Before Borderlands was a thing, this was the series I always associated Gearbox Software with. During the early 2000s saturation of WWII games, Brothers in Arms stood out. Most of the console offerings were action focused FPS games that gave you a “greatest hits” of WWII, but that’s not the case in this series.

Let’s start off with the story. Medal of Honor games would often jump around the war to showcase major battles, placing you in the boots of a soldier that partakes in special missions. They don’t really have much in the ways of memorable characters. Brothers in Arms goes for a grounded, smaller story focusing on the exploits of one squad of paratroopers. The story is going for more of a prestige cable show vs a bombastic movie. Band of Brothers is a strong influence here. All of Road to Hill 30 takes place over 8-9 days. Starting with you parachuting into France before D-Day, you then fight through Normandy to capture a strategic French town. You aren’t fighting Rommel in North Africa, then storming Omaha, then crossing a bridge too far. The most impressive set piece is your jump into France. After that you fight through the bocage, taking a few small farming communities till you reach the town. You fight a few tanks, but they aren’t treated like scripted action moments. They operate like normal enemies, just extra dangerous. Overall, this does a good job of showing a more grounded take on WWII, fighting in battles that aren’t well-known to your casual WWII enthusiast.

Brothers in Arms is also focused on a squad of characters you fight with through the whole game. Your squad doesn’t fall into the usual WWII media trope. You don’t have a wise-cracking New Yorker, a Texas farmboy, bookish Harvard kid, or the other archetypes. There’s an attempt to make these actual people, though admittedly after the first few missions, the game starts to slack on character development. We get a few little before battle scenes with Allen’n’Garnett, Leggett, and Hartsock, but I knew very little about McCreary, DeSoula, or Obreski’s personality. You play as the squad leader, Sgt. Matt Baker. He’s voiced by Troy Baker in one of the few roles I don’t mind him in. Baker has the same affliction as Metro’s Artyom where he really only talks during the mission loading screens. Most of his in-game dialogue is limited to barking orders, which makes sense for this style of gameplay. Baker is a contemplative soldier who often reflects on his lot in life and the nature of soldiering. Compared to most WWII shooters, he’s a character with some personality. His reluctance to be a squad leader is something he often reflects on, especially as his "brothers" start to fall in battle. A sorta secondary character is Leggett, the squad radio man. He is never under your command, but you do follow his story as he doesn’t seem like he understands what fighting a war means & seems to be more a danger to your unit than a help.

Since you spend all the game fighting through Normandy, the world space can get a little drab. You won’t see much beyond forests and small towns. Towards the end, they mix it up with a bigger town to fight through that includes some industrial areas and graveyards. It also doesn’t help this was from that era of games where the camera always looked like it had a thin layer of Vasoline. Basically, the world space is not what you’re coming to this game for. It’s the story or gameplay.

That’s another way this game bucks the trend of those other WWII console games. While you play it in 1st person, BiA is a tactical shooter. You are in control of, usually, two squads of men. One you use to pin down Germans, keeping them from firing back with any accuracy. Then you use the 2nd team to swing around the side and kill the Germans by firing from their flank. That’s the basic gameplay loop, and it can get a little dry by the end of the game. They do try to mix it up on occasion by giving you access to a tank or setting up German squads in places that require you to risk yourself out in an open field. You also aren’t super accurate with your guns. Popping heads from across a field with your M1 is not likely. The lack of accuracy does add some realism, because trying to land headshots while under heavy fire from an MG42 is a little stressful. That being said, there were times when once I was right on top of the Germans I still seemed to miss an awful lot of point blank shots.

You are also responsible for keeping your squad alive. At first I thought if a squadmate died, they were gone for good and so anytime one died I reloaded a checkpoint, which luckily they are usually paced out well. Luckily, this game doesn’t play for keeps, if you get a squad wiped out, they’ll be back for the next level. It does break the suspension of disbelief, maybe having them go down, but squirming in need of a medic would have helped that. Luckily, the AI is competent enough, they don’t stand out in the open, unless you tell them too, and can reliable take down some Nazis. Though, if one of your squad gets a bazooka, don’t expect them to survive the mission. The only time the game really felt broken was when you encounter German mortar teams. There’s a bit of a pattern to their fire, but it’s still not perfect, and that where I died a lot or lost at least a few squad mates. It feels a bit cheap because there’s no safe place to move through, but I guess that’s sort of realistic too?

All in all, compared to the later games in the series, this game is a little rough around the edges, but the bones are there. It’s one of my favorite series of WWII games. It’s more story focus, small scale action, historical authenticity, and tactical gameplay make it stand out.