Broken Arrow

About

Broken Arrow is a single player and multiplayer real-time strategy game with a warfare theme. It was developed by Steel Balalaika and was released on June 19, 2025. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

Broken Arrow is a large-scale real-time modern warfare tactics game. The base game features both the American and Russian factions, more than 100 units and multiple deck specialisations per nation. Broken Arrow brings the genre to a whole new level by combining the complexity of a joint-forces wargame with the typical real-time tactics action-packed gameplay.

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60%

Audience ScoreBased on 10,827 reviews

story161 positive mentions

optimization148 negative mentions

The game offers deep, tactical, and engaging RTS gameplay with extensive unit customization, combined arms mechanics, and a unique deck-building system, providing strategic depth and replayability.
Graphics are stunning with detailed unit models, realistic visuals, atmospheric effects, and impressive sound design that enhance immersion and create a gritty modern warfare atmosphere.
The campaign missions are varied and tactically challenging, with well-written mission briefings that establish stakes; the multiplayer and scenario editor offer endless customization and replay value.

Optimization is poor to terrible, causing frequent low FPS, crashes, stuttering, and performance instability even on high-end PCs, significantly hindering gameplay experience.
The solo campaign suffers from lengthy missions without mid-mission saves, frustrating design with bugs, mission soft locks, punishing AI, and unskippable dialogue, making single-player tedious and sometimes unplayable.
The game is plagued by persistent stability issues including bugs, crashes, freezes, and cheating, alongside balance problems and exploitable mechanics, resulting in a frustrating multiplayer experience.

