to climb to keep things interesting and satisfy different playing styles.

Relatively simple, but utterly addictive and thoroughly satisfying. If you like a mix of planning, strategy and action - this game is for you!