If I needed to sum up Firm of Heroes 3 in a single sentence, I’d say it is a wonderful real-time technique sport that’s technically sound – but additionally unambitious. I am having fun with the sport however I do not really feel it is pushing boundaries in the way in which that its predecessors did. So, on the one hand, it does really feel like a missed alternative to a sure extent however the flip aspect is that it’s totally simple to run on very excessive settings throughout a spread of {hardware}.
I used to be actually desirous to cowl this one as a result of it is an RTS with a really completely different spin, placing you in charge of an allied or axis power from a top-down perspective. The purpose of the sport is not only to beat the enemy whereas micromanaging your base and useful resource gathering. The purpose is to seize and maintain territory, which then furnishes you with assets to equip and broaden your small power. There are not any huge armies right here, only a firm of troops, the place infantry are moved and requisitioned as a squad. There is no Starcraft-style constructing queue and you are not churning out models of their tons of to ship to their deaths like Command and Conquer.
Firm of Heroes is all about maintaining every particular person unit alive for so long as doable, adhering to cowl, utilising particular talents and gaining additional expertise that interprets into new benefits on the battlefield. New troops usually are not as efficient as skilled veterans, so the profitable commander usually has good micro-management and positioning expertise. Briefly, it is a completely different type of RTS with a smaller, extra tactical nature. That is what made 2006’s Firm of Heroes so compelling and it is in revisiting the unique launch and the 2013 sequel that I started to understand how technologically unambitious the brand new sport is by comparability.
Let’s be clear – the sport nonetheless appears nice and has quite a bit going for it. Geometric element is greater, to the purpose the place zooming in on a fruit cart within the battlefield reveals every particular person fruit. Equally, Firm of Heroes 3 sees a unified push to make all textures and supplies authored in a physically-based method: the metals of tanks have a very nice look to them and look very completely different from the stone or dust round them by way of materials high quality. Textures are additionally typically authored at a better decision than ever earlier than, and importantly, with out lots of the element pre-painted within the diffuse texture, so they don’t look overly noisy. The element is now pushed by materials properties, like a contemporary sport.
Animations are additionally of a top quality – zoom in on some infantry in fight and you may see them working the motion of their weapons, displaying apparent recoil on firing – and there are additionally bespoke animations per unit when reloading happens as magazines are switched out. When mixed with the granular destruction that the collection is thought for, the place buildings explode and the place each piece of canopy you see could be destroyed or flattened by automobile, then sure, Firm of Heroes 3 appears fairly lovely. Nevertheless, there’s a lot that would profit from additional enchancment.
Among the finest examples could be discovered with the sport’s shadows: the sport makes use of shadow maps and the transition between completely different high quality ranges is jarring at shut vary. The older Firm of Heroes titles did this higher – even the primary sport from 2006. The brand new sequel is extra extremely detailed, however with its odd shadows, it appears oddly sterile as compared. The brand new particulars to geometry and textures usually are not so noticeable as a result of they don’t seem to be shadowed accurately.
| 60Hz Optimised Settings | 120Hz VRR Optimised Settings | |
|---|---|---|
| Picture High quality | Most | Excessive |
| Physics High quality | Excessive | Excessive |
| Shadow High quality | Excessive | Medium |
| Texture High quality | Extremely | Extremely |
| Geometry High quality | Most | Most |
| Anti-Aliasing | Excessive | Low |
| Decision Scale | 100% | 83% (If Wanted) |
One other indication of a extra conservative strategy to innovation is the novel use of the newest cutting-edge know-how. The unique Firm of Heroes was one of many first DX10 video games, utilizing the brand new API to enhance shadow and lighting high quality whereas punishing GPUs at launch with the best settings. Firm of Heroes 2 was notorious in 2013 as its DX11-powered graphics have been equally heavy when set to their highest. This sort of graphical newness is lacking in Firm of Heroes 3. Though the brand new sport has transitioned to a brand new DX12 model of the ‘Essence Engine’, there is not any actual indication that the brand new API is being pushed arduous in any apparent method. For instance, ray tracing is nowhere to be discovered, and one thing like ray-traced shadows would have been a computationally low-cost and wonderful approach to remedy the visible points with shadows on this sport.
In actual fact, Firm of Heroes 3 is actually mild on the GPU. Booting the sport on my Core i9 12900K system paired with an RTX 4090, the maxed out expertise hit 200fps at 4K decision. That is nice for individuals who like excessive frame-rates, however for optimum settings it is a bit of a let-down. Not like its predecessors, there’s nothing new right here to push the newest PC {hardware} and I feel that interprets into untapped potential to make the sport look higher.
Optimised settings? There’s an argument that you do not really want them because the choices focus totally on graphical results when the first bottleneck is usually on the CPU aspect. It is simply doable to be CPU-bound in Firm of Heroes 3, even at 4K decision. If you take a look at that CPU utilisation, the sport is utilizing lots of cores and threads with all the opposite AI gamers, however you’ll be able to nonetheless see that there’s a single-threaded restrict to the load. It is not likely the behaviour I prefer to see in an period the place CPUs have gotten wider at a extra fast tempo than single-thread efficiency.
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Even so, it is nonetheless doable to get excessive efficiency ranges from mainstream package, which is an efficient factor, or else you’ll be able to goal excessive frame-rates as a substitute, to get the very best from a excessive refresh charge monitor. On this web page, you will see my ideas for numerous frame-rate targets, utilizing a mainstream Ryzen 5 3600 paired with an RTX 2060 Tremendous asiming for a 1440p output. Body-rate not excessive sufficient to sit down comfortably throughout the VRR window of a excessive refresh charge display? A fast discount to the decision scale helps immensely.
In abstract, Firm of Heroes 3 is nice enjoyable and polished in some ways, but additionally ‘protected’ from a technical perspective. It is also comparatively mild on shader compilation #StutterStruggle, with solely a handful of hitches within the preliminary 30 seconds of the tutorial mission, with the remainder of the sport taking part in out as easily as could be.
The sport runs very well even at max settings, however there’s nonetheless the sense that the developer ought to have pushed additional on the GPU aspect: RT shadows and ambient occlusion would have made an enormous distinction to the presentation. Briefly, I wasn’t dissatisfied by the sport – and I am positive the sunshine GPU necessities will be sure that extra gamers get a clean expertise – however the place prior collection entries pushed new boundaries throughout the style, Firm of Heroes 3 doesn’t.
