Recent reviews by Proe24

I played when it very first came out and returned it after an hour. At that point in time it didn't feel like it built much on the genre or separated itself, had a lot of glaring issues and obviously felt very unpolished. The Winds of War update has fixed many of those issues and finally set it apart. The new outpost feature and ability to turn in quests/pick them up from just about anywhere (for most quests) has been a great addition. It feels less tedious now, needing to constantly go back. The world feels more alive and the objectives are both more clear and more fun.

I think it is definitely on the right path. There is still clear work that needs to be done, but as long as they keep listening to the community and improving then I think this will finally be able find footing and grow.

I fired up this game for the very first time the day it came out and nearly immediately uninstalled it after realizing just how plagued by bugs again. Again, a year or two later, I launched it, this time playing until just past the prologue, but again uninstalling it. There were still some bugs and the I just wasn't getting sucked in. Finally, four years later, I found myself in a situation where I was equally overwhelmed and uninterested by every multiplayer game out there. I decided to take one more chance at this game. I purchased Phantom Liberty and hopped back in.

I finally beat the Phantom Liberty, and then finally the base game. I just played through my third ending of the base game today. I am honestly sad that it is over, this has to be one of, if not the best game I have ever played. The dialogue, the story, the quests, the consequences, all of it. Any time I have tried launching something else I've ended up closing it and coming back to this. I highly recommend it to anyone. I can't wait to play the next installment, whenever it comes out.

ArmA Reforger has a massive amount of potential but can be very overwhelming. When it works, it works well, but its success relies heavily on the people around you in the game. I've had some amazing experiences ranging from absolutely hilarious to peak milsim seriousness. However, I've also had many games where it felt like I was ramming my head against a wall nonstop. For whatever reason, this game attracts some of the worst people, and when you get them with 128 others and a microphone, they take advantage of it.

Since "Squad" is my most played game, I can only compare it to that. If I had to pick one of the two games, I would choose "Squad" because its more focused nature consistently breeds better gameplay. However, Reforger has a lot of systems that could allow it to outshine "Squad" if the player base matured and if the game became more feature-complete.

My two biggest gripes are related to squad gameplay and vehicle selection:

------- Squad Gameplay -------
You may as well not be in a squad at all. Unless you are playing with people you know, squads in the game don't stick or play together, and this isn't the community's fault. There is almost zero encouragement to play with your squad. It is almost impossible to tell where your squad is. Only squad leaders show up on the map, and all squads look exactly the same on the map with the same icon and color. When you spawn in, you have no way of knowing where your squad leader is. Additionally, everyone has access to the "command radio," so there is no communication hierarchy. Anyone can get on the command radio and scream slurs, making command comms typically (but not always) useless.

If squads could be more easily differentiated on the map, if only squad leaders had access to command comms, and if squads were limited to radio comms with their members only, it would promote squad gameplay, teamwork, and effective communication far more effectively.

------- Vehicle Selection -------
Anyone can spawn a vehicle. To be fair, the maps are massive, and you absolutely need a vehicle to get around. However, since everyone can spawn a vehicle, it often results in people wasting resources by spawning personal vehicles that they use to drive to a spot, abandon immediately, and then die, return to the main base, and spawn another. This leads to a massive resource drain from the main base or any other spawn point that allows vehicle spawning. It also discourages sharing rides and establishing transport systems.

While people are generally good about sharing rides if one is available, almost no one requests a pickup from the main base if they can just spawn their own vehicle and scoot off to wherever they want.

------- Conclusion -------
Other than these major gripes, the rest of the game is pretty great. There are some issues I have with kit selection, but that is definitely a personal bias, and I know people love the freedom of play it allows. There is a distinct lack of weaponry and combat vehicles in the vanilla game, but mods mostly deal with that, albeit with their own level of jank. I have no doubt that when the vanilla game matures and adds more content, it will be wonderful.

I currently enjoy the vanilla servers more than the modded servers because they are slightly more focused and seem to attract fewer problematic players.

First day review:

My wife and I played for a few hours and so far we are loving it. One of her top games of all times is Valheim so this spoke to her. Combat is interesting and the building mechanics are a creatives wet dream. Being able to dig through the earth and build one tiny block at a time if you'd like is extremely refreshing. Building basements in Valheim was always a chore but now you can easily create sprawling complexes.

Only gripes so far is that the crafting menu feels like it was designed more for a controller. You can't see enough on the screen without having to scroll.

For ranged combat, unless I missed an option, I wish it was more skill based. Locking on to enemies is awesome with melee, but I wish you actually had to aim the bows and they didn't home in. Hopefully a mod will allow that if it isn't already an option.