Because the hype is too low. For me, Company of Heroes is easily one of the best Real Time Strategy games of all time.

User Rating: 10 | Company of Heroes PC
Company of Heroes is a World War 2 Real-Time Strategy game, developed by Relic Entertainment - the same team that developed the Homeworld and Dawn of War series.

You may notice several similarities with the other games:

1. Great Graphics for it's time.
2. Tactical Scale (Well, Homeworld battles are rather small-scale for space combat...)
3. Great Soundtrack

But now, on to the game itself.

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Company of Heroes is similar to Dawn of War (Check my profile for my Dark Crusade review, I don't want to copy and paste the gameplay section from there to this review) in resource collection.

However, it's different as well. In Dawn of War, there are two types of resources, and one of them (Power) can be 'collected' by simply building 'Power Plants' in your base.

By comparison, there are three types of resources in CoH - Manpower, Munitions and Fuel. All three are collected in the same manner as Dawn of War's Requisition resource - by capturing and holding certain points on the map.

Onto those points, unlike the Dawn of War system of Strategic Point (Standard), Relic (Allows for your races' most powerful unit to be built) and Critical Location (High resource rate, hard to defend), Company of Heroes uses a Low, Medium and High system. The amount of resources you get from each 'type' of - Manpower / Munitions / Fuel - point is different.

Capturing said points will also give you the control of their respective sectors - preset areas on the map. You won't get the resources or the ability to build fortifications on those points you captured unless they are connected to your territory via the sectors.

Company of Heroes uses a different population system than Dawn of War. Instead of having a Squad / Vehicle cap, the population cap is unified into a single cap - and unlike Dawn of War, where a squad will take up a set amount of population, squads in Company of Heroes will take up equal amounts of population to how many men the squad has alive.

Total popcap for CoH is 125 - and you start with a base of 30 popcap. To get more popcap, you need to capture said points. The amount of popcap you get from each point varies.

On to combat now.

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Like Dawn of War, most infantry units are trained in squads. Such squads can be reinforced. However, Company of Heroes is different in that you cannot reinforce a squad if it's not close to a nearby barracks or HQ.

Unlike Dawn of War, this game has no melee combat - but ranged combat is far more advanced. Instead of just the accuracy factor to take into account, terrain plays a part in how often you hit. Your man could have an 80% chance of hitting a target, if you're not taking cover into account, but that might go down to 20% if his target is hiding behind a tank trap.

And that also differentiates CoH cover from DoW cover - In Company of Heroes, cover reduces your troop's chances of getting hit, whereas Dawn of War cover reduces the damage they take.

With tank combat, it's even more chancy. Your tank's shell could bounce off (therefore doing practically no harm), explode without penetrating (Doing more damage, but nothing critical), or go right through the armor and damage it to your shell's full potential. Other factors, such as what part you hit (Your tank's shell more likely to penetrate a tank's armor through the rear than the front... yeah I know that sounds a little sick) also come into play.

Unlike Dawn of War's morale system, infantry in here don't have a bar showing how much courage they have left. Instead, machineguns supress and pin infantry, making them slow to move and barely capable of firing back. To get out of this, you can use the retreat option - which quickly brings the squad back to your base for any needed restoration. You can't control the squad in this mode, though.

What makes this game's gameplay so dynamic is the destructible environment - You can blast craters into the ground to create cover, or blast away enemy cover, or destroy an obstacle to create a new path.

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Company of Heroes is well balanced, but the only two factions aren't all that different. There isn't much variety other than the US focusing on versatily and numbers, while the Germans focus on more expensive, but more powerful units that serve their own purpose the most.

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The Campaign is linear, 15 missions long and is for the Americans only.

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Why I like this game:

Very dynamic. I already stated why.

I can't offer a technical analysis of the graphics, since I'm not running it in max settings, or sound, since I really don't know much about sound in the first place, but I think it looks and sounds great.

All in all..... buy this game and prepared to be blown away.