This campaign serves to educate players about the German forces, their weaponry and tactics. Rommel narrates the pre-battle briefing to tell you about the mission you need to pull off, using your own tactics. In still-frame cut scenes, the game conveys the viewpoint of Libyan families who rebelled against the Nazi and Italian occupiers. You play as Rommel, who became known as the Desert Fox for his wily tactics in beating enemies with larger forces and better supplies.

I would have liked to see a full campaign, or even a separate game for this one. It’s just a collection of battles that you have to finish in a kind of tutorial campaign. It’s a mini-campaign because there is no strategic map of the region where you can fight back and forth to seize key points. The North African mini-campaign starts in January 1942, as Erwin Rommel arrives in North Africa in charge of the Afrika Korps.

One of the surprises is that Relic threw in the North African campaign as a prelude to the invasion of Italy. The North African campaign You play as Rommel in the North African campaign at the start of Company of Heroes 3. But I’m very glad that Sega/Relic took the time to deliver this title. That’s probably why you don’t see as many RTS titles these days even as their multiplayer only battle arena (MOBA) cousins are more popular. And a single-platform game is a business risk since many titles do better if they’re playable across a bunch of platforms. Greenlighting such ambitious titles isn’t common since RTS games are best played with a mouse and keyboard, and that means they’re tied to the PC platform.

Company of heroes new skirmish maps