Not revolutionary, and definitely not the best WW2 RTS ever. But it's good for the arcade RTS crowd.
The graphics are still pretty nice. While effects are flashy and the animations do a great job of making combat lively, the game's textures really suffer. Everything is pretty bland, brown, and blurry. The game does support DX10, but performance in it is so terrible that it's not worth using. Overall it's a nice presentation, but RTS's are generally never top of the line and now 4+ years later, it's dated.
The sound also holds up well. The soldiers have some good voice acting, but as usual you'll get bored of the nit acknowledgements. Combat is pretty immersive, and it's easy to feel like you're in some gigantic war film.
Now onto the first thing I've heard get lot of hype, the story. Story isn't that great. While it has some emotional moments, and i treat it with respect, it's too broad to be truly engaging. The tale follows the company as a whole which lessens it's impact. The first expansion opposing Forces, has a much better story following two brothers. It's much more emotional, though towards the end you practically know everything that will happen.
The gameplay also gets heaping amounts of praise, many reviews saying that it was the first good WW2 RTS. I resent that because there were plenty of good WW2 RTS games before it (Sudden Strike, Blitzkrieg, Close Combat, Codename Panzers, shall I continue?) That being said Company of Heroes does have an amazing presentation, and the infantry combat looks realistic (alas, yet another rts did this well first: Soldiers Heroes of WW2) Everything else is a complication or expansion of Dawn of War. Is that a bad thing? No, but it proves that CoH is definitely not original.
A few more points. The resource point system works, but it's not a perfect fit for WW2. A better system is showed in the Battle of the Bulge mod for CoH, in which territory control is handled by number of units in that territory. This creates a real frontline, rather than senseless rushing, and uncapping harassment. It worked in Dawn of War, because Dawn of War had no need to be realistic. In a WW2 game, it fails to create true frontline, and gives the impression that forces in the second world war ran around planting flags and stealing them just to get fuel. Also the game has base building, we all know how unique and original that is.
The last few points. The destructible environments are nice, but not nearly as tactical as it could be, and even blowing up a building could still create a flat rubble that you can't cross. You really can only destroy what the developers intended for you to, which limits the tactical possibilities. (Example Carentan. You have to go through the chokepoints. You can't just plow your tank through a wall can't come out the other side. There not bad but my point is that they could be better (for another WW2 game with brilliant tactical destruction, try Silent Storm.) Lastly, in the name of balance, annoying things like infantry that can't be killed by a tank blast, or machine-guns that can't hit anything. Or infantry that can't be ran over: happen. This limits realism and is extremely annoying when you see it happen. Why not instead make tanks have a narrow line of sight, (Viewport, unless they open the hatch) That way they could be extremely deadly, but easily flanked, and destroyed. (Sudden Strike, another WW2 game, used this method) Then tanks would perform to expectation, it would limit unrealistic events, yet they still wouldn't be to powerful or unbalanced.
In closing, Company of Heroes is a decent RTS. While I respect it for bringing mainstream gamers to the World War 2 RTS, it's not the best example of what the genre can do. Still if flashy presentation, nice graphics, and solid sound design are all you need for your "ultimate" rts then so be it. For everyone else, CoH is too arcade-like to be truly fun or engaging.