The battlefields of World War One were brutal, vast scores of men were cut down in seconds in a number of different ways and Isonzo perfectly encapsulates how hard it was to stay alive. Death comes at you in seconds, often from nowhere and it can feel like you’ve barely been vertical before someone puts a bullet in you.
If the screaming artillery barrages don’t get you, then the sweeping sprays of Machine Gun fire, creeping gas or frenzied enemy players will. With friends being cut down constantly all around you, fights can get confusing fast, even more so if you’re new. So to make your first foray into the firefights smoother, here’s a beginner's guide to Isonzo.
How It All Works
Isonzo is your standard WW1 FPS in that you’ve got two large teams fighting over contested points that are staggered over extremely large crater-filled maps. There are also plenty of levels to run around on, they’re all extremely well detailed and if you’re making a custom match you can decide on what particular part you start on.
There are two sides, Attackers and Defenders. The factions you’ll get to play as are the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom Of Italy. Both sides have weapons accurate to the era and country. So Italy gets to use a bunch of old rifles like the Fucile Da Fanteria and the shorter Moshetoo Per Trupppe. Whilst Austria's finest take pot shots with the Repetierstutzen and the iconic Reptiergewehr. They’ve all been rendered in surprisingly great detail, so if you’re a historical gun-nut you’re going to have a field day.
The Classes
To keep things interesting there are multiple classes to choose from and they all have their own unique role that can help out the team as a whole. Some are more complicated than others and they have their own unique weapons, gear, and buffs that can substantially help their squads.
In total there are six classes, so there’s a fair amount of variety to suit a number of different playstyles. Here’s a brief rundown of each one and what they do:
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Officer |
Squad Leader in charge of a group. Allows friendly spawning and can call in strikes. |
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Rifleman |
Standard point-and-shoot soldier with a rifle. |
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Engineer |
Support role that can build barricades and defenses. |
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Assault |
Heavily armed shock troops with access to a bunch of explosives. |
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Mountaineer |
The ultimate reconnaissance class. Also has a bugle unlock that boosts friendly fire rate and movement speed. |
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Marksmen |
The Sniper. |
The Levelling System
Worth mentioning is how the leveling in Isonzo works. It’s a little odd and for those looking to power through their class of choice to get those fun unlocks at later levels, there are going to be a few hurdles to jump over first. Instead of just leveling up and collecting new guns as you go, or unlocking new gear by playing a particular class over and over again, Isonzo does something different. In what’s quite a unique way of incentivizing you to learn and play a class a specific way, the developers use upgrades as rewards for hitting milestones and finishing challenges.
For example, a new piece of gear is made available after reaching a specific level and then performing an action such as killing a set number of enemies whilst crouched or capturing a point. They become more complicated as you go on, but they’re linked in a way that encourages and rewards you for learning a class and how they play. Like how the ability to fire grenades from rifles comes after getting hand-thrown grenades, but only after you kill a set number of enemies with these particular items first in an act that lets you learn how they work.
Beginners Tips
The gameplay in Isonzo is pretty straightforward. In broad terms, you go to the capture point or in the general direction everyone else is going and put bullets into anyone wearing a different colored uniform than you.
But that’s not to write the game off as simplistic, far from it. On the surface, it’s your standard run-of-the-mill shooter, but scratch the surface and there’s some fun stuff to learn that can help you out on the front. They’re simple things, but here are a few beginner’s tips that’ll ease you into the battlefield and keep you alive a little longer.
Don’t Wander Off
The player count in Isonzo is pretty big, there’s 24 on each side, so the battlefield can get pretty busy. With so many people running about it’s rare that you’ll be on your own for long, but venturing off into No Man's Land on your own is generally something you should avoid.
The time to kill is pretty high and it’ll take just one or two well-placed rifle rounds from half the map away to put you down so death can come fast and out of nowhere. Sticking with your buddies gets you more manpower and with how slow rifles are to reload, you’ll always need someone to watch your back if you get ambushed or miss your first shot. So stay with the group.
