What is Enlisted Game? Gameplay, Release Date, Review

Enlisted Game is a brand-new WW2 shooter, developed and published by Gaijin Entertainment. The Enlisted game is inspired by using RPG and MMO mechanics to bring a new spin on the genre. The game features specific campaigns, each with its own campaign level, weapons, maps, vehicles, and more. With all that said, quite a few things are going on with Enlisted game. Here is everything you need to know about the title, including what is Enlisted, and how to play Enlisted.

Enlisted is a free to play competitive WW2 shooter, adopting RPG mechanics to enhance further the FPS gameplay you expect. The game is available on PS5, Xbox, and PC in an open beta stage. Enlisted game release date is all over the place, with its timed Xbox release date in November 2020. On March 2nd, the closed beta launched on PS5, with all platforms getting the Open Beta on April 8th. As it stands, there is no dedicated launch date for Version 1 of the game.

Upon downloading the game and creating an account, the game will prompt you to select a campaign and a faction to play. You can easily change the campaign and./or faction you want to main in the main menu.

Once you get in-game, you’ll soon notice many different menus, tabs, and other RPG elements. Furthermore, as you play, you’ll spot maps, equipment and other items associated with specific theatres. We will go into more detail on each section below.

 

Campaigns

 

Picking a faction and campaign is a big deal. The game uses campaigns as a way to level up your progression for a specific faction on that campaign, allowing you to better your troops, squads, and more. 

Every time you play a game for a faction in a campaign, you’ll earn experience for those specifics. The further you go through the campaign, the more experience you’ll need to reach the next level. Every level offers something historically used on that theatre of war back in World War 2. For example, the Allied Normandy Campaign features American and Canadian weaponry due to the heavy use of North American troops during the allied invasion. Over in the Moscow campaign, you can see more use of USSR equipment because of the different factions in the theatre.

The further you progress any campaign for any of these examples and more, you will gain access to new weapons, vehicles, and squads for use in that campaign. This is where the MMO part of the game comes in, with the community aspect impacting the players you’ll meet in those theatres. 

As it stands, there are only the Normandy and Moscow campaigns available in Open Beta. However, the Tunisia campaign between the British and the Germans and the Battle for Berlin between the USSR and Germany will be available on release. 

 

Maps

In addition, each campaign has specific maps and game modes associated with it. Before committing to a faction and a campaign, play around with each see what maps and kit you prefer. There is the Normandy Campaign, the battle for Normandy beach, with the allied landing facing machine-gun fire from the German bunkers. Over in Moscow, you can experience the German assault on the Russian capital, with Russian troops making their efforts to push the Germans back.

Other maps follow the warpath both campings went on to. You will get to fight over villages in Moscow and Normandy, with appropriate environments fitting the geography of the regions.

Each map has a different objective to fit the map. In Normandy, there are two assault game modes. The first one is the Normandy invasion, with the allies starting on the landing craft in Normandy. They aim to assault the bunkers as happened historically. Once the beach is secured, you’ll begin fighting your way through Norman villages, into the hills and beyond. Another invasion map takes you into the cities of Normandy, with players fighting for blown up towns, into the fields and beyond to push the Germans out of Normandy. There are fice objectives to capture, with the allies taking one at a time to advance the map. The invades also start with 1000 lives for the team, earning more when they capture the point.  

Also, these invasion maps have several different smaller version of them. These smaller maps capture a snapshot of the invasion map, putting in conquest game modes, with three bases to capture and control to win the game.

 

Playlists

As it stands, there are two playlists available to queue for games. The first is Squads, which allows you to pick a squad, with you getting a character and the AI taking over your bots. This allows you to play as different squad members by rotating between them and even respawning on them if the character you were playing has died. This feature is also important for building squads to have different members in their role. Having a sniper squad with a Radio Operator allows you to call in an airstrike, despite having snipers, etc.

The other game mode is Lone Fighters, which removes the AI component of your squads. Instead of spawning in with your full squad, you simply pick just one character from your squad and go in alone. The game feels more like a battlefield experience, with the running around on your own taking a centre approach to the gameplay.

 

Squads

 

Squads are one of the core aspects of the Enlisted gameplay. Before going into a game, you can have three different infantry squads, along with one vehicle squad. This is how you build your playstyle. Starting afresh campaign and faction allow you to take an infantry, sniper, and assault squad. But once you get your campaign level going, you can unlock squads like the engineer, flamethrower, and more. Each different squad allows you to take multiple of that specific troop type. While some squads have upgrades to take Radio Operators, Assaulters, Engineers and more, they are very limited in capacity. 

