For reasons unknown, the game has an absurd amount of character customisation. Moments like these, when combined with large scale battles, make Battle Cry of Freedom a unique experience, and this is only amplified by the game’s insane attention to detail. In the middle of a battle, for example, a player may try to surrender to you, or you yourself may be welcomed with open arms into the enemy’s band provided you arrange the unofficial arrangement over voice chat. While there is, admittedly, a fair amount of racism because of the game’s setting, most of the people you'll talk and play with are genuinely great.

In a game that’s focused on showcasing the brutality of pre-modern combat, their community is surprisingly relaxed and open to joking around. It’s worth noting that what makes this such a great feature, and what makes Battle Cry of Freedom a strange game, is that these moments aren’t always serious. This leads to an almost constant stream of moments that are only possible in Battle Cry of Freedom (or the other limited pool of titles that lets you communicate with your enemies over voice chat).Ī rare historical photo of the Battle of Schrute Farms, colourised When the enemy team decides to charge, for example, you’re able to hear their battle cries in the same way that you’ll listen to your own team preparing to be attacked. Unlike in other games, you can hear both your enemies and your friends talking in real time through the game, which adds to immersion in ways that shouldn’t be possible. This is amplified, too, by the developer’s genius inclusion of proximity voice chat. When you hear cannons fire overhead or a distant gunshot, you’ll know that it's coming from a virtual gun fired by a real person, and this ensures that the individual firefights you’ll often experience feel about as real as games can get. Every match of Battle Cry of Freedom is almost surreal because everyone you’re playing with is a live human being. There aren’t words to describe just how cool it is to fight alongside a couple of hundred other human players in a public multiplayer match against a similar number of enemies. Who forgot to lock the door to the port-a-loo?īut, if you’re willing to put up with the aforementioned gameplay loop and some janky combat, the overall experience of Battle Cry of Freedom is genuinely remarkable because it makes you feel like you’re actually in an 1800’s battle. All these things mean that fans of Call of Duty, or even Squad, likely won’t have a good time with this title. Battle Cry of Freedom doesn’t play like a game released in 2022 the shooting isn’t particularly satisfying, the animations aren’t great, the graphics leave a bit to be desired and there’s an unsurprising amount of downtime each round. Just like in Mount and Blade’s 2012 DLC (or the more recent Holdfast: Nations at War) this gameplay loop isn’t for everyone, nor is the actual quality of the game. If you somehow survive, you’ll spend twenty seconds reloading your gun before you repeat the process, and if you die, you’ll simply respawn and rejoin your team. To do that, each time you spawn, you’ll move to be about fifty metres away from your enemies, fire your single blackpowder gun’s shot, and then charge into an all-out melee until you’re killed. Each round, you load into a massive map as either a Confederate or a Union soldier, and with your team, try to take objectives from the enemy or defend your own.

If you’ve played Mount and Blade : Warband - Napoleonic Wars (which developer Flying Squirrel Entertainment also made), you’ll know what to expect with this game. From a gameplay perspective, it's a serious multiplayer-only American Civil War battle simulator.

Image 1 of the battle cry of freedom