Enlisted is a WW2 FPS game developed and published by Gaijin Entertainment. It’s similar to Gaijin’s other game, War Thunder, in that you have a variety of ways to battle, like tanks, planes, and infantry. Of course, it’s not a direct copy of War Thunder; it’s even worse, and here’s why.
When you boot up Enlisted, you will have a choice of what you want to play, such as a tanker, a pilot, or a squad of soldiers armed with only your rifles. In each category, there are many different vehicles and ways to play, such as a large variety of tanks, planes, and guns that you can unlock by playing the game. The realism is quite good, with the graphics being immersive and the first-person view making it feel like you’re really there. When you play as Infantry, you will control a squad of between 3-9 soldiers, you can play as each one individually, and the rest will follow you and fight alongside you. Some tanks even have actual repair teams that can fix minor damages mid-combat. During the battles, there are two teams, the attackers, and the defenders. In one of the game modes, the attackers have 1,000 respawn tokens, with each respawn of their squad being anywhere from 20 to 167 tokens, they can regain tokens by capturing control points. Defenders, on the other hand, have unlimited respawns and have to fight until all attackers are dead, or the attackers capture all of the control points, at which point the game ends.
This is much different from Gaijin’s other realistic war game, War Thunder, and much worse too. In War Thunder, you can play with a much bigger variety of vehicles, like more tanks, planes, and ships, but there is no infantry mode, and the first-person perspectives are only really used by pilots. The graphics in War Thunder are about as good as Enlisted, but it feels so much more powerful when you roll through city streets in a T-34 or a King Tiger, or when you dive through the clouds in a P-400 to drop bombs on unsuspecting tanks. The graphics in both games are good, but I would say that War Thunder’s is more impactful and immersive.
Another way the games differ is their tech trees and game modes. The tech tree in Enlisted is much more simplified, with each category having only one path, all on the same screen. War Thunder’s tech tree is much more in-depth, as it focuses a lot more on the vehicles, covering vehicles from WW2 up to recent years. In War Thunder, you can find each vehicle type under a separate tab, which includes Army (tanks), Helicopters, Aviation (planes), Bluewater Fleet (ships), and Coastal Fleet (smaller boats). Though the ships in War Thunder are, to say the least, unpopular, hardly anyone plays them seriously, and the focus is much more on the planes available in these naval battles. Enlisted’s tech tree is much worse than this because it’s smaller and less diverse, making it much less interesting. Enlisted also only has four different nations’ tech trees, as opposed to War Thunder’s ten, making it much more limited and boring.
The game modes of both games are very different as well, with War Thunder having two main game modes for each vehicle type: Arcade and Realistic. Arcade mode, for any of the three main vehicles, offers an easier and more guided experience, with enemies having aim reticles over them, and the general difficulty being lowered. Realistic, however, drops you into a game along with your teammates, and you have to actually push through, capture control zones, and find and destroy enemy vehicles. There is no aim helper, no big red sign over the enemies, to get a kill, you must put your skills to the test, and find them before they find you. Enlisted has six game modes: Conquest, Invasion, Assault, Destruction, Confrontation, and Zombies, all of which are very similar; You fight to control points on the map. The only really different game mode is Zombies, in which you just have to hold off waves of zombies, with no enemy teams. There are some small differences in the other five modes, but most are just whether the teams have specific roles in the battle. I can’t say that either game is better in this aspect, as War Thunder is quite limited in its game modes, but makes up for it in its diverse range of vehicles, while Enlisted has many more game modes, all of which offer only a slightly different, fun version of the game. Each has its perks, and its drawbacks, so they are roughly the same on this point.
Now, the main negative factor to both of these games is the pay-to-win aspect. Both games offer premium, paid weapons and vehicles that can push you ahead of regular players, and that can be quite frustrating. From what I’ve seen and experienced, War Thunder has the most paid vehicles, but also the most free vehicles, and it’s quite easy to progress once you know what you’re doing. For each vehicle you unlock, you can then buy with the in-game currency Silver Lions, which are pretty easy to obtain; gaining enough to buy a good one could only take a few days of casual playing, and as you play, all of the Research Points you gain go to unlocking the next vehicle, etc. In Enlisted, the grind for vehicles and weapons can be so much worse, since, with a smaller, simplified tech tree, you can’t pick and choose what you want, like you can in War Thunder, and so you are more incentivised to buy premium equipment and other items to progress faster. Despite all this, both games are effectively cash cows for Gaijin, their high progression times and skill requirements being good motivators to buy expensive items in either of them.
I personally have played War Thunder a lot more, and I can easily say that it’s the better, more rewarding, and more immersive game, and being free to play, it’s worth playing at least once. Enlisted is also pretty good, but it just doesn’t quite meet the same level of quality. And besides, there’s no better feeling than “Target Destroyed” popping up on your screen after firing a shell across the map into enemy spawn. I would definitely recommend War Thunder as the best WW2 battle game.