 

The total number of squads in the game are:   

• Infantry
• Assault Infantry (SMG)
• Sniper Infantry
• Tank Batallion
• Engineer
• Fighter Pilot
• Flame Trooper
• Field Signal (radio operators)
• Bomber Infantry
• Machine Gun Infantry (LMG)
• Trench Mortar

 

While levelling your campaign, you’ll also gain access to better squads of one’s you have already unlocked, unlocking better versions of weapons and vehicles with better troops to match. This is the core of your Enlisted gameplay experience as this is the means of how you play Enlisted game.

As you play your squads and troops in those squads, you gain experience. Squad experience allows you to spend tokens on upgrades. You can upgrade your troop’s loadout capabilities, go through weapon upgrades to personalise weapons, break them into weapon parts, and upgrade squads. Individual troop experience levels your troops up to select perks, making them better at holding their breath, quicker, more resistant to explosion after effects and more.

 

Logistics

The Logistics tab is an important aspect of improving squads. As you play the game, you get battle cards from your tasks and campaigns. This is your earned currency in-game, allowing you to buy new weapons, troops and equipment. You can then add these to your new purchases your squads by clicking on the soldiers you want to make changes to. You can add higher-level infantry to the specialised infantry squads to further improve that squad’s output.

 

Academy

The Academy is where you send your leftover troops to get upgrades to new tiers when you have an expanded army. At the start of the game, this feature is going to be largely irrelevant. But as you upgrade those squads and get new troop tiers, it will be a lifeline to improve your starting troops.

Like most games this generation, Enlisted is indeed crossplay. PC and console players can queue into the same servers, highlighting console players through their gamepad icon in the leaderboard while in the game. As it stands, inviting players to your lobby from other platforms is not enabled. Enlisted’s open beta currently cannot invite players on other platforms but will do upon full release. 

Gaijin Entertainment recently ran an influencer campaign, targeting twitch drops and bringing in some of Twitch’s popular streamers to the game. From the first week of the open beta, players could earn drops, getting some battle cards and weapons to add to their arsenal as a nice boost to the game. Gaijin unveiled that the first week of Twitch Drops had ended, but revealed there is a second round of Twitch drops from April 23-26, alongside the Battle for Berlin launch.

To round off the weekend we have one last lineup of streamers for you to check out on Twitch! They'll be live very soon, last chance to grab your drops! 🎁 pic.twitter.com/Yo4nZhOkB9

— Enlisted (@EnlistedGame) April 18, 2021

The developers also develop and publish games like War Thunder, their most iconic game under their umbrella., War Thunder gets frequent Twitch Gaming promotions. There is potential for Enlisted Game getting future promotions as its sister title does.

Enlisted is an interesting spin on the FPS genre, incorporating systems from titles like World of Tanks, War Thunder and more. Furthermore, the game has interesting RPG and strategy mechanics. The developers allow squads to level up and upgrade over time – just like in titles like XCOM.

As for the gunplay itself, the game has some very strong mechanics. Most of the weapons in the game involve bolt action rifle, with satisfying time to kill, rewarding the aim and one in the chamber or long reload times of some weapons.

Enlisted is a hardcore style of pace, but it has some quality features making it accessible to newer players. If you end up getting downed, every character has a med-pack on them, allowing them to heal if they took damage or save them if they get downed. Furthermore, the squad feature makes it easier to get back in action, making it not as punishing as other hardcore shooters like Hell Let Loose, Rising Storm, and other titles. However, it doesn’t mitigate poor squad management. Losing a squad means having to go back to the default spawns your faction has. Unfortunately, if you die in an awkward spot, there is some walking to do to get back in the action. Of course, this is presuming there is no Engineer placed spawn point on the map.

Also, weapon variation stacks up well. The game’s time to kill is low, with most bolt actions downing in one, semi-autos in two, and higher fire rate weapons needing a few more. With that said, every weapon has a role on the field, making no weapon better than another, other than in certain situations. The SMG is the best weapon for taking buildings, trenches and other closed-off objectives. Bolt action rifles are long-range weapons designed for picking targets off, especially with sniper scopes. Snipers are a big deal in this game, most notoriously being the counter to LMg placements reaping havoc on Normandy. LMGs is the weapon for placing a bipod to a spot, covering areas and suppressing.

While it is still in the early days for Enlisted, it does look rather promising with its beta stage. We will hold out on a  full review of the title until we see more of it. That being said, it does look good so far, especially if you want a more community-focused and less hardcore FPS experience.