The developers of the World War 1 shooter series that started with Verdun continue to hit it out of the park with their third entry into the series. Isonzo brings players into the gorgeous Italian Alps during the First World War. Players are asked to play as either the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Kingdom of Italy in multiple historical battles that took place between 1915 and 1917.

While the Austro-Hungarians are making their return from the previous game, Tannenberg, the Italians are a new army that hasn’t been explored in the game series before. This allows Isonzo to seem a bit similar, but also be entirely different from the rest of the series. Furthermore, the terrain of the maps are a first of their kind for the series since most of the maps feature either multiple hills or enormous mountaintops to traverse.

In Isonzo, you get to pick from six different classes; Officer, Rifleman, Engineer, Assault, Mountaineer, and Marksman. Each of these classes come with their own set of unique challenges, weapons, gear, and abilities that you can utilize on the battlefield. The key to the game is to use the abilities in a strategic fashion with your team to either keep the enemy at bay or to capture objectives to push the enemy back. However, there are only so many of each class (besides the Rifleman) that there can be at one time, so you have to make sure that you have the best of the best in these positions. 

Each side will be either on offense or defense. The offense has to break through the enemy lines and capture or blow up key objectives in order to push the enemy all the way to the back of the map. The defense needs to hold off the offense until they run out of men, which occurs after the offense has suffered 300 casualties. This number is reset after every successful pair of objectives are met. The only exception to the number of casualties is if the offensive team is in the process of capturing an objective. If the offensive team can hold on and fully capture the point, then the battle will continue onto the next set of objectives, if there are any. If the defensive team manages to kill all of the offensive team from the point, and keep them from getting back onto it for about fifteen seconds, then the match is over and the defensive team wins!

Leveling up in Isonzo works two ways. The first is your overall level, which doesn’t do too much except shows how long you have played the game and give you access to various cosmetics that you can add to your Italian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers. The second way that you level up is through your classes. You gain a new challenge at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, 18, and 20. Once completed, each challenge will grant you several new pieces of gear or various abilities that can give you advantages based on your play style. These additional things can do anything from reducing how much damage you take, to increasing your speed of doing various tasks, and countless other things.

My overall experience with Isonzo was absolutely amazing! It was definitely different than my play testing of it at PAX East 2022, but that is mainly because almost every soldier that I have been fighting with or against has been controlled by a player rather than an AI. For the most part, I have played as an Engineer since most of the other roles get filled up, and the Engineer is perfect for setting up supportive equipment for the team. The Officer is definitely my second favorite, but the teams are limited to two at a time which makes it difficult to try that class out at times.

The player base for Isonzo appears to be very strong, as most of the time I have to scroll through the server list to find a game that has a free slot. The only bug I ever ran into was one where I would get partially stuck inside a boulder, but that seems to be something that only happens if the spawn mechanic ends up flinging you nowhere near your intended destination. There was one point where I did end up spawning inside some barbed wire, but that was because the person that I spawned on had just set some up. Overall, I have had an absolutely amazing experience playing Isonzo and look forward to seeing what the developers add to it in the future.

A PC review copy of Isonzo was provided by BlackMill Games for this review.

Isonzo

$29.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Realistic Gameplay
• Lots of Players
• Accommodates Various Playstyles

Cons

• No Voice Chat
• A Bug or Two