Armistice Day Special 2: Isonzo Review
Isonzo might be an excellent mini-FPS, but taken in the context of its trilogy, I wish it had done a few things differently.
About a month ago the long-awaited Isonzo came out on Steam. Isonzo is the third and final entry in BlackMill Games’ World War I theater trilogy, which officially began in 2015 with the release of Verdun. Like Verdun and Tannenberg before it, Isonzo is named after the most notable battle of the game’s front—in this case, the Battles of the Isonzo that took place between 1915 and 1917.
I say ‘long-awaited’ in reference only to myself. I feel as though I had this game on my wishlist for an eternity, checking back every few months to see if a release date had been announced. Whether or not anyone else felt the way I can’t say, although it’s my impression that Isonzo is doing reasonably well on Steam despite its esoteric subject matter.
If it is, BlackMill and the publisher M2H have earned it. I love Verdun, I adore Tannenberg, and I like Isonzo. Last year for the 11th of November I reviewed the former two, so now that I’ve had time to play about fifteen hours of the newest game and make it to level 20 on my first class it seemed an excellent opportunity to write up my thoughts.
Battlefield Won
Players of the previous games will at once notice upon arrival on the Italian Front the generational leap in production value. When I first played Verdun’s demo for free in a small window on my PC in 2013 I thought the graphics and mechanics were both decidedly independent in quality, however compensated in historicity and design otherwise. The same held true for Tannenberg.
Isonzo is a revolution. The gunplay is completely overhauled to rival or perhaps exceed a Battlefield title in fluidity. Every shot is satisfying, although the sound design is still sometimes underwhelming. The graphics, while weak in places (some explosion effects and environmental textures can be shoddy), are on the whole spectacular. The feeling, the spirit, the essence and soul of this game, is AAA—not Eurojank independent. Animations specifically are vastly improved over previous titles.
The overall structure of play is altered from the previous games’ formula too. Rather than eight variable squads that, of themselves, are largely unchanging, the teams are composed more like Battlefield. Squads are fluid; there are a set number of roles per team (two officers, four snipers, five assaults, etc.) but each role has a customizable loadout, complete with an XP progression scheme and a selection of perks and myriad unlockables.
In Verdun, I played the game to have fun playing the game. In Isonzo, I play the game to earn loot.
I’m of two minds about this. Verdun and Tannenberg both technically have an unlocking scheme for classes, but it's so token to be pointless, and I like it that way. Progression isn’t what keeps me coming back to the multiplayer games I like. In fact it’s often what keeps me away. Locking cool historical guns behind 15 or 20 or perhaps even more hours of playtime does not enhance the experience of the player, when the player has chosen this game because it has such cool, historical guns.
But as far as progression schemes go, this Battlefieldification of Isonzo is fairly good. The player must reach certain level thresholds to discover weapons and perks, then complete challenges to actually unlock the weapon or perk in question.
I found this compelling enough during my time with the game, but it’s completely unnecessary. I don’t need this. What does it add? For cosmetics I have no problem, and challenges might be an interesting way to give objectives to the player. But for loadout selection? I don’t know.
In general I prefer the old games’ structure more than what they’ve done in Isonzo, as I prefer Tannenberg over Battlefield One. In some real sense Isonzo feels more like a real game, and for that I find it less enjoyable.
Let me elucidate.
Historical Authenticity
As its predecessors, Isonzo excels in authenticity. You’ll find no black lesbian Italian infantrymen here, unlike in Battlefield One. The firearms, maps, and uniforms are all carefully researched. These are accomplishments worth recognition.
But while I don’t know the long-term plans for the game, the selection of weapons seems comparatively weak to me. Each side receives one revolver, two automatic pistols, two or three indistinguishable bolt actions, a machine gun, and a few melee weapons. There’s also a breach loader, but only for the Austrians. The Italians receive fewer weapons across the board, and so far I think what they do have is worse. Their revolver is simply inferior to the Austrian's; their LMG is weirder and more awkward; their default automatic pistol is way worse; and while their rifles have a larger magazine capacity, their sights are shit relatively.
But I also decry balance. If one side had better weapons historically, that should be replicated in these games. I have no objection to that. Plus the Italian Glisteni M1910 pistol kicks serious ass.
Still, the need to create moderately balanced classes has eliminated the ability to create joke loadouts with weird guns, or no guns at all, and to some extent I feel accuracy has been yielded to gameplay. Overall Isonzo wants the player to usually, if not always, use the weapon that feels most optimal for the situation, while Verdun would seem to suggest, “A Reichsrevolver is the worst possible firearm in any situation you can imagine, but wouldn’t it be fun to have one? They really used them, you know!”
The class restrictions can be frustrating, too. My favorite gun in Tannenberg was the Roth-Steyr pistol, a weird stripper-clip loaded automatic pistol from the early 1900s. It's a really cool gun--and it's in Isonzo!
