I've been playing this since mid 2021

The game was largely fun until late September 2023 when they added the Infantry Combat Overhaul (ICO) update, since then the games just been really hard to play for regular infantry. Many people will claim "SKILL ISSUE" or "GO BACK TO COD IF YOU WANT A TWITCH SHOOTER SO BADLY" if you try to give any criticism to the update, while most others that dislike it have already abandoned the game entirely, or, like me, are trying to tough it out trying to like it and make it work.

The main problem with infantry gunplay is that your gun will always be swaying, if you've ever played Project Reality, supposedly this game uses the same system from that where you have 2 dots on your compass to tell you how accurate your next shot will be (The closer the 2 dots are, the more accurate your next shot will be), but the problem with this is that you can never truly get perfect accuracy, now, technically you can IF you go prone, scope in, and hold SHIFT so you're holding your breath ala call of duty style, but you can not move under any circumstances, otherwise your aim goes all over the place.

Now, this makes sense for when you're on the move and if you are sprinting, your aim will, naturally and understandably, get worse, but the problem is it takes so long to recover your aim that you're literally having to debate between being able to run and survive, but not hit the actual broad side of a barn, or to walk, and likely risk dying, but be able to quickly react. To SOME, this is perfect gameplay and exactly what you want, and to many others, this is an okay concept, but needs heavily fine-tuning to make it work.

The real problem is that the update has been tweaked to such an extreme that you struggle to actually play the game normally as infantry and most of the time you're getting frustrated because you can get the advantage, lay down on a higher position, aim perfectly, and still miss, you can do the most perfect setup and still fail and die to the enemies that will end up usually randomly firing back at you.

This issue only gets worse depending on the faction you fight, as those who have 7.62mm guns (Primarily the fictional faction Middle Eastern Alliance (MEA) or the recently added Turkish Land Forces) can get a guaranteed 1 shot kill if you're too close to them, not to mention ANY weapon that IS 7.62mm will have heavily increased suppression (Which distorts your view and blurs it if a bullet shoots near to you), even a bolt action rifle, which is really bad when you consider machine guns that fire 5.56mm won't do the same even if you're firing full auto, even at close range

So now you've got players on both sides basically firing blindly at each other sometimes, hoping someone dies first, which again, to some this is ideal and realistic, but to most this is NOT FUN GAMEPLAY and is incredibly frustrating! A lot of people will scream at you "BUT THIS IS REALISTIC", and while the game certainly takes a more realistic approach compared to others I won't deny; I would also at the same time encourage you to ignore people who treats this as a milsim or realistic in any way, as the game developers have even said this game is not a military simulator, its meant to be a bridge gap of casual and milsim like games.

And this is not even addressing the many issues with "realism" in this game such vehicles getting stuck on the smallest rock, or how you need to fire several rockets to destroy vehicles, even lightly armoured ones, or helicopters tanking damage. So people who treat this as a milsim are treating the game a little too seriously (Especially on the steam discussions and discord, which I would discourage you from interacting in), and as such they will beat you down because "muh realism", look guys, I love my realism too, I play Arma 3 sometimes and I love having realistic stuff in these games, I like my tactics and strategies! But I also want something a little bit more casual but not so casual its call of duty, I don't want to wait several seconds between shots on SEMI-AUTO while crouching and aiming down sights to actually get target acquisition. It does not get much better if you are hip firing, as you are not likely to hit anything even if the target is right in front of you.

The final straw for me on this was the developers and community management, or at least, upper management, as they seem to not be keen on taking on any of the communities feedback, there are thousands of messages in their discord, and on the steam discussions about how the ICO update has very negatively impacted the game and how it can be improved in so many ways, while the developers/management seem to be dragging their feet extremely hard, refusing to communicate with the community outside of YouTubers that already share their notion that his update was good and shouldn't be changed.

The reality is that a lot of people actually like the idea of the ICO update but hate the execution as it is has been tweaked to such a degree you have to be camping and laying down in bushes with bipods, constantly aiming down sights holding shift all the time to actually make any meaningful progress which makes the gameplay boring and repetitive for those who do this, and frustrating for this who keep dying to these people as it is not fun gameplay. People will try to give you tips to help deal with it, and while I really truly appreciate those who do give these tips, this doesn't fix the issues people are having with the update.

I've tried to like the update for almost 3 months, but I can't. Its simply not fun, and at this point the development is so backwards and the community is so clearly being ignored, I'd rather be tempted to try out Operation: Harsh Doorstep or hell even learn what it takes to make a game myself and try it, because the game has so much potential but its not being realised nor utilised, and this is on the team at Offworld Industries. It does not help that there seems to be a big push for emotes and weapon skins (likely after a large investment by Tencent), when the game is already plagued with so many bugs and issues that continue to not get fixed each update and with every update, more bugs and issues plague the game, the most recent one (V7.1) makes it practically impossible to even play on multiplayer servers!

While I am all for supporting development and that to support a game as large as this for several years they need money (Despite the fact the games community ran?), theres a clear lack of priorities on the developers part.

If you still want to play the game, I seriously encourage you to look up any videos on the ICO update before buying this, and wait for a free weekend, they are few and far between I won't deny it (1 or 2 per year) but for a game thats £40, and with games that go on for 1 - 2 hours which would easily make you inelligable for a refund, I just simply wouldn't encourage you to buy this unless you absolutely know what you're getting yourself into

I would also NOT trust the trailers much, they are somewhat scripted and while they certainly say they're "tested on a live environment" they are very much hosted on a server with only a small number of players on a separate instance on the game which isn't a real reflection of the gameplay you'll get (Especially with that PLANMC trailer where you've got mortars almost hitting humvees, that just won't happen). You also won't get such intense radio chatter sound effects in game, thats been added post production.

I might still play the game a fair bit, but know that I largely play helicopters and vehicles now, infantry is just straight up horrible, and considering infantry is a main part of the game, that is not something you can ignore.