"I'm too poor to play conventionally free games."

"Free cheese only comes in a mousetrap."

ENLISTED - Free Battlefield V?

Before I start talking about ENLISTED, I think it's appropriate to reveal some maps of my dark past: I have a rich and deep experience in conditionally free-to-play shooters. I've studied all the mechanics of player engagement in these projects and have had a lot of painful bumps in the road. I've played such dreary games, reviews of which have not been published for more than 10 years, and the peak online in such "masterpieces" of game-building reached a ridiculous 200 players... Not 200 thousand, but just two hundred players.

In the same game I once had a killer "stick" and even a gold AK-74. All this sounds disgusting and even a little sad, but thankfully this nightmare is a thing of the past and no longer haunts me at night. What does this have to do with ENLISTED? - You ask, and I'll answer...

Revealing the cards...

ENLISTED is a conditionally free first-person shooter from the very breed of games I mentioned earlier. ENLISTED can be easily downloaded from the developer's website and installed on your PC. I say "PC" with confidence, because despite its multiplatform nature, it's definitely not going to be played on the same Xbox Series S or even PlayStation 5.

And if you are allergic to Free-to-Play projects, or have a pathological dislike for this niche of the game industry - feel free to close the review. Looking ahead, I'll say that ENLISTED is not a gem of the genre, but it's not an idle cash cow either.

World War II again?

ENLISTED takes place during the Second World War. The setting is frankly stale and hackneyed, but still workable. After the disappointing Battlefied V, many players were hungry for the battles of Stalingrad and the next landings in Normandy. The developers of ENLISTED decided to play on this hunger. By the way, the publishers of this free shooter - Gaijin Entertainment, worked on War Thunder. The game is controversial, and for some people, and frankly bad. This fact already suggests not the most rosy thoughts about the upcoming experience in ENLISTED.

The entire game is divided into four companies: the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Berlin, the Normandy Landing, and the Battle of Tunisia. The companies are nothing more than fairly large maps where points of interest are shuffled from map to map. There is no detailed elaboration of levels, let alone historical accuracy.

Moreover, not all campaigns are available at once. For some of them you will have to pay real money to increase the replayability; however, not everything is so gloomy...

For a conditionally free shooter the maps are made quite well and even boast some destructibility. I was really surprised to see burnt-out vehicles on the battlefield turn into a pile of scrap metal under the tracks of tanks. 

The war-tarnished natural terrain is not brilliantly detailed, but the leaves falling from the trees and the air carelessly drifting with agitations all play to the atmosphere. An air-raid alarm sounds before artillery fire, and dropped bombs characteristically whistle overhead before bursting, keeping the player in suspense.

In the houses encountered in battle, windows are broken out, and careful players will notice elements of utensils in the dwellings themselves.

The balance of the locations itself raises questions, but the level of detail of the buildings is quite decent for the level of a conditionally free shooter....

ENLISTED is a game of one mechanic

From the gameplay point of view, ENLISTED offers only a couple of new mechanics, based on the experience of its big brother Battlefied. In terms of gameplay modes, the game is frankly not brilliant, and there are only two of them: one of them is a classic capture and the other one is a classic "onslaught". In the first mode players fight for control of several points, and in the second mode - there is a kind of tug-of-war according to the rules of classic DeathMatch.

But the marketing campaign of ENLISTED is not built around the variety of maps and modes, and not even around equipment, it is built around the mechanics of "squads". Squads are a local alternative to Battlefield classes, but instead of equipping one fighter, we equip a whole group, and play as a commander. This is the same group that the players have to manage.

While we play as the commander, the artificial intelligence takes over the management of the rest of the squad. Bots can give orders and influence the battle tactics in every possible way. Moreover, at the press of a button you can take control over any of the team members. This is especially appropriate in conjunction with the fact that in ENLISTED death does not always catch up with the player instantly, - that is, first the player is wounded, but he can still be raised, as it was in the same PUBG.

