WARNO
Last updated: 2025-11-16
- Highly enjoyable, polished game experience.
- Immersive Cold War setting and realism.
- Diverse units, strategic deck building.
- Suffers from persistent technical instability.
- Criticized for overpriced, predatory DLCs.
- Confusing user interface and clunky controls.
Emotions
Players feel satisfied by the game's high overall quality, including its impressive graphics, sound, performance, and deep strategic and tactical gameplay. This is enhanced by well-designed mechanics, balanced units, and engaging modes like multiplayer, campaigns, and mod support. Satisfaction also stems from the game being a worthy successor to previous titles, offering abundant content, and providing a rewarding experience after mastering its challenging learning curve.
Players experience frustration primarily due to persistent technical issues such as frequent crashes, freezes, and server disconnections that disrupt gameplay. This is compounded by balance problems, including perceived faction imbalances and issues with specific unit effectiveness, and concerns over the monetization model, which often locks desirable content behind expensive DLCs. Further frustration arises from a steep learning curve, clunky controls, and perceived developer unresponsiveness to long-standing bugs and community feedback.
Disappointment stems from persistent technical issues, including game instability and broken multiplayer, which prevent players from enjoying the game. Many feel let down by the monetization strategy, viewing DLCs as overpriced and essential content being locked behind paywalls, leading to a perceived 'pay-to-win' model. Furthermore, players express disappointment with aspects of gameplay balance, AI effectiveness, and a perceived lack of innovation or quality-of-life improvements compared to previous titles or competitors.
Players feel excitement from the game's high overall quality, encompassing its impressive graphics, immersive sound design, and exceptional music, particularly within its Cold War setting. This is amplified by the engaging tactical and strategic depth, combined arms warfare, and the dynamic, intense nature of large-scale battles. The prospect of future content updates, new divisions, and successful multiplayer or co-op experiences further fuels this excitement.
Enjoyment is derived from the game's consistent fun factor, engaging gameplay mechanics, and deep tactical and strategic options across various modes, including single-player, skirmishes, and multiplayer. The immersive 1980s Cold War aesthetic, enhanced by graphics and music, also contributes significantly. Players also find enjoyment in playing with friends, experimenting with different divisions, and the rewarding process of mastering the game's complex mechanics.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 69% ¡ Negative 31%. Score: 31 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game for its immersive, fun, and strategically deep gameplay, calling it a polished and worthy successor to previous titles. It is considered a leading example in its genre, showcasing the developer's expertise and offering an incredibly rewarding experience.
- The game excels at creating an authentic Cold War atmosphere with historically accurate units, realistic combat mechanics, and stunning visual/audio design. This combination provides a deeply immersive experience, making players feel like genuine commanders on the battlefield.
- The game features an immense variety of highly detailed and historically accurate units, strategically organized into unique divisions. The deck-building system allows for deep customization and diverse playstyles, significantly enhancing tactical possibilities and game balance. Unit management is also praised for its simplicity.
- The game provides a vast amount of content, including diverse and tactically rich maps, alongside extensive PVE options. Strong mod support via Steam Workshop further extends replayability, allowing for custom experiences and continuous community contributions.
- The game consistently receives high praise for its impressive graphics, featuring detailed unit models, realistic effects, and beautifully rendered battlefields. The outstanding synth-wave soundtrack and immersive sound design significantly enhance the overall atmosphere and gameplay experience.
Negatives:
- The game is plagued by widespread and long-standing technical problems, including frequent crashes, freezing, black screens, and stuttering. These issues render the game unplayable for many, particularly in multiplayer, where disconnections and server instability are common and have persisted for months across updates.
- Reviewers widely criticize the game's high base price and even more expensive DLCs, which are perceived as overpriced 'cash grabs' offering minimal or 'copy/paste' content. Many essential units and nations are locked behind paywalls, making the game feel incomplete without significant additional investment, and raising concerns about pay-to-win mechanics.
- The game's user interface is widely described as confusing, abysmal, and overwhelming, making navigation difficult and detracting from the gameplay experience. Coupled with clunky controls, insufficient settings, and a lack of quality-of-life features, players find it challenging to effectively manage units and understand on-screen information.
- The game presents an extremely steep learning curve and demands extensive micromanagement, making it largely inaccessible and frustrating for casual players or newcomers to the RTS genre. Basic tutorials are often insufficient, leaving players overwhelmed by complex mechanics and struggling with clunky controls and unit pathfinding.
