Recent reviews by Buzztr0n

While I'm having fun for the majority of the game, I cannot give this game a positive review until they
A) fix some of the GAMEBREAKING bugs (e.g. respawning stops working for one or more players)
2) rebalance some of the USELESS weapons that players spent time & energy (or even money) to unlock

If you, like me, have played & loved SWAT 4, then this game is everything you wished for. Especially with the 1.0 release, it is now so much fun to play singleplayer with AI teammates. The AI is incredible!

It's exactly what you would expect from an Bethesda game : A LOADING SCREEN SIMULATOR GAME. nothing new, same old, plenty of bugs and lacking or incomplete features that they leave for the modding community to add/fix...

And worst : no actual space travelling. HELLOOOO? Everything is "click here to fast travel", Bethesda loves throwing loading screens at ya.

It's pathetic to release something like this in the year 2023 and charge 70€ for it. Everything is so bloody outdated.

Most of the stories are pretty boring (bad writing) and the characters are very cringey and unbelievable (again, bad writing). Were the dialogues written for 6 year olds? Zero immersion, weird NPC behaviors, especially since every scene you get some typical Bethesda bugs & glitches.

For the price I would expect a little bit more content, but its alright for a start (I assume they will add more content later on, like SOGPF and GM did).

I am SHOCKED tho that they did not include some of the most common vehicles like the Willys MB jeep, GMC trucks, Kübelwagen, SdKfz.251 halftrack, Pzkpfw. V Panther, Stug IV or some german armored vehicles like the SdKfz.234 or some tank destroyers ... really?! wtf
They made some questionable choices like including the Panzer III in MANY variations, while the Panzer IV only has one. The Panzer 3 was so uncommon at this time & theatre, they should have skipped it and included some more common vehicles like those listed above.

The infantry stuff is really cool and the vehicles they do have come in great detail and some customization options.
Altho it is a HUGE shame that they censored the German insignias (which is not required in games any longer!)

The map is really nice looking, very detailed (just wish they left some flat spots for mission makers). Many nice new objects for map and mission makers.

Overall a bit disappointing... I would wait for a price drop or wait for some promising content updates.

The game is very buggy right now, like iNSANELY BUGGY, including some GAMEBREAKIN bugs that can only be solved by aborting a mission or reloading a savegame. Sometimes marines get stuck and will not respond to any orders, and things like that. Which is super frustrating considering how hard the difficulty is. So even tho I still recommend the game, keep that in mind and thus maybe wait for a few more bugfixes to come out :)

BUT, this game is so much fun nontheless! I always wanted a real-time XCOM, since I absolutely cannot stand turn-based games. And this game is everything you can wish for. So many tactical gameplay elements. Very challenging but fair and balanced. It's fun to manage resources, equipment and upgrades, as well as the marines and their needs. Despite the bugs I had massive fun and really enjoy playing this very unique RTS. I hope we will see more games like this (so my hatred for turn-based games still allows me to play cool games like this lol)

Altho there is a few bits that bother me, like for example not being able to EXFIL my marines during an onslaugt - which would make more sense if the marines were being engaged, however I was in the 20 secs prep phase, in which I had the marines RIGHT NEXT TO THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ APC... so really felt like a dumb gameplay choice by the devs at this stage. Same with elevators, I stand right inside a bloody elevator and its saying "onslaught in 20 secs", so why cant my marines press the damn button? Would make for a cool experience like "woah we barely avoided that".

Also there are certain moments when being able to only move the squad as a whole but not individual marines is a big issue and makes the game more difficult than it should be. Especially when the marines often get stuck on corners etc (pathfinding not always working and they then ignore orders as I wrote above).

The stress system seems a bit unfair at times, e.g. shouldn't my marines be less stressed out after taking down a horde without any losses or injuries, or when taking down a bloody QUEEN ?!?! :D

Could have been a really good game, personally I'm still having fun for the most part, however for a full price title its definitely a complete DISASTER. I can basically confirm the bad things everyone else is mentioning.

Too many bugs, even GAMEBREAKING bugs in campaign - had to ALT+F4 the game a few times as it was the only option, thankfully there are alot of autosaves & I didn't loose any progress.
It really feels like they didn't do any sort of testing or simply ignored any sort of feedback from the testers, since alot of small bugs are so plain to see.

The campaign is very disappointing - best way to describe it is GENERIC, especially the mission objectives. While I like the idea of an "Total War"-style campaign map, it's pretty shallow in comparison and gets boring quickly. But the biggest issue are the "handmade story missions" which should be the main part people care about in a singlerplayer campaign. They are VERY similiar to the random skirmishes in design and lack interesting objectives. Really just feels like a skirmish with some additional secondary objectives... Wth devs?!
Some missions were not working properly because they didn't count in certain aspects of specific units/companies you can bring along...
The "dynamic" aspect of the campaign has a few things that need improvement. The random skirmishes you encounter are super repetitive (there is like 3 different types that keep repeating over and over again) and you are somewhat forced to play them out yourself as the "auto-resolve" feature is useless because it always give you a 50-50 chance regardless of your skill as player or the units skill level, which is quite annoying after a few dozen skirmishes that all feel and play the same.

Huge flaws, many many visual bugs, and terrible pathfinding - are you a fan of watching your vehicles driving reverse for miles, thus with their rear facing towards the enemy? Or squads getting stuck on random objects/cover or simply refusing to follow your orders... And oh lord the absolute ugliest UI / HUD I've seen in a long time. It's the sort of UI you usually only see during testing an alpha / beta version of the game & later is replaced by some professional reworked interface.

And as others pointed out, the sound design is weak and lacks powerful weapon & explosion sounds. And the battle chatter of units should have the factions native language (e.g. German soldiers speaking German), blows my mind that they didn't do this!

Since there is still good parts to it and it can be fun, I'd just recommend to wait for a sale on this

Lots of technical issues :(

Pathetic of the devs to not include KB+M for local coop (split-screen) after all this time...

I should have listened to my guts (early access for such a long time = dont buy) and avoided this. Got it duo to the good rep and instantly regret it. Was looking for a game that allows local coop / split-screen. This game is so bloody unstable, holy cow. Played it for less than two hours (so will def get a refund) and had so many bugs and crashes. The mechanics like combat are so clunky and just bad. Yikes.

Trash. The combat is absolutely horrible, the amount of loading screens just pathetic, the only good thing about this is the included radio stations that give you Cowboy Bebop & Firefly vibes.