If you get wounded, you "become" in your battle buddy, lift yourself up and go back into battle - sounds interesting. Imagine you're playing Battlefield, but instead of joining a squad that has a free slot, you play as the entire squad at once. Interesting? On paper, yes, but in practice...?

How will you be drawn into the gameplay and...

And in practice, each fighter will have to pay much more attention and time than it seems at first glance. Weapons in the first slot, weapons in the second slot, type of explosives, melee weapons, perks - this is the minimum to be considered when pumping.

Not only is the in-game interface a bit cluttered, but ENLISTED also has some minor inclusions of mechanics from collectible card games. I will not go into details, it will be unnecessary, but it should be noted that pumping in ENLISTEDhoty and made with an emphasis on depth, still serves one purpose - to entice the player to sit longer in the game.

Squads are also divided into classes: sniper squads, medic squads, machine gunner squads - the variety of squads can make an uninitiated player's head spin. And you should also take into account that each individual soldier in the squad has his own personal equipment and, attention, education! We have already seen something like this in World of Tanks, only with tank crews. But that's not all!

Between the lines, I've already mentioned some medics, some snipers, but I didn't say: "What's the point?". So here it is: there are more than ten classes in ENLISTED. There are both classic front line soldiers with rifles, and quite exotic - radio operators. Radio operators are weak in direct combat, but they can radio coordinates for shelling in the area. What surprised me most was the engineer's abilities.

I'm used to the engineer being a fighter against technology. But in ENLISTED, an engineer is not a jack-of-all-trades with a grenade launcher, but a goddamn construction worker! An engineer in ENLISTED can build a machine gun nest right in battle, and an anti-aircraft gun out of improvised materials.

You can fall in love with ENLISTED at first sight: there's atmosphere, depth, and hints of builds. And what kind of clan battles could there be?

And you don't see those pre-flawed, crooked animations, you don't notice the meager pool of available maps... All you see before your eyes is that cherished "hardcore" Battlefield we dreamed of...

...and siphon money out of you.

But sooner or later there will come a moment when the shroud of love will fall from your eyes and the butterflies in your stomach will die, because your candy-bouquet period with ENLISTED will come to an end. With time you begin to notice that all that depth of gameplay is created with the sole purpose of monetizing every element.

Donation is not limited to just the premium account, it extends to absolutely every area of the game. If you hear from someone that donation in ENLISTED is quite gentle - do not believe it under any pretext. Remember one rule: if microtransactions in the game are not limited to cosmetic items - it's not a game, but a donation dump. If the game has not yet managed to become a donation dump - it will become a donation dump. This is an axiom proven over the years.

At the time of 2022 ENLISTED has already come out of open beta testing and even began to develop at a leisurely pace. Mostly improvements have been made to the technical part. But it's not even hour when the mousetrap will slam shut and it will be impossible to maintain the game achievements at the same level.

But accusations of excessive donation are not the only complaints to ENLISTED. The mechanics of squads has a dark side. Thus, having equipped each player with a gang of bots in subordination, the developers create the appearance of large-scale battles. The fact that you can't use more than two tanks and planes in a session, while in Battlefied you can find dozens of armored vehicles on the same map. It's silly to compare an AAA-project with a conditionally free shooter, but throughout the whole acquaintance with ENLISTED I never left the feeling that I was taken for a fool. That's why I can't transfer experience to another squad, but have to pump all these snipers and engineers separately? Why couldn't they make a general progression for all classes? That's right! So that I can spend as much time in the game as possible and raise her online. Whether I like it or not is not that important.... 

Conclusions

ENLISTED is a classic game with donation, created according to all the standards of this genre. Gaijin Entertainment have impressive experience and know how to involve players in their games, but these games are created on the principle of a mousetrap: show, fascinate, make them invest time, effort and find friends in the game, and then create conditions in which the player will feel discomfort - ruin game statistics or stop feeling progress in the game.

Donation can be defeated: all you have to do is treat games like ENLISTED as temporary entertainment. Entertainment that will help to pass a month or two before the long-awaited release. But be careful not to kill too much time.