Squad Review Summary

Immersive and tactical gameplay: Players consistently highlight the game's immersive and tactical gameplay, emphasizing high-stakes moments, realism, and deep teamwork. The balance between accessibility and depth makes it engaging for both new and veteran players.

High replayability and variety: Players appreciate the game's high replayability due to diverse roles, factions, maps, and gameplay scenarios. The variety of experiences keeps the game engaging over hundreds of hours.

Teamwork and communication focus: The game is praised for its strong emphasis on teamwork, communication, and coordination. Players find it rewarding when squads work together, and the design encourages strategic planning and leadership.

Supportive and engaging community: The community is frequently described as helpful, welcoming, and less toxic than other games. New players are often guided by veterans, enhancing the overall experience.

Realistic military simulation: The game is described as one of the best military simulators, balancing realism with accessibility. It offers authentic combat mechanics, large-scale battles, and a unique blend of strategy and FPS elements.

Severe performance and optimization issues: The game suffers from frequent FPS drops, stuttering, crashes, and poor optimization, especially after the Unreal Engine 5 update. Players report unplayable frame rates even on high-end hardware, with issues like black screens, texture pop-ins, and server lag.

Game-breaking bugs and unplayable states: Numerous game-breaking bugs, such as inability to access the main menu, frequent crashes, and texture/mapping issues, render the game unplayable for many. These issues have persisted since launch and worsened with updates.

Poor vehicle physics and mechanics: Vehicles suffer from unrealistic physics, clipping issues, and poor handling, such as getting stuck in terrain or flipping uncontrollably. These problems degrade the gameplay experience and have persisted despite updates.

Degraded shooting and infantry mechanics: Shooting mechanics have worsened post-update, with issues like excessive recoil, stamina systems, and unrealistic weapon handling. Infantry combat feels restrictive and frustrating for many players.

Developers prioritize monetization over fixes: Developers focus on cosmetic updates, DLCs, and new content instead of addressing core gameplay issues, bugs, and optimization. This has led to frustration among players who feel neglected.

Team-based squad gameplay core: The game is fundamentally built around squad-based teamwork, with roles like squad leader, medic, and rifleman requiring coordination and communication. Players emphasize the necessity of teamwork for success, with mechanics like squad leadership and designated roles shaping the experience.

Role specialization and progression: Players can choose from diverse roles (e.g., medic, sniper, anti-tank, pilot) with unique responsibilities. Progression from basic infantry to advanced roles (e.g., squad leader, vehicle crew) is a key feature, emphasizing strategic depth.

Communication-critical gameplay: Voice communication (VOIP) is essential for coordination, with channels for squad, command, and local interactions. The game’s design heavily penalizes lack of communication, making it a core mechanic for success.

Large-scale combined arms battles: Battles involve up to 100 players, integrating infantry, vehicles (tanks, helicopters, logistics trucks), and artillery. The scale and variety of armaments create dynamic, high-stakes combat scenarios in urban and rural environments.

Faction and vehicle diversity: The game includes 15+ factions, each with unique weapons, vehicles, and loadouts (e.g., T72B3 tanks, RPG28 launchers). Vehicle gameplay (e.g., helicopters, logistics trucks) is a major component, requiring strategic use.

Severe FPS drops across hardware: Players report significant FPS drops (e.g., from 200+ to 60-80) on both high-end (RTX 3070/4070) and mid-range hardware, even with DLSS enabled. Performance instability is widespread, affecting gameplay fluidity.

UE5 update worsened performance: The transition to Unreal Engine 5 introduced critical performance regressions, including halved FPS, stuttering, and crashes. Some players note visual improvements but emphasize unplayable framerates on previously capable systems.

Stuttering and texture loading issues: Persistent stuttering (especially in combat) and delayed texture rendering (e.g., invisible objects) degrade immersion. These issues persist even on high-end systems with fast SSDs.

DLSS/FSR reliance masks problems: Players must use AI upscaling (DLSS/FSR) or resolution scaling to achieve playable FPS, suggesting the game’s native performance is inadequate. Frame generation introduces input lag and blur.

Server and connectivity crashes: Frequent crashes occur when accessing server browsers or during gameplay, with transport errors affecting entire servers. Multiplayer connectivity is unreliable, disrupting online play.

Highly recommended for tactical teamwork: The game is consistently praised for its immersive military simulation, tactical depth, and emphasis on teamwork and communication. It appeals to fans of realistic combat and strategic gameplay, especially when played in organized squads or clans.

Not beginner-friendly in current state: Many reviews advise against purchasing the game for new players due to its steep learning curve, community toxicity, and lack of coordination. Some suggest waiting for fixes or improvements before buying.

Performance and bug issues deter purchases: Numerous players criticize the game's current state due to bugs, poor optimization, and performance problems. Many recommend waiting for patches or a UE4 rollback before considering a purchase.

Training and patience required: New players are encouraged to use training modes, watch tutorials, and start with beginner-friendly roles (e.g., medic or rifleman) to learn mechanics and squad dynamics before diving into matches.

Alternatives like Arma recommended: Some players suggest alternatives such as *Arma 3*, *Arma Reforger*, or *Foxhole* for those seeking realism or large-scale multiplayer experiences, especially if they find this game too complex or buggy.

Chinese server issues: Players report developer bias, cheating problems, and community toxicity specifically in Chinese servers. These issues create an unfair and frustrating environment for legitimate players.

UE5 upgrade anticipation: Players express excitement about the upcoming engine upgrade from UE4 to UE5, viewing it as a positive step for the game's future. However, some criticize the focus on this over fixing current issues.

Long-term player base: The game has a dedicated long-term player base, with some users reporting hundreds or thousands of hours played. This indicates strong retention but may also suggest stagnation for newer players.

Large game storage requirements: The game's size is a common concern, with players noting it consumes a significant portion of storage (e.g., 15% of a 1TB drive). This may deter players with limited space.

Regional server population insights: Players share details about Korean server population trends (peak/off-peak hours) and note the need to learn Russian for better matchmaking, highlighting regional accessibility challenges.