I need to stress that for this review, I am looking at this from a wide gamer perspective and not as a niche enthusiast. This game appeals to a very specific niche, which is why I do not recommend it for the wider audiences of gamers.

The game is infuriating and has moments that make me question the logic of what the engine is running on. Not to mention that it does not play well with AMD GPUs, having had several instances where the graphics have collapsed because of updates. The heavy calculations required slows down even the most modern of systems (9800X3D suffers and that is a CPU that can help remove bottleneck on 5090 GPUs.) The UI scaling is not the most pleasant and trying to enjoy this beyond 1080p is effectively impossible. As an experience, it requires a lot of sacrifices and compromises and I don't think that is something a normal person will want to endure, even if looking for a "military grade" experience.

That being said, if you're someone who wants to engage in a game that really does put a lot of emphasis on being a tactical and strategic simulator, when it works, it can be a very good fulfilment of that need. I have nearly 250hrs on record and I am still nowhere near a "competent" user of this game. I can win on Iron, I can win with few casualties, but I am still learning the parts of the game that can only come from aggressively trying new things. It gives me a chance to consider how I would command a battalion, company or platoon and also forces me to actively deal with my assumptive thinking and lack of cautious behaviour. I often return to the game out of spite to show it I am competent, and often find myself not proving my point any further than before.

There is a market for this game and I am one of those market members. However, thinking of whether I would encourage a friend, family or fellow enthusiast to pick this up, I have to question if that would be enjoyable for the majority. In reality, I feel most would find better experiences from a more FPS based perspective like "Squad" if they want to try and implement military simulator experiences. If you want to go higher than Squad, but below the madness of a Paradox HOI4 campaign, this definitely fits into the right category. Just be mindful that your mileage will definitely vary and this game is not going to let you find peace just because you read the manual, played the tutorial and have a few hundred hours in it.