Yonan
One of the most hyped games for the last few years, Broken Arrow is currently the 26th most wishlisted game on steam (amazing for a small developer and publisher) and is in the final stretch at last, with a release target of June this year. Developed by Steel Balalaika and published by Slitherine, Broken Arrow follows the RTS formula established mostly by the Wargame series and has had several prior closed and open playtests including Feb 2023 and late last year. The current campaign and multiplayer playtest is likely to be the last closed test before launch, but we might get lucky with another open one. I didn’t join in on the multiplayer but the campaign missions were a blast to play and much improved over my first experience more than two years ago.
Two campaign missions were available this Broken Arrow playtest, one each for the American and Russian factions with both using newly revealed army specializations. The US get their Airborne Infantry and face off against Russia, whilst Russia gets their airborne troops too – the VDV (Vozdushno-desantnye voyska) and face off against Latvian forces. Both are manned and equipped fittingly for such operations and whilst they do have a lot of overlap with each other they also have a lot of asymmetric features – for example the US airborne has far better wheeled artillery and more support in general but the VDV have a lot more recon and vehicle options including optional up-armoured variants.
In the campaign missions you don’t get to build your own deck of units and so have to make work the loadouts given to you which is fine, but bringing your own custom deck to skirmish battles is the true fun for me in this regard and I look forward to the variation there will be when choosing 2 of the 5 army specializations and customizing the weapon loadouts when making them.
Campaign Missions
The American campaign mission “Airbase Heist” seemed well balanced, completing it first try (on easy…). There is enough of a unit spread and resources to afford them to cover each objective one at a time while covering your rear, so long as you don’t throw them away. The story of the mission was plausible with an enjoyable range of tasks and cinematics. Following the C-130 Hercules in as it lands to deliver your troops looked cool, as did the final battle with a massive wave of Russian armour and infantry. You have to make use of primarily air dropped reinforcements with no heavy armour of your own (until the last push) and limited light vehicles which leads to higher stakes play as the units were pretty squishy compared to armoured or mechanized forces.
The Russian campaign mission “Blackout” bugged out for me the first time on easy, but the second time on medium was fine – though I didn’t complete it then either. Suffering from too much attrition, one flank collapsed and I lost a primary objective. On reflection I should have used the air mobility that is a highlight of the VDV to move some troops between the two primary defence points between waves rather than split the entire force in two, half of which were doing nothing most of the time. Unlike the American mission you get an allied force assisting you during the mission which I always enjoy.
Overall the pacing and balance of these missions in Broken Arrow were both solid, with most problems here being due to unfamiliarity with various aspects of the game. Both missions were staged with sequential objectives unlocking and both had an initial air-only phase. The Americans leveraged their fighters and anti-radiation missiles to destroy air defences while the Russians used a wave of helicopters to clear initial ground forces. Each mission also gave a choice towards the end to choose 1 of 3 different reinforcement packages not otherwise available to you during the mission and I was definitely thankful to the durable front provided by a squadron of Abrams tanks at that point.
Misc and Sundry
The combat feels a bit too fast for me personally, with a very short Time-To-Kill – but it’s not bad just a personal preference on the spectrum of slow and realistic to fast and “arcadey” and everyone falls somewhere different on it. Units even in forest or building cover still die faster than I’d like to attacks and it feels like they should have more protection from cover than they do. I’d prefer having to choose between slow light infantry slugging it out in forests and needing to call in air strikes or artillery to quickly deal with infantry in buildings but this might again be me trying to tie the game to what I’ve seen of real action being presented from Ukraine rather than an actual game. Units do get absolutely shredded in the open which is good and accurate however and you always cringe when you let it happen.
Speaking of Ukraine, Broken Arrow does something to me no other RTS does – I value every single soldier on the battlefield and want to keep them alive to the point it can make the game harder to play properly at times. This is probably due to how it’s the best mechanical and graphical representation of modern units we’ve had, combined with a whole lot of Ukraine War videos that really bring home the cost to those on the front lines. This is nothing against the game, it’s a mentality I have to break but it’s interesting to me that I have it in this game and nowhere else, at least anywhere near this extent.
No game other than Slitherines own Command: Modern Operations represents the modern equipment used on the battlefield this well and it’s a huge part of what makes the game fun to me. You need to work around the actual features of the equipment and the loadouts for each unit and it’s great. Each unit only has so much ammunition for each type of weapon systems they carry, and depending on how engagements go, you might lose the anti-tank member of a squad right before you engage some armour which is always quite the experience. Resupply is available which also heals and replaces missing infantry, it feels to be in a solid spot without being cumbersome. Limited munitions for aircraft are also very impactful, leading you to make calls to keep them around at high risk to try to use their cannons to provide support or RtB them to recover resources and call them back after a delay.
Annoyances/Feedback
The pause and increase/decrease speed hotkeys still don’t work, but the on-screen buttons do – so I still use an autohotkey profile for Broken Arrow to move the cursor and click the pause button, then back to where it was. There is no patrol command, while it might have been rarely used in this game and fixed wing units already loiter in a circle, it would still be good to have particularly for light vehicles and drones. You can toggle weapon systems on or off, but you can’t force use a specific one on a target – it’s always up to the AI. Something like changing toggle on/off to RMB and manual target with LMB>target would be good but it’s not a big deal by any means. Zooming the camera has an annoying feature where it will change direction to zoom specifically onto a unit, even if the unit ends up under the cursor while zooming so your perspective changes and you have to reset it. There should be a Grid hotkey layout – there’s no need for artillery Smoke position and aircraft Strafing Run to be on separate keys for example, unit specific commands should (have an option to) be shared similar to Starcraft 2’s excellent system, even while using WASD for camera panning.
Broken Arrow is looking great and is definitely shaping up to be a solid contender in this subgenre of RTS. The performance issues have been completely nailed from what I’ve seen, the graphics and sound effects all seemed to be in place and good quality with only a few icons being placeholders now. The campaign missions have been fun with engaging scenarios that have multiple phases to them. My primary concerns with the game all boil down to interface issues, which were shared by Chris in his demo coverage last year, along with some subjective preferences. The improvements since I first played it more than two years ago however have been impressive, and the game seems to be in a good state now and we’re both very much looking forward to full release!
This playtest review utilised a key provided by Slitherine and Broken Arrow is set for launch on Steam in June 2025.
#roundtablecoop
Chris Inglis
