Preface: Pour yourself some tea before reading.
I played, or rather tried to play Enlisted since the time of separate campaigns. After the “Global Update” many advised me to return. I tried to sit for a while longer and the game finished me off, bringing me to burnout and here’s why…
- The developers presented bots as one of the main mechanics, but… Bots are dumb blanks and as subordinates - unplayable. “Everything is known in comparison.” I’m not saying to make cyber-cutlets out of them, especially since I myself am a casual and noob in shooters, but they are noticeably worse than the bots of Call of Duty 2003 on the easy difficulty level, which at least somehow imitate combat activity. I’m not even talking about Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 from 2005, where bots have exactly the same casual controls as in Enlisted, but they intensively search for cover, hide behind it, open suppressive fire at the command of the same movement button, when aiming at the enemy [movement button] + LMB they storm positions with suppressive fire, grenades and hand-to-hand combat, and also share ammo. In the GTA-like The Godfather 2 of 2009, we also control a squad in a similar way to Enlisted, customize them, upgrade their skills and weapons, the bots in it are simpler than in Brothers in Arms, but still look for cover, if an ally or player falls, and there is a Medic in the squad, he will run as fast as he can to revive him, and on order a sapper - can plant explosives, a pyromaniac - set fire, an engineer - cut barbed wire, a melee fighter - break through closed doors to lay passages and attack the enemy point from unexpected places. There are covers in Enlisted, but the bots do not really hide behind them. They are shot at, and they just stand in an open field, while the player spends precious seconds on their regrouping, self-healing or respawning for them. This time is usually enough to completely knock out the squad. They also don’t use additional equipment like mortars, first aid kits or shovels and you can’t order them to do so. Since I’m a player of tactical strategies, I can’t forget about them either, feeling a kind of responsibility for them and for their effectiveness for the team. Only the “Lone Fighters” mode saves me from this psychological pressure;
- The speed of movement is like in slow-mo and there’s no need to remind me about perks, the speed should just be normal, adequate without perks from the start. This is a game about soldiers, not a militia of God knows who;
- While digging trenches, and sometimes just while moving while sitting or lying down, my character spontaneously gets up, without any command, exposing himself to enemy reconnaissance and bullets;
- Shovels are simply useless, or rather sometimes it is simply physically impossible to win without them, but in the “Squads” mode there is too little time and resources, even with a fully upgraded up perk for close combat speed, since when you dig everything you need, the battle is already over, and sometimes you don’t even have time before the end of the battle, and again you can’t order the squad (but I would like to);
- In the “Lone Fighters” mode, the shovel already shows itself better, but still for digging trenches and saving the lives of allies with their help they do not give any experience, no money, nothing. You can say that this is a contribution to the profit from victory, and honestly, since the time of Blockade Online I myself like to dig trenches, but this is still too little, because without frags on one dig you simply get practically nothing, but for a large number of frags with a defeat you get at least something, than nothing. For the fact that the developers did not separate digging and striking separately, they give a kick, sending you to the Black List forever for the fact that your allies themselves run under the shovel when you dig, causing critical damage and killing;
- The trenches themselves are dug in a strange way. On the Eastern European ones, they are a third of height, on the Western European ones, they are almost full height. You can refer to winter and frozen ground, but there are Eastern European maps not only winter ones, and the same problem remains. Moreover, Western maps are dug relatively smoothly, and Eastern ones are in jerks, bumps, and only after finding a certain angle, when a wedge-shaped earthen seam appears before your eyes, digging in this direction more smoothly, quickly and without bumps;
- The “Lone Fighters” mode was never made the main/one of the main ones, when it is the most adequately playable and looking;
- In the “Lone Fighters” mode, the spawn system of squads, not individual fighters, because of which I can’t play alive, healthy and ready for battle fighters of the same squad several times in a row;
- The spawn system is still unclear, when they forbid me to play for a squad that I haven’t used yet;
- There is no limit on the number of snipers in a battle, just like with tanks, because of which from the 2nd BR whole Napoleonic ranks in white coats with sniper rifles are built, because of which the points are simply not taken by anyone, and are given to the enemy (I recently had exactly this kind of battle, pity I didn’t take a screenshot);
- The maps are still small, for “wall to wall” battles, without giving any space for tactical maneuver. The maps feel even smaller than in the exemplary classics Battlefield 2 and 2142 of 2005-2006;
- The deadly nature of the restricted area affects the combat effectiveness of both me, trying to make tactical maneuvers, but not seeing the enemy because of the gray screen and dying from an invisible timer or an enemy not noticed in time, and the entire team, losing because of this fighter, a reserve resource and time that I or any other tactician could have spent fighting the enemy, and not waiting for my spawn;
- Shouts are not optional, the character controlled by the player sometimes shouts when he wants and bots cannot be ordered to remain silent. I understand that this is for the entourage, but at certain moments it breaks the whole tactic and the element of surprise, allowing the enemy to prepare for the meeting or find and destroy the saboteur. For comparison, in PlanetSide 2 2012, the character says something only when the player chooses an answer or marks the enemy by the player, and only then can the enemy hear the player;
