Broken Arrow is a modern real-time strategy with deep potential—but severely crippled by baffling omissions.
Broken Arrow is a new take on old real-time strategy games like Wargame: Red Dragon, Steel Division, and Regiments, developed by Steel Balalaika and published by Slitherine. It was supposed to be a deep military simulation with easy-to-use controls and wars on a movie theater scale. Early previews and demos looked good: huge battlefields, real units, and strategies with many levels.
It was clear from two different demo previews that the developers were on to something great. Hard-core RTS fans were excited because it looked like the next step forward in modern warfare RTS. But even though the battlefield looked good, the war effort failed right away. This wasn’t because of how good the game was, but because of what it was missing.
Broken Arrow doesn’t have a typical plot in the sense of a story. Broken Arrow does not have a story that branches or a campaign that is based on characters. Instead, it relies on its structure as a modern war simulation, with missions that were carefully made for the U.S. campaign.
These missions are meant to feel like real, multi-layered military operations. Each one is different and will test your ability to make tactical decisions in different settings. Some missions have more than one part, and the difficulty rises as you move from landing zones to inland attacks or long defenses.
It’s not a story but a narrative by situation. There’s no way to save in the middle of a mission, which takes away from the immersion that was supposed to be there. For long tasks with many steps, that means you have to do the whole thing at once or start over.
In Broken Arrow, there is a lot of large-scale combined arms warfare, which is a real-time tactics game at its core. You are in charge of modern military units like infantry, tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets, and you have to manage them on huge maps that require careful planning and awareness of the battlefield.
The deployment of units is broken up into stages, which gives the war a sense of pace. You scout, set up bases, take out targets, and then push deeper into enemy lines. Broken Arrow encourages a slower, more deliberate style, unlike fast-paced RTS games. You need to look at the terrain, watch how the enemy moves, and then place your units accordingly.
This depth is both a good and a bad thing in the campaign. Often, you’ll pause Broken Arrow, move your units around the map, and then slowly move forward. In skirmish mode, on the other hand, you can’t even pause. Yes, don’t stop at all. Imagine being in charge of dozens of units on a huge battlefield and not being able to stop the game to plan your next move. It’s a strange and annoying limitation that goes against the whole idea behind the game.
In Broken Arrow, combat is based on real-world rules, such as line of sight, armor facing, range, unit synergies, and even the height of the terrain. Infantry is great at ambushes in cities, tanks are great on the plains, and planes can help or change the tide from above.
Each unit can be fine-tuned and changed to fit your needs. You can change your deck before missions so that your army has the right mix of air, ground, support, and reconnaissance units. It’s not just about using brute force; it’s also about working together and being smart about how you use combined arms.
But once more, the main problem shows itself: there are no campaign saves. There are missions that last up to two hours and can’t be stopped and picked up later. You lose time when you have to leave your desk. Also, if you have real-life obligations, you shouldn’t try to play the campaign unless you can set aside whole afternoons. The campaign feels like a chore instead of a challenge because there is no “exit and resume” button.
Broken Arrow fights are great because they are ambitious and have a lot of depth. Today, not many RTS games let you control how the air and ground work together with this much detail. It’s fun to set up battle lines, use reconnaissance to find hidden ambushes, and use well-timed artillery to break through an enemy line. The design of each unit, from helicopters to IFVs, is real and fun to use.
What’s bad is that the systems fall apart when they can’t be used properly. No save. No break in the battle. No AI friends. Even the new skirmish mode, which was meant to be a backup for the campaign, feels like it’s not quite finished. You can’t do 1v1 right, and on many maps, the AI acts passively. As of now, AI teammates are not possible in the game. This means that if you want to play on a big map with multiple factions, you will be up against five other players. Not really ideal.
You don’t get traditional XP in the campaign or the skirmish. Instead, the strategic depth comes from making your army’s deck unique. You put together a deck from different types of cards before each mission or skirmish because each phase of deployment has different units.
As you play, you get access to more tools and combinations, and you can change your loadouts to fit any situation. It’s less about grinding and more about getting better by learning and trying things out. And to be honest, that part works well. If only the game didn’t make you start over after long battles to punish you for taking the time to play.
Broken Arrow looks solid, especially when you zoom in on it. The unit models are very detailed, with silhouettes and textures that look just like modern military gear. It’s fun to watch explosions and damage happen, especially when a well-placed hit takes out a line of enemy tanks.
The landscape is also important, both visually and tactically, because hills and buildings in cities can be used as cover or as a barrier. But when you zoom out too far, some UI elements and unit readability can get fuzzy. It is very important to be clear in this kind of game, and a few more polish passes would help a lot.
The sound design works in Broken Arrow, but it doesn’t have any impact. The background noise of the battlefield, like helicopter blades, gunfire, and radio chatter, builds tension, but it’s not the main focus. The unit feedback is clear, and the explosions sound good, but the sounds aren’t very varied or immersive. What you hear is just a layer of sound that doesn’t make you feel anything. It works, but it doesn’t make you feel better like the best strategy games do.
Broken Arrow is a great strategy game that is ruined by some strange design choices. It gets right to the heart of tactical warfare. It offers one of the best modern military RTS experiences, particularly in terms of its gameplay, unit variety, and mission setup.
But it fails completely when it comes to the basic quality of life. No way to save in a campaign with missions that last hours? Not a break in the fighting? No way to work together with AI friends? These aren’t small problems; they’re mistakes that change the game. It feels strangely unfinished for a game that isn’t in early access.
What’s the sad part? You can tell that Broken Arrow is almost great. It’s clear that the developers know how to make a fun combat sandbox. The possibilities are huge. But the experience is being held hostage by features that make sense.
Luckily, the developers have heard what the community has to say and are already working on fixes. That patch might make this game the standard it set out to be once it comes out. But for now, it’s a masterpiece of strategy that can’t decide what to do next.
