Company of Heroes 3: mamma mia, we Total War now!

Oh yeah that’s right. And there was that bit of a hybrid I found fun and interesting in the Valkyria Chronicles series too.

RTS are now less popular than they were when CoH1 released, so it’s doubtful.

I would argue that there is just too much competition.

You have the entire Age of Empires Series with some serious Money.

People are trying to make Spellforce 3 an E-Sport series but that isn’t going far.

Company of Heroes 2 has a few tournaments going on, but I don’t know if that qualifies as an E-Sport.

And I guess even Total Warhammer has regular tournaments of just the Battles, which is interesting.

RTS is just really fractured, with half a dozen or so games, but I really only hear about the AoE Tournaments that are sponsored by Red bull or Microsoft.

Same for me.

You just showed how little competition there is: just two big games (AoE, TW), the previous game to his series (CoH2, which is no. 125th on the most played game list on Stam), you didn’t name it but I guess Starcraft 2 is still alive and kicking…and that’s it.

It isn’t like there is a dozen popular games all vying for attention, like in shooters.

Are there?
I can think of maybe 1 or 2 FPS that are trying to be E-Sports, but none of it seems to break through to me.

And, you do realize that when I spoke of AoE, I meant all 4 games.

AoE is huge in Vietnam, as big as Star Craft in S. Korea at one time (and although well passed it’s peak, it still exist) AoE 2 DE has multiple tournaments a year and of course AoE 4 exists, with what I believe are even bigger tournaments.

I assume that there are people that play the AoE Series through Microsoft, so I am not sure how reliable Steam numbers are on there own.

And, as I mentioned, Spellforce 3 pushed to be an E-Sport, going so far as giving away a free Faction for anyone wanting to play Multiplayer (random drawing of Human/Elf/Orc Faction) to build up hype.

In any case, I figure the only big E-Sports are going to be DOTA clones and the like these days.

Anyway, I assume there is a lot bias on my part. I have little interest in FPS games, since they seem one dimension. DOTA seem more interesting because there ‘builds’ and tactics, while RTS and the like seem to have the most interesting mechanics and features (plus, I am sure the highest barrier to entry).

WTF this is out this week? I thought it would be delayed forever so I didn’t have to think about whether to play it or not. Hmm…

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I think that PCG reviewer expected more out of the campaign map than I did. For me I’ll be happy if it provides context for the RTS missions and doesn’t get in the way too much. I’m not expecting deep strategy or serious pushback. This is an RTS at the end of the day.

I was hoping for more because it sounded interesting. Dynamic campaigns remain challenging.

Yeah I agree. Besides that, I normally play RTS vs AI via skirmish or in multiplayer. Both were solid in the play tests so I am really looking forward to getting into it more.

Rock Paper Shotgun generally seemed pretty happy with campaign:

Well, other than the entire paragraph where they weren’t:

What’s more disappointing is that the constant push and pull you’re enacting down on the ground in its real-time mission battles just isn’t present on the wider campaign map. I was playing on the Standard difficulty during my review, but once I’d captured a town, it was pretty much as safe as could be. I felt very little need to construct further defences to hold the fort down while my troops went elsewhere, and it’s a shame there wasn’t more of a tussle over our constantly changing territories. This seems like a missed opportunity, especially when larger towns require you to break down their defences first before you can invade and capture them. But not once did the AI even try and retake a lost city during my playthrough, making their overall threat feel quite inert outside of the game’s real-time missions.

Rob also says the campaign AI is very passive. Some bugs as well. But skirmish seems to be the most polished which is good.

Sure, but there’s all the other paragraphs where they liked it. From what RPS wrote, it sounds like it could use some tuning, but generally RPS liked the campaign.

IGN on the other hand hated it. A 6 on the IGN 7-10 scale — ouch! That 6 score is for the campaign only, not multiplayer (which they haven’t reviewed yet).

No link but the Polygon review was quite glowing. I’ll definitely get this someday.

Still the best thread title on Qt3.

Seemed to like the campaign quite a bit. Following three paragraphs of positive description of it (for those paragraph counters in the thread), he writes.

He does mention a few glitches, as did the RPS reviewer.

I wasn’t aware this is getting a boxed collectors edition!