Focus On One Class
If you’re looking to get better gear faster then it’s highly recommended that you focus on one particular class instead of bouncing between them all. Whilst you level up overall, your experience for roles comes with use and completing challenging milestones as we mentioned already.
In the beginning, these challenges are pretty easy, but as you go on it can take a lot longer than you would expect to get to higher levels. Even after a few hours with a Rifleman, you’ll barely have gotten them to level five, let alone their max cap of 20. So a good tip is to pick the one you like the most and stick with it, then rotate onto another role once that’s maxed out. It’s a much more efficient use of your time.
Always Have Someone On The MG Nests
In the first World War machine guns were a relatively new introduction to warfare and they absolutely decimated soldiers on the battlefield. The same applies to things here in Isonzo as the fixed MG placements can get you some very easy kills pretty quickly.
Though their ammunition is finite, the fact that they’re the only real fully automatic weapon in an area and era where everyone's using bolt-action rifles means it can make them a massive threat. Quite often you’ll see whole infantry charges cut to ribbons from one of these nests hidden away in a trench. Or large swathes of the map suppressed by their rapid fire. In the right hand the Machine Gun Nests are extremely deadly, so if you see one free, grab it and get firing.
Machine Gun positions can be destroyed through sabotage. If this happens they will need to be rebuilt.
Learn How Reloading Works
It may sound a little odd, but the reloading in Isonzo will often get you killed. But that’s not a bad thing as it goes both ways and you can often get lucky with kills on other players that get caught out by it as well. For those not familiar, you’re only able to reload your weapons after they’re completely empty and you have to manually hit the reloading button after your gun goes dry.
Though you can change it to auto-reload in the settings, by default if your gun runs out of ammunition and you don’t press the reload button, it’s going to stay empty even if you try to fire. So often you, or an enemy player, will have a moment of trying to open fire with a weapon that’s not loaded, and you can guess what happens after that. The reloading animation and time are different for each gun, so it’s recommended you take a few seconds during a round to figure out the different speeds so you don’t get caught out at the worst moment.
The Trick To Melee
Trench warfare is close ranged, quick and brutal. Jumping into a packed trench full of enemy players quickly turns into a brawl and knowing how Isonzo handles melee can make all the difference. Everything can be used as a physical weapon in a pinch, even binoculars and they all deal damage differently.
As an example, if you jump in with a rifle you can bayonet someone, which is an instant kill and then hip fire within a few seconds to get another. What’s good about it is that stabbing with the rifle locks you into a short animation that makes you invulnerable to damage for a couple of seconds and it can be chained if you’re fast enough. It’s a solid little combo that works quite well for clearing rooms, whereas if you bonk someone with binoculars it’s going to do very little damage. However, the bayonet is much slower than if you were to equip a melee weapon. There are a few to choose from as a secondary item and they don’t lock you into an animation as you’re battering someone to death like the bayonet does. It lets you can churn through troops quickly, but the second they get some distance you’re liable to get shot. Find a combination that works for you for when the fighting gets close and brutal.
Get Grenades
If you’re looking to cause absolute carnage on the frontlines then you definitely want to get your hands on some grenades. It takes quite a while to unlock them, but considering how many easy kills you can get with them they can become quite a good way to quickly grind up experience points.
Often you’ll see massed charges of infantry, or bunched-up troops hiding behind what already sparse cover there is on the sprawling maps of Isonzo. All it takes is one grenade toss and they’re instantly turned into bloody chunks. Also, since low-level players won’t have them, it’s quite easy for higher-level squads to just steamroll through.
Open Ground Is Instant Death
It may seem like an obvious tip, but don’t go out into No Mans Land, especially all alone. The uniforms of the era aren’t exactly made for blending in and it’s easy to be spotted from a long way off. Especially if you’re wearing those lovely bright blue uniforms of the Italians.
All it takes is one sniper round to drop you, so sticking to the trenches or behind as many bodies of other players as you possibly can is highly recommended. There’s always one or two snipers watching for someone wandering outside the trench lines and if they don’t get you, the Machine Gun Nests will. So keep your head down as you’re making your way to the Capture Points.