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’ve had this game on my wishlist for an eternity. Whether or not anyone else feels this way, I can’t say, but I believe the game is doing relatively well on Steam.
If it is, BlackMill has earned it. I love Verdun, I adore Tannenberg, and I like Isonzo a lot. Last year for the 11th of November I reviewed the first two; now that I’ve had time to make it to level 20 on my first class, this seemed an excellent opportunity to write up my thoughts.
Battlefield Won
Players of the previous games will at once notice the generational leap in production value. When I first played Verdun’s demo in a small window on my PC in 2013, I found the production value to be lacking. Tannenberg was not much different.
Isonzo is a revolution. The gunplay is completely overhauled to rival or perhaps exceed Battlefield’s 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), still come together spectacularly. The feeling, the spirit and essence and soul of this game, is AAA—not Eurojank independent. Animations in particular are vastly improved over previous titles.
The structure of play is altered from the previous games. 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 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 progression schemes, but they’re token enough to be pointless, and I like it that way. Progression isn’t what keeps me coming back to the multiplayer games I like. It is often what keeps me away. Locking cool historical guns behind 15 or 20 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 unlock them.
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 the player objectives. But for loadout selection?
In general I prefer the old games’ structure, as I prefer Tannenberg over Battlefield 1. Isonzo feels more like a real game, and for that I find it less enjoyable.
Let me elucidate.
Historical Authenticity
As with its predecessors, Isonzo excels in authenticity. The firearms, maps, and uniforms are all carefully researched. These are accomplishments worth recognizing.
But the selection of weapons seems comparatively weak to me. Each side receives one revolver, two automatic pistols, two or three indistinguishable rifles, a machine gun, and a few melee weapons. There’s also a breech-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 Austrians’; 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 Glisenti M1910 pistol kicks 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 authenticity 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 incredible. The reload animations are great, 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 replaced by a bot with the marksmanship skills of Helen Keller.
This is actually the primary appeal of the game. The bots are bad. Killing bad enemies is easy. Killing enemies with cool old guns is fun. Therefore, playing against bad bots is fun.
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. This is where I found myself encountering 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 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. 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
Each of the three World War I shooters focuses on a single game mode. In Verdun that is trench warfare. In Tannenberg it is dynamic maneuver action. In Isonzo it is mountaintop assault.
Mountaintop assault means Battlefield’s Rush game type 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. There are also a decent number of them in total.
…but there’s only one game mode. It’s just Rush. 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, and which 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?
The Long Road Ahead
Gameplay improvements make Isonzo much more accessible than its predecessors. BlackMill has managed to do this without seriously impinging on the game’s authenticity. They've created an excellent and historically satisfying World War I FPS to round out their trilogy. I would recommend Isonzo to anyone who enjoyed Battlefield 1 but also wanted something more historical.
But with Isonzo BlackMill has also lost some of the soul of their previous games. The result is undeniably a better multiplayer FPS. There’s less jank. The mechanics adhere to more conventions of the genre. There are more cosmetics, and the progression scheme actually matters. In the abstract, everything should be excellent.
And it would be excellent, if I played these games to win. But the way that I enjoyed Tannenberg was to go around shooting bots with a single-action Smith & Wesson Model 3. In Verdun I would hop between classes to get kills with the RSC, the BAR, and the Chauchat before going to bed. When I played these games, it was because I wanted to use a Roth-Steyr and a single-shot blackpowder rifle, because no other game had them.
I played Verdun and Tannenberg because I like cool, old, weird guns, and I didn’t mind that the gameplay was basic.
Isonzo has cool, old, weird guns, and it has mostly basic FPS gameplay. But the complexity is starting to build, and through becoming more complex, it’s starting to lose its charm.
You should still pick it up, though. This is still a great FPS. Isonzo is available now on Steam for $30.
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.