...if you're playing the Austrians. And you're an Officer. Even after it's been unlocked, you can't use it on any other class, and there can only be two Officers on either side at any given time. In other words, the Roth-Steyr basically isn't in Isonzo, unless you create a custom server and play against a bunch of bots. Otherwise your odds of being able to use it are 2/64
But don’t let me sound too negative. While I feel like there could be more firearms, what is present in Isonzo is impeccable. The guns look fantastic. The reload animations are immaculate, and for the first time in the series they differ on empty magazines. I also love how slow they are. In fact unlike in Tannenberg, the memey revolvers with loading gates like the Rast & Gasser actually feel competitive for a change, since they hit hard and fire fast. My only complaint is that sprinting still cancels reloads and forces them to reset; surely, by 2022, we have the technology for reloads to resume mid-animation?
Also, the Beretta is complete shit.
Fuck this pistol. Worst gun ever.
The Butchering of the Bots
In Tannenberg especially the servers are always deserted. That’s fine, though, because each missing player is compensated for by a bot.
A bot, whose performance in marksmanship is approximate to Helen Keller's.
Contrary to being a detriment, this is actually a primary appeal of these games for me. The bots are bad. Killing bad enemies is easy. Killing enemies with cool old guns is fun. Therefore, playing against bad bots is fun.
I won’t pretend it isn’t.
Isonzo’s player count is much healthier than Tannenberg’s ever was, but I played largely on empty servers after being steamrolled by real players in an attempt to capture the magic of the previous games. And while I did to some extent, I found myself encountering the problem of the aimbot-bots.
The bots in Isonzo are all cheating. They’ll 360-noscope you the second you come into their field of vision. Their accuracy is pinpoint over vast distances. They tend to move in great schools, like Krauty fish or flocks of feather-capped birds, and behave in bizarre ways that make them far harder, and less fun, to play against.
They’re still not as good as real players, except at aiming at close and medium range. Then they're like jackal snipers on Legendary. They almost never miss. Their rifles are lasers. They are way more capable than the accura-phobic AI that was in Tannenberg, and to be honest, I don’t find that an improvement.
The Game Mode
All three of these World War I shooters focus on one single game mode: trench warfare, dynamic maneuver action, and now mountaintop assault.
“Mountaintop assault” translates to Battlefield’s Rush game type, but turned into an entire game.
At first I was impressed by the maps and their variety. They’re long and have numerous different phases. They look gorgeous. The detail is amazing for what must have been a fairly low budget production, and still isn’t a full price release. There are also a decent number of them in total.
…but there’s only one game mode. It’s just Rush. Over and over and over again. Endlessly. Forever.
I never find myself getting tired of Maneuver in Tannenberg. Trench warfare in Verdun is exhausting, but that’s sort of the point. Yet here in Isonzo I'm bored of the single gametype already. I’m tired of the give-and-take. It’s slow, sluggish, static, and most games with real players don’t make it past the first offensive phase. Those that do seem to fall into the new meta of sneaking past the frontlines and backcapping the objectives, which is borderline an exploit due to how spawns work but happened to me a dozen times last night.
I don’t mean to suggest Isonzo’s levels are bad. They’re not. They’re very good for what they are. But are they an entire game?
All I can say is that after fifteen hours, they—and their single Rush gametype—are wearing thin.
The Long Road Ahead
Gameplay improvements make Isonzo much more accessible than its predecessors. BlackMill have managed to do this without seriously impeding on the game’s authenticity. They've created an excellent, enjoyable, historically satisfying World War I FPS to round out their trilogy. I would recommend Isonzo to anyone who enjoyed Battlefield One in particular--but would prefer something a bit more grounded going forward.
But with Isonzo BlackMill has also lost some piece of the soul of their previous games. The result is probably, even undeniably, a better multiplayer FPS. There’s less jank. The mechanics adhere to more conventions of the genre. The mechanics are less confusing. The are more cosmetics and the progression scheme actually matters. In the abstract, everything should be excellent.
And it would be excellent, if it wasn’t for that I’m the kind of person to loads up Tannenberg to take potshots at Krauts with Smith & Wesson Model 3s in Single Action—not to gain XP. I’m the kind of person who slides into every single open class during a round of Verdun because I want to get a few kills on the RSC, the BAR, the sawn-off SMLE, the Chauchat, and the MP18 before I log for the night. I’m the kind of person who uses the Roth-Steyr because it’s awesome and who always prefers the single-shot blackpowder rifles because they’re more fun and feel weirder and more anachronistic.
I don’t play these games to win. I play them because I like cool, old, weird guns, and I enjoy the simple, unpretentious FPS gameplay.
Isonzo has cool, old, weird guns, and it has unpretentious FPS gameplay. But for me it’s lacking in simplicity. And that’s why, for the most part, I think I’ll spend my time going back between Verdun and Tannenberg still, while I’ll only occasionally load up Isonzo. Isonzo has far better gameplay. It’s more fun, on the most basic level. It looks better. It feels more polished.
But in becoming polished it’s lost a lot of its charm, and the rough edges were what drew me to the first games. So I doubt I’ll play all that much more. But then I've given up on Battlefield, Call of Duty, and even Halo multiplayer at this point, so I'm hardly an authority on shooters anymore.
You should still pick it up, though. Isonzo is available now on Steam for $30. You’ll probably like it. Even if you don’t care about history, it’s a solid FPS, and I've enjoyed my time with it.
EDIT: One year later, I still find myself going back to Isonzo when I have nothing else to play. It holds up, and the regular content updates are fantastic.