- Many players feel the game is a significant step backward compared to its predecessor, Wargame: Red Dragon, lacking innovation and offering an inferior experience in terms of gameplay, unit variety, map design, and overall fun. The fixed division system is particularly disliked, seen as a downgrade from Wargame's flexible deck-building.
Gameplay:
- The game is a complex real-time tactics (RTS) title, often compared to Wargame and Steel Division, known for its deep strategic systems without base-building. It features extensive unit variety, combined arms warfare, and multiple game modes including varied multiplayer (1v1 to 10v10, co-op), strategic single-player campaigns (Army General, Operations), and skirmishes, all requiring tactical resource management and direct unit command.
- Players consistently highlight the game's extremely steep learning curve and overall high difficulty. Mastering the game requires significant time to learn complex mechanics, unit specifics, and intricate strategies, often feeling overwhelming for newcomers even with tutorials and easier AI difficulties.
- The game uses a division-based system, where each division has unique strengths and weaknesses, necessitating the effective coordination of diverse unit types. Successful gameplay hinges on mastering combined arms tacticsâintegrating infantry, tanks, artillery, and air supportâand leveraging division specializations, particularly in competitive multiplayer modes where teamwork is crucial.
- The game features nuanced unit interactions heavily influenced by terrain. For instance, tanks are vulnerable to infantry in urban or forested areas without proper recon, highlighting the importance of tactical positioning and understanding each unit's environmental strengths and weaknesses.
Performance:
- Numerous players report frequent game crashes, black screens, freezes, and significant FPS drops, especially during longer play sessions, large 10v10 matches, or with specific hardware like RTX cards. These long-standing issues severely disrupt gameplay and prevent some users from playing effectively.
- While many players praise the game's good optimization, stable performance, and high FPS even on mid-range or older systems, a notable portion still reports severe performance problems. Some past issues, particularly related to NVIDIA drivers, appear to have been resolved, indicating ongoing but inconsistent improvement efforts.
- Multiplayer experiences are hampered by unstable server connections, frequent disconnects, and high ping spikes, particularly noticeable in larger 10v10 matches. The netcode's reliance on individual player internet quality also contributes to lag, impacting command responsiveness.
- The game requires a substantial 52GB of storage space. This might be a consideration for players with limited hard drive capacity, although some find it workable.
Recommendations:
- Player sentiment on purchasing the game is mixed but generally positive, with many strong recommendations, especially for RTS fans. However, a significant number advise buying only during a sale due to concerns about full price value or current game issues. General ratings frequently fall between 7.5/10 and 9/10.
- The game is highly recommended for experienced RTS players, especially those who enjoy complex tactical challenges, Cold War-era military simulations, and titles like Wargame or Steel Division. It is considered unsuitable for casual players due to its steep learning curve and depth.
- Many players are actively comparing WARNO to the game "Broken Arrow," often suggesting it as a superior alternative or advising to wait for its release. Some view WARNO as a placeholder or suitable only for specific niches, such as single-player or for systems unable to run Broken Arrow.
- There is divided feedback regarding whether the game is best suited for single-player or multiplayer. Players give conflicting advice, with some recommending it exclusively for one mode and cautioning against the other, suggesting an inconsistent experience or unclear development focus across game modes.
- Some players express a fundamental dislike for the game, finding it unbalanced or simply not aligning with their preferences, leading to strong negative opinions that it's "not for me" or "worst game ever." This feedback lacks specific actionable insights.
Miscellaneous:
- Players strongly desire a significant expansion of game content, including more maps, diverse factions, and new units. There's a particular interest in transitioning towards a more modern or near-future warfare setting, introducing advanced vehicles and weaponry. Additional features like dynamic campaigns, weather conditions, naval units, and fortification building are also frequently requested.
- Players perceive the game as still being in active development, with promises of visual and feature improvements. While the general sentiment is 'okay' or 'has potential,' there's a clear feeling that the game needs more work to reach its full potential, impacting accessibility and overall player satisfaction. Marketing and content limitations are also noted as areas for improvement.
- Players frequently discuss Broken Arrow as a direct competitor, with some hoping it will push Warno to improve, while others express disappointment with Broken Arrow's state or even preference for it. This competitive dynamic is a significant factor in player perception and expectations for Warno's development.
- WARNO is recognized as a niche title with a stable but small player base, which some believe hinders mod development. While mod support exists, players desire deeper or 'true' modding capabilities, with some actively using mods to enhance their experience in the vanilla game.
- WARNO is seen as a distinct title, a 'thoroughbred' game, but its setting might be less popular than alternatives. Many Red Dragon veterans hope it evolves into the ultimate version of their beloved game, highlighting high expectations for its long-term identity and quality.