story
1,426 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
11%
84%
5%
The story mode offers a realistic and engaging, if somewhat clichéd and cheesy, campaign with missions presented from both US and Russian perspectives, providing varied tactical challenges and character-driven moments. However, it is heavily criticized for lengthy missions without mid-mission save or checkpoint functionality, frequent bugs causing mission soft locks, unbalanced and punishing AI, and frustrating mission designs, making solo play tedious and sometimes unplayable. While the narrative adds context, many players find the voice acting, dialogue, and pacing lacking, with the campaign serving more as a tutorial and introduction to gameplay rather than a compelling story experience.
- “The campaign features a thrilling plot of escalating global tensions, where each mission presents new tactical challenges and story developments.”
- “It's not just an afterthought – it's actually well-written, engaging, and full of varied mission objectives that force you to adapt and experiment with different strategies.”
- “The campaign missions are fun, the story is extremely corny, but somehow, against all odds, it works.”
- “The campaign missions can take nearly two hours to complete, and you can't save mid-mission at all.”
- “No save or checkpoint feature in solo campaign; missions are multi-stage and can take over 60 minutes, with no way to recover from any mistake or bug; no restart button in missions, forcing exit to main menu and replay through unskippable dialogue.”
- “The lack of a save function, combined with this utterly rubbish game design and dreadful story writing, puts a gigantic nail into the coffin of mediocrity that is Broken Arrow.”
gameplay
1,419 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
57%
5%
The gameplay of Broken Arrow offers a deep, tactical, and engaging RTS experience with extensive unit customization, combined arms mechanics, and a unique deck-building system, standing out in its genre with modern military detail. While the core gameplay is praised for its strategic depth, fluidity, and replayability, many reviews highlight issues such as balancing problems (notably perceived Russian bias), exploitable or incomplete mechanics, lack of critical quality-of-life features (like saving, replays, and adequate anti-cheat), and frustrating multiplayer elements including leavers and hackers. Despite rough edges, bugs, and optimization challenges, the gameplay loop remains compelling for those willing to invest time learning its complexities, especially in coordinated multiplayer settings.
- “Fantastic gameplay, for me the premier deck building real-time tactics game.”
- “The core gameplay loop is incredibly fun and entertaining with the almost limitless customization of battle groups.”
- “Broken arrow is an excellent rts that has some of the most mechanically sound combat in the industry, and excellent unit variety and deckbuilding that makes me want to weep tears of joy.”
- “The most glaring issue is how easily players can exploit mechanics like unit birthing, which completely breaks the intended flow of combat.”
- “This game’s current state is not of a finished game; it’s still a raw, work-in-progress product with bad balance and broken mechanics.”
- “Only way to win is not war but using exploits in the mechanics.”
optimization
549 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
61%
27%
Optimization for the game is widely criticized as poor to terrible, with frequent reports of low FPS, crashes, memory leaks, and stuttering even on high-end PCs. Many users experience unstable performance especially in large battles, and network lag compounds frustration. While some recent patches have improved performance slightly, optimization remains a significant issue hindering overall enjoyment and stability.
- “The game obviously pushes hardware pretty hard and with not a lot of headroom at times due to its slightly primitive and yet-to-be-developed optimizations, but if you disregard the modern obsession with 240fps silky smooth gaming "requisites" and are more content with the old-ish humble gaming ways of looking nice and spectacular whilst accepting any negligible performance loss, say, floating around 60-100 or even 40-70 fps whilst running it maxed out in a big match then you'd be pretty well off and without real problems.”
- “Performance has been good, bugs (outside of some menu and matchmaking bugs) have been relatively unproblematic, netcode is mediocre but being improved, anticheat is a chainlink fence trying to hold back a tsunami, but from a technical perspective it is quite an accomplishment.”
- “And also, improve your optimization ok?”
- “Absolutely terrible optimization.”
- “Optimization is absolutely garbage and the performance issues never stop.”
- “Performance issues and bugs still persist months after launch, including game crashes, visual glitches, and lag in multiplayer matches.”
graphics
512 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
53%
4%
The graphics in this RTS are generally praised for their detailed unit models, realistic visuals, and atmospheric effects that enhance immersion, often considered superior to similar titles like Warno. However, many users report poor optimization, frequent graphical glitches, and performance issues—even on high-end systems—leading to inconsistent frame rates, crashes, and frustrating visual artifacts. Overall, while the game's aesthetics show strong potential and high-quality art design, technical and optimization shortcomings significantly impact the graphical experience for many players.
- “The graphics are stunning, offering a realistic depiction of modern warfare with detailed unit models, explosions, and cinematic destruction effects.”
- “The visuals are sharp, the sound design makes every explosion and flyover feel authentic, and the pacing of battles keeps you engaged from start to finish.”
- “Broken Arrow is a visually stunning and conceptually exciting RTS that offers deep unit customization, modern warfare aesthetics, and impressive graphical detail.”
- “The game has undergone continuous graphical downgrades for no real performance benefit.”
- “The graphics in particular are too buggy; building skins and shaders glitch on and off, so one second you have a monochrome simple polygon like a huge cube, next second a detailed and fairly realistic building—distracting and annoying beyond just ruining immersion.”
- “The overall graphics are disappointing; the cap for the fps is 144, and I don't reach that anyway. It feels like a sign from the devs that 'hey, we capped fps at 144, you won't reach that anyway, so instead of unlimited fps, the most fps you can reach is 144, so enjoy!' Also, you can't play this game without FSR; you won't be able to see properly or have a smooth experience.”
stability
252 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
5%
1%
94%
The game suffers from pervasive stability issues, including frequent bugs, crashes, freezes, and glitches that often render it unplayable, especially in multiplayer. Despite some improvements, core problems like desync, poor optimization, and cheating remain unresolved months after release, severely impacting gameplay. Although the game shows potential, its current buggy and unstable state makes it difficult to recommend until substantial fixes are implemented.
- “Multiplayer runs great, and I could reconnect to a game after my internet dropped.”
- “Game runs great without frame gen and I get 120+ frames on maxed out settings. I just played the first mission; it's very good fighting, awesome using the tomahawk missiles, still figuring everything else out, literally zero frame tears.”
- “I play on Linux and the game runs great using Proton Experimental (which is just the latest stable Proton, despite the name).”
- “The game frequently freezes — sometimes for up to 10 seconds — making it nearly unplayable at times.”
- “After about ~5 months this game is still missing core features and is riddled with bugs and glitches that make the game literally unplayable.”
- “It's completely unplayable, it's buggy beyond belief and I'm so sad that this is the state this came out as, I cannot recommend this game in the state that it is in.”
replayability
84 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
57%
5%
