Faces of War

Faces of War sits in a niche that very few games occupy comfortably: the hybrid tactical RTS where you can switch from issuing squad orders on a minimap to directly controlling a single rifleman in the middle of a firefight. Developer Best Way built this as a spiritual successor to their earlier Soldiers: Heroes of World War II, and the DNA shows. You command small WWII-era units across multi-stage missions, managing suppression, cover positions, vehicle crew assignments, and ammunition scarcity all at once. That last point matters more than most strategy games let on - running dry mid-assault because you forgot to loot a dead MG42 crew is the kind of lesson the game teaches exactly once. The decision layer here is genuinely interesting if you give it time. Unit positioning is not decorative. A machine gun team placed on the wrong side of a hedgerow will get flanked and destroyed inside thirty seconds. The direct-control mechanic, which lets you possess any individual soldier, is not just a gimmick - it becomes necessary when the AI pathfinding (and it will pathfind badly sometimes) sends a tank driver somewhere catastrophically wrong. Think of it as a manual override that compensates for the game's rough automated systems. Veterans of the Men of War series will recognise this philosophy immediately, because Faces of War is a direct ancestor of that franchise. Where the game earns its 88% Steam rating despite a modest Metacritic score is in the sandbox-adjacent freedom of its mission design. Objectives can often be completed multiple ways. You can sneak a scout around the long flank, steal a vehicle, crash a supply truck through a gate. That improvisational quality keeps missions replayable in a way that scripted corridor RTS games simply do not. The cooperative multiplayer component, for those who can get it running on modern systems, adds another dimension entirely - coordinating two human brains against the AI changes the calculus of every engagement. The honest problems: the tutorial is functional but sparse, and it assumes you have played something adjacent before. The AI, both enemy and friendly, has moments of genuine tactical competence interrupted by baffling decisions. The graphics, even by the standards of its era, were not cutting-edge on release and they show their age clearly now. Multiplayer connectivity can require some port-forwarding patience. And the campaign, while satisfying in its mission variety across Allied, German, and Soviet perspectives, is not long by modern standards. If you are coming from a Total War or a Company of Heroes background expecting polished unit responsiveness, there will be an adjustment period. For newcomers to this subgenre, the right framing is: treat the first two missions as an extended tutorial you are allowed to restart freely. Once the control scheme is in muscle memory and you understand that cover is not cosmetic, the game opens up considerably. The mod community, while not enormous, has produced some content that extends replayability. The price point at which this typically sits makes the depth-per-dollar calculation favourable for anyone willing to accept rough edges in exchange for a tactical RTS with genuine teeth.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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