Squad

Squad sits in a narrow band between arcade shooters and full-blown military simulators, and that positioning is deliberate. Offworld Industries built something that demands you talk to your squad, coordinate with your commander, and actually think about where you place a forward operating base before you sprint into a firefight. The 100-player servers split into squads of up to nine, each led by a Squad Leader who holds the radio to the commander. Break that chain and your team loses. It is a social contract enforced by game mechanics, and it works. The combined-arms layer is where the depth lives. Infantry, armored vehicles, helicopters, and logistics trucks all feed into a single match economy. Ammunition and construction resources have to be physically transported from main base to forward positions. A lone tank that charges without infantry support gets flanked and burned. A mortar team without a spotter wastes every round. Every role has a counterpart it depends on, and learning those dependencies is the actual skill curve here. Newcomers will spend their first ten hours feeling lost, and the tutorial covers basics but cannot fully prepare you for the social coordination the game demands. Finding a regular group or a community server early is not optional advice - it is the tutorial the game forgot to build. From a strategy perspective, Squad offers genuine decision-making weight at the squad-leader and commander level that most tactical shooters hand-wave away. FOB placement, rally point timing, vehicle requisition, and layer selection (the map-mode combinations that rotate each match) all create a planning layer that rewards players who treat each round like a short operational puzzle. The meta has evolved steadily since release, and the Steam Workshop mod ecosystem adds new factions, maps, and gameplay tweaks that keep the rotation from going stale. The modding community is active enough that some workshop content rivals official quality. Where Squad struggles is in accessibility and polish consistency. The learning cliff is steep for solo players who refuse to use a microphone. Servers with poor admin oversight can descend into disorganization that wipes out the tactical experience entirely. Vehicle handling has improved over multiple patches but still feels stiff compared to dedicated vehicle simulators. Performance can dip on large maps with heavy vehicle traffic, and optimization remains a conversation the community has not finished having with the developers. These are real friction points, not minor complaints. For strategy-minded players who have ever wanted a shooter that rewards planning over reflexes, Squad is one of the few games on PC that delivers that in a live multiplayer environment at genuine scale. The Soundtrack Bundle adds the game's score, which is worth having if you want something atmospheric for background listening, but the music itself is not the reason to buy here. The reason to buy is 100 players, one coherent battle, and the rare satisfaction of a plan that actually holds together under fire.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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