The game offers extensive replayability through a robust scenario editor, diverse units, deck-building mechanics, and multiplayer modes, allowing for endless tactical experimentation. However, replay value is somewhat limited in the campaign due to linear missions and lack of customization or save features. Fans highlight that expanding playable factions, improving AI, and adding more single-player content could further enhance its long-term replay appeal.
- “The endless amount of user-created scenarios make for fun and exciting replayability.”
- “Broken Arrow has all of the fundamentals of a modern tactical RTS but adds an incredible amount of depth and replay value with additional mechanics like ballistic missile interception as part of your defense and tanks with active protection systems to counter ATGMs.”
- “- Mission editor and technical stuff 9/10, by adding this the devs basically expanded the game lifetime by years, you can basically create missions and upload them to the workshop, you can make lots of different scenarios and customize everything, it's really endless options, customization, and infinite replayability.”
- “The only replayability this game has is the user content which can get repetitive fast too.”
- “- the campaign is fine, but has little replayability.”
- “The total lack of single player and replayability.”
humor
60 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
98%
2%
The game's humor is often described as unintentional and sarcastic, stemming from its bugs, balancing issues, and slow development, which many find amusing yet frustrating. Some players appreciate the amusing voice lines, quirky unit dialogues, and moments of comedic absurdity, while others highlight the clichéd and sometimes laughably bad campaign writing. Overall, humor arises more from the game's flaws and player experiences than from deliberate comedic design.
- “Also, the voice lines are funny as hell.”
- “The units have some funny dialogues, they don't feel soulless and they change their dialogue depending on what type of situation they are facing; in combat they will sound more desperate and panicked, and while out of combat they sound more calm and make some jokes. An example of this is when selecting the heavy weapons squad, they have dialogues like "you like big guns too?"”
- “The game strikes a perfect balance between strategy and action, and when you’re communicating and laughing with your squad, it’s pure gold.”
music
53 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
49%
45%
6%
The game's music is widely praised for its epic, fitting soundtrack that enhances the immersive military atmosphere, with many users calling it fantastic or a "certified banger." While most find the soundtrack authentic and well-crafted, a few note some repetitiveness or mediocrity, but overall it is considered a standout aspect that complements the gameplay and audio design excellently.
- “The soundtrack is very fitting to the game aesthetic, with great attention to detail and authentic depiction of military equipment.”
- “The music is fantastic and really fits into the game.”
- “The soundtrack is truly amazing, something out of this world.”
- “Audio-wise... except for the music - which is, well, mediocre - the sound design is outstanding.”
- “- songs 6.5/10, there are a few bangers on the songs and they definitely fit the atmosphere and chaos of the battle, but sometimes they start sounding too repetitive and generic.”
- “Add music that doesn't sound like a B-tier track from an Ace Combat game.”
grinding
45 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
7%
24%
69%
Grinding in this game is widely criticized as tedious and repetitive, with long missions and trial-and-error gameplay that can feel punishing and time-consuming. The AI's overpowering presence and unresponsive controls further contribute to the monotony, while issues like unskippable dialogues and lack of friendly AI add to player frustration. Overall, grinding detracts significantly from the enjoyment, especially for those aiming to climb rankings or complete the campaign.
- “You'll need a second life for grinding.”
- “You'll need a second life for grinding.”
- “Games feel fun but not tedious.”
- “Long missions become tedious, and one crash or mistake means starting over from scratch.”
- “Worse still, its lackluster pacing and repetitive combat quickly turn what should be thrilling large-scale warfare into a tedious grind.”
- “If you need to restart a mission, you're forced through multiple load screens and unskippable dialogue, making trial-and-error gameplay incredibly tedious.”
emotional
23 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
96%
4%
Players express strong emotional frustration due to poor server quality, balancing issues, and lack of meaningful progression, which overshadow the game’s unique potential and engaging gameplay. While some praise its tactical depth and occasional emotional highs, many feel disappointed, describing the experience as emotionally taxing and discouraging continued play until major improvements are made.
- “It’s honestly heartbreaking, because the game itself is amazing, but both the poor server quality and terrible optimization have completely ruined the experience.”
- “This is honestly heartbreaking because the game has so much potential, it is very unique and the idea of it interested a lot of people when it first came out.”
- “While character development and emotional depth take a backseat to operational realism, the mission briefings do a solid job of establishing the stakes.”
- “Campaign has a tutorial and fun missions but a boring story.”
monetization
21 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
5%
5%
90%
The monetization of the game has been widely criticized as a cash grab, with many users feeling the full-priced release is unjustified due to limited content, bugs, and an overemphasis on multiplayer and advertising. While some appreciate the absence of in-app purchases and the delayed polished launch, concerns remain over deceptive marketing, microtransactions, and ongoing lack of support. Overall, the monetization approach has generated significant frustration and distrust among players.
- “It is a very exciting and wonderful game, and you can customize any force you want with high features. The fact that justice is established between players and there is no need for in-app purchases is great, and I hope it stays that way.”
- “Releasing it as a full-priced game in this condition feels like a cash grab.”
- “At this moment this game has the feeling of a cash grab - probably it isn't and most of the issues can be fixed but man - the frustration leads to people uninstalling this game.”
- “Clear intent to split content off into microtransactions, with advertising that misrepresents the game.”
atmosphere
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
35%
15%
The game is widely praised for its immersive and intense atmosphere, combining detailed visuals, sound design, and tactical depth to create a gritty, modern warfare feel. While some cite occasional issues like repetitive music, AI immersion breaks, or technical hiccups, the overall tone and ambiance strongly enhance the gameplay experience.
- “The tactical depth, atmosphere, and attention to detail make it a real joy to play.”
- “It has a really cool atmosphere, smooth and satisfying game design and mechanics, and the coolest arsenal of vehicles, weapons, and jets I've seen in a game.”
- “The atmosphere is fantastic, sound design is dope, and if you zoom in on the graphical details, animations are really well done.”
- “The 'if it is cool, add it' approach has only harmed the game's tone, atmosphere, and pacing.”
- “The atmosphere of modern warfare - you don't have a huge extended front, as in Warno, which by the 20th minute of the game is already an impassable layered defense.”
- “The songs definitely fit the atmosphere and chaos of the battle, but sometimes they start sounding too repetitive and generic.”
character development
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
67%
Character development in the game is generally considered weak and somewhat forced, with emotional depth taking a backseat to operational realism. While mission briefings help establish the stakes, the overall storyline and character arcs lack inspiration and fail to engage players deeply.
- “The campaign storyline and the character designs are interesting.”
- “Uninspired story: character development and 'drama' feel forced, making me want to replay World in Conflict instead.”
- “While character development and emotional depth take a backseat to operational realism, the mission briefings do a solid job of establishing the stakes.”