Broken Arrow – A Tactical Feast or Just Another RTS Leftovers Platter?

Hello everyone. Today, we’re dissecting Broken Arrow, a so-called tactical RTS that brings with it a campaign longer than most people’s attention spans and enough unit customization to make min-maxing nerds salivate through their keyboards. But before you get all giddy thinking you’ve found your next strategic masterpiece, let’s run this through the diagnosis table – scalpel in hand – and see what turns up.

The Campaign – Training Wheels with Delusions of Grandeur

Nineteen missions. That’s right – nineteen little slices of military theatre that serve as your onboarding to the “real” game. The publisher will no doubt call it a “narrative-driven tactical experience.” I call it what it is: an extended tutorial designed to get you from “button-confused noob” to “competent key-presser.” You’ll spend 20 to 25 hours here if you’re focused, minus the time you’ll waste replaying the missions you flub because your helicopter decided to take a scenic nap in enemy AA range.

• Mission names range from the generically macho “Hunting Season” to the quirkily try-hard “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
• Expect your standard mix of blow-stuff-up, defend-this-point, and “surprise twist” objectives that you saw coming a mile off.
• Don’t expect deeply branching narratives – this is not a Choose Your Own Adventure; it’s more like “Choose Which Unit Dies First.”

As a doctor, I must commend the pacing – it’s nice and steady, so you won’t induce a cardiac event trying to match the APM of your caffeinated teenage self. It’s more about placement, timing, and making smart calls, not seeing how many times you can dislocate your wrist clicking per minute.

Post-Campaign Life – Or, “Now the Game Actually Starts”

Once you’ve completed your basic training, Broken Arrow throws you the rest of the meat – skirmish mode versus AI, multiplayer slugfests, a full-bore scenario editor, and enough army customization to prove that “build diversity” doesn’t just mean swapping your favorite rifle’s color scheme.

• Skirmish Mode: 19 maps, adjustable AI difficulty. It’s where you sharpen your fangs… or retreat into comfort gaming when multiplayer’s human cruelty is too much to bear.
• Multiplayer: 5×5 tactical carnage. Prepare to have your confidence systematically dismantled by someone named “xXx420NukeLordxXx.”
• Scenario Editor: Liberty to craft your own missions with the same tools as the devs. Translation: expect an influx of lovingly deranged player scenarios where a million tanks spawn in your deployment zone for “lolz.”
• Army Customization: 300+ units, over 1,500 combinations. Like a military-themed loot box without the microtransactions – yet. Don’t give them ideas.

Here’s the thing: I love customization when it’s meaningful, but there’s a fine line between “deep tactical options” and “please spend two hours in menus instead of actually playing.” Sometimes the thrill of the battlefield is supposed to be about the fight, not auditioning helicopters for the part of “Thing That Gets Shot Down.”

Tactical or Just Slower Click-Fest?

Broken Arrow markets itself as “tactical” – which in modern RTS language often means “the pacing is slow enough for your brain to catch up with your hands.” That’s not a bad thing. I personally prefer strategizing over frantic mouse abuse. The downside? Without high-velocity gameplay, pacing issues become glaringly obvious. Scenarios can drag longer than the plot of certain open-world RPGs with eight-hour fetch quests and three hours of NPC monologues.

From a gamer-diagnostician’s perspective: it’s stable, mechanically sound, but at risk of turning players into armchair generals who spend more time admiring their simulated military parade than actually winning battles. And no, you can’t cure boredom with more unit types – that just spreads the disease out thinner.

Final Verdict

Broken Arrow is a buffet of tactical tools and game modes – and like any buffet, it depends entirely on whether you fancy spending your evening sampling every dish or just piling up a plate of your favorites until you regret your life choices. The campaign alone is sturdy enough to justify your time if you enjoy methodical, slower-paced RTS action. But if you’re craving constant thrills, razor-sharp multiplayer combat, or deeply innovative mission design? You might find yourself yawning between orders.

It’s good. Not genre-defining, not a revolution in tactics, but far from a dud. This is the kind of RTS you revisit for a comfortable tactical scratch, not your go-to for adrenaline-charged evenings.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.

Article source: Broken Arrow Has A Healthy Campaign Runtime, But The Real Challenge Comes After The Credits, https://kotaku.com/broken-arrow-rts-campaign-how-long-to-beat-hltb-2000616860