- Tanks have no place in such corridors, where an armor-piercing man, a guy with dynamite/TNT, or another tank can jump out from any corner, literally breathing in face;
- The tank is not felt at all, and given the size and game design of the maps, it is impossible to accelerate anywhere, on the contrary, it is very easy to get stuck in some debris of indestructible surroundings or in trenches, not human ones, but ones that are part of the map, the tank just gets stuck there and starts rattling madly, although it is visually clear that it should be able to overcome them. At the same time, there are no additional cameras, for example, a driver-mechanic to monitor the road, especially if the turret is turned back, please switch, but then it is impossible to shoot, because the bot-gunner does not react in any way. The tank crew must act as a single unit, but in Enlisted the control is “1 person per 1 tank”, just like the control of vehicles in WW2 Online 2001;
- You cannot select shells for a tank before the start of the battle, and the game and the developers themselves decided to spawn it already loaded, usually armor-piercing, even if it is a T-60, which by definition is an Anti-Persons tank with a main high-explosive belt and wherever I look, it seems impossible to unload the gun to replace the shell. No, to spawn it unloaded, anyway, until you get to the battlefield;
- Grenades are thrown in a strange way, if everything is clear with Molotov cocktails, then dynamite and especially hand grenades do not bounce off the walls at all. No matter how sharp the angle, they just seem to get stuck in the wall, like in a very soft pillow and fall straight down, which is why the main advantage of hand grenades is lost;
- Prototypes and small-scale weapons are still in the main development trees and they are still flaunted quite en masse across the battlefield, with these disgusting proto-pseudo-Kalashes, instead of putting them all in gold. And the developers themselves stated back in 2021 that the game focuses on historical accuracy and is positioned as a shooter “with maximum historical accuracy.” Once again, these are the words of the developers themselves;
- For 3-4 years, they still have not made normal customizable upgrading of weapons and vehicles, giving only three stars for increasing the level of weapons. Just like in mobile games, not serious PC war games. For comparison, in Heroes&Generals 2014, now closed, you could create an anti-tank MG42, putting armor-piercing rounds, a heavy spring and trigger mechanism in it, which dealt damage to light paper tanks or destroyed the T-34 engine point-blank in the roof;
- There is no display of the battle phase in custom battles, which makes it easy to go to the very end of a failed battle and simply lose the bonus for the first battle of the day;
- Sometimes they do not give any profit for participation in the battle, regardless of the “Squads” or “Lone Fighters” mode, especially if this is the first battle of the day, even after active participation in it and a significant contribution to the victory. After this, the bonus for the first battle of the day may either remain or disappear;
- Sometimes, especially in the first battles of the day, especially in those where nothing is given for active participation, when trying to build something, the message “Unable to start construction so far away” appears, while the building is lit up green and is located not far from me, away from the spawn and other spawns, on a flat surface;
- A large number of connection breaks. After it, somewhere around 60 to 40, the session crashes to the main menu, after which, with some frequency, a window starts spamming with the message “The army has changed due to a change in settings”, even right in battle, completely paralyzing combat capability and any movement for several seconds. Occasionally, this window appears after the end of a battle, after leaving the room, leveling up fighters and entering back into the game room. I live in the Far North-East Asia, but for comparison in PlanetSide I also had and still have breaks with flying tanks, but the chance of crash the game is usually about 30 to 70, and I heard that their servers are in Amsterdam, and in World of Tanks it is even less;
- You cannot buy a sold knife or bayonet again. You must first buy a new rifle or a new fighter and take what you need from them, wasting money. A trifle, but unpleasant;
- There is no way to see what this or that improvement gives. More precisely, there is an opportunity to “Try out” squads of the necessary classes, as I found out much later, but this is not indicated anywhere, which is why before choosing to upgrade a squad of one between the AT, Engineer or Radio, I had to ask other players what they give and what is better to upgrade, instead of creating my own gaming experience;
- By the way, there is no non-combat communication between players. In World of Tanks, although spammed with all sorts of nonsense, at least there is a chat, you can find platoon friends, or even team up in a clan. In Enlisted, I feel absolutely alone;
- Bots in the game are not marked in any way, their nicknames merge with the nicknames of real players, players are distinguished only by their responses from the chat and by the console icons, but both are rare, which is why often doubt own strength and in general any need for my presence in the battles of the game. Again, the feeling of loneliness is even more intensified;
- The Italians are voiced extremely caricaturedly, like a famous plumber, which is why their overly squeaky voice hits the ears and brains after a long time of playing;
- And finally, skins. For comparison, in World of Tanks you can remove a skin from one vehicle and transfer it to another or rent it for silver for 100 battles, and in PlanetSide 2 you can get one skin for an event, a special currency received for daily or donations and stick it on everything: infantry, vehicles, weapons. Here you need to buy a skin element separately for each place of each squad, and they can disappear over time, disappear from the player’s availability, due to new patches, updates, after battles, moving weapons or soldiers between the squad and the reserve, regardless of whether these skins were bought for gold or change cards, which are always lacking for me, since I am bad at shooters and the game has too many, which puts pressure on my gaming ability, with each bug or flaw, leading to gaming burnout.