Nothing like scaling a massive mountain under heavy artillery bombardment, ducking and weaving through barbed wire and trench systems, over fly-covered horse carcasses and burnt-out rubble to charge bayonet-first through a cloud of mustard gas against an alpine bunker.

To sum up Isonzo in a few brief points (longer review below):

- Extremely immersive and historically accurate weapons, uniforms, and locations.

- Perfect balance between casual arcade shooters like BF1 and hardcore mil sims like Squad 44 and HLL.

- Fantastic gameplay that benefits from amazing TTK thanks to the realistic damage and stopping power + slower RPM bolt action rifle combo.

- Incredibly well done bots and offline gameplay in addition to its somewhat smaller but passionate and generally quite healthy online player base.

- NO PAYWALL SUBSCRIPTION BATTLEPASS DLC GAMBLING MICROTRANSACTION UNFINISHED BS. You pay for a finished game (at a bargain sale price) and that’s exactly what you get! They even released their map DLC expansion completely for free because these are clearly people who actually love what they do and it shows.

- Good sound design with some minor bugs with its dynamic music that changes based on whether you’re pushing certain positions, which is worth it for how badass you feel with epic music to cue your bayonet charge.

- Solid graphics definitely on par with many games today, nothing mind blowing as its outshined by something like BF1 but I also don’t have the processing power to run everything on ULTRA with full post FX, at least if I care to have more than 2 frames per second!

FULL REVIEW:
This game is criminally neglected, it’s genuinely better than 90% of historical FPS games. It nails historical accuracy, with breathtaking maps faithful to the real geography of the Isonzo region and with missions based on the real battles that took place there over the course of almost 4 years. This game strikes the most amazing balance between the arcade Battlefield experience and the hardcore mil sim HLL challenge. The ambience is incredibly immersive, the weapons extremely faithful to real life. It’s supposed to be WW1 and it NAILS it. No hordes of highly durable enemies sprinting around with ultra-rare and anachronistic SMGs and automatic weapons like BF1, but rather a large force of detailed and customisable soldiers in period correct uniforms wielding a variety of BOLT ACTION rifles which handle wonderfully and give you the actual experience for many infantrymen during the world wars. You will have your moments to charge uphill at the enemy fortress with a fearless tenacity, but a minute later you will find yourself ducked down in a massive shell crater or trench, hiding from suppressing fire and aerial bombardment. There’s no COD style full-auto infinite-health rushing meta. One shot to centre mass will drop your enemy dead, and often you’ll be reminded by the true toll of war by their dying screams and whimpering as their extremely well-done rag doll collapses into a puddle of blood. Artillery shells exploding nearby and gunfire whizzing past your head not only puts you on the WW1 battlefields but thanks to an excellently implemented suppression mechanic it actually has an effect on players, forcing them to flinch, throwing off their aim and making them duck out of harms way. Your bayonet becomes crucial to clearing trenches, and while coordination with your officers and fellow players is an excellent way to win, there isn't the same mil sim pressure if you just want to play solo for fun. You can even have immense fun offline playing with just bots. This game probably has the best bots I’ve ever experienced. They aren’t aim-bot laser death machines, nor are they completely brain dead free kills. If it wasn’t for their sometimes slightly predictable paths you would think they were decently skilled real players, and even then they will surprise you by flanking or coming from an unexpected angle at times. There is not any single player class that is absurdly OP or unbalanced, and it has an awesome setup the way as an attacker you can get absurd amounts of kills yet if you don’t push the objectives you will lose regardless, which really promotes a constant dynamic engagement style over camp-and-farm tactics. The graphics and sound design are pretty good, though it doesn’t quite look as good as say Battlefield 1 or EA’s Battlefront games for example, but those are prime instances of notoriously pretty games, and for a lesser-known franchise Isonzo’s graphics hold up perfectly fine, and you often ignore the very insignificant shortcomings in texture or lighting simply due to the incredible immersion. The maps are seriously attractive and generally very well designed and balanced, and you honestly have just as much fun losing as you do winning. Furthermore, while you can get paid DLCs with unique historically accurate (no immersion breaking pink banana costumes sorry) skins and cosmetics, there’s no weapons or abilities locked behind a pay wall. There’s no battle pass, subscription, or micro transaction gambling BS. YOU PAID FOR THE WHOLE GAME, YOU GET THE WHOLE GAME. Being it was on sale for a great price, I gave Isonzo a cautious chance to try and satisfy my WW1 history buff itch (as aside from BF1 it’s usually the Second World War that gets all the love in media and video games) and it genuinely exceeded every expectation I had for it, even after I had read other people’s positive reviews. I hope these developers continue to put in the same passion and historically faithful, hard work into their future projects because both the gaming world and myself really need more of this.

Full of cheaters. Game is absolute ♥♥♥♥. ♥♥♥♥ that.

I've been really enjoying it. Definitely like the "primitive" guns and how that changes the gameplay as compared to other FPS games. Kinda feels like Battlefront 2 in some ways. Just wish it performed a bit better on macOS. I've got a Mac Studio M1 Max and am getting 40-60 FPS at 1080p and low settings.