Full ReleaseXbox · PC · PlayStation

Arma Reforger

Bohemia Interactive · Simulation, Shooter, Strategy, Action

Overview

Engage in massive combined arms battles, create and curate combat missions in real time, and shape your experience with endless community mods. Deploy into the Cold War and experience the most authentic and immersive military sandbox ever created.

Arma Reforger deploys you into an authentic Cold War military sandbox with highly realistic weapons and gameplay systems, expansive terrains, and extensive customization options. Battle it out against other players or AI in a plethora of multiplayer, co-op, and single-player game modes, and tailor nearly every aspect of the game with mods from the vast in-game Workshop.

Arma Reforger is the latest installment in the legendary Arma franchise, offering a versatile, creative, and fully-moddable platform that redefines the mil-sim genre.

Experience enthralling multiplayer combat in matches that can last anywhere from an hour to days in the Conflict game mode or create your own missions and curate them in real time in Game Master. Team up with friends in Combat Ops to engage in special operations, or ramp up the adrenaline with the fast-paced, tactical gameplay of Capture & Hold. For the lone wolves out there, the new single-player campaign Operation Omega features 5 replayable missions, and the additional scenarios Elimination and Air Support offer hours of intense and immersive gameplay.

From the distinct crack of an M16 to the rumble of a BTR-70, every element of Arma Reforger is designed for authenticity. Engage in realistic firefights with detailed ballistics, navigate using only a map and compass, and master a roster of meticulously recreated Cold War-era weapons and vehicles.

Deploy to three vast and intricately detailed islands for thrilling and immersive open-world military operations. Featuring stunning landscapes with lush forests, idyllic towns, and austere mountains, these islands provide the perfect backdrop for the wide range of PvP, co-op, and single-player game modes available in Arma Reforger.

The war expands with the addition of Kolguyev, the iconic island first introduced in Arma: Cold War Assault. Navigate through the desolate ruins of former mining operations, infiltrate secret military installations, and immerse yourself in Kolguyev's unique atmosphere in the brand-new single-player campaign set in 1989.

Instantly download and install thousands of community-made mods from the in-game Workshop. With an endless variety of time periods and genres, Arma Reforger mods open up a vast universe of weapons, vehicles, assets, terrains, game mechanics, and even completely new game modes to customize your experience to suit your preferred play style.

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,995 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

Players who recommend Arma Reforger describe a large, slow, deadly sandbox war that feels like being a soldier in it. The reasons they give are the realism, squad play over radio and proximity chat, and a mod scene that turns the game into WW2, Vietnam, modern warfare, zombie survival or PvE co-op. Several say the Cold War base game on its own would not keep them playing, and that the modded servers are where they spend their time.

Technical trouble comes up in more detailed reviews than anything else. 38% of them mention crashes, bugs, poor performance or connection trouble, and hundreds of the reviews that recommend the game carry the same warning. Updates are the other big complaint: long-time players describe each major patch breaking mods and community servers for weeks, and reviewers tie the two weakest months of 2026 to a June update and to an August change that, they say, made deaths cost rank. Opinions divide on the community (good teamwork on one server, trolls and teamkillers on the next), on how Reforger compares with Arma 3, and on the supply and rank system.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Realism and immersion players say they can't find elsewhereHigh

18% of the detailed reviews praise the realism, the immersion or the "milsim" feel. Players describe ballistics, bleeding and medical systems, map-and-compass navigation without a GPS marker, and firefights where one shot ends you, and dozens call it the best military game or milsim they have played. One reviewer summed up the appeal as "Battefield meets its grown up brother for grown up players that really want to get immersed in long battles that require team work, logistics and forward thinking." Another praised the navigation: "I love that they didn't cut corners like telling you where you are on the map." A few dissenters say the realism stops short, pointing to enemies that take many hits to go down and little feedback when a shot lands.

Mods and community servers are the main drawHigh

Mods come up in 31% of the detailed reviews. Fans are blunt about it: "The modding support for this game is insane," and "The mods are what make this game shine." Players list WW2, Vietnam, zombie, modern-era, King of the Hill, Wasteland and roleplay servers, plus large PvE units, and some recommend the game only on that basis ("pretty good but only if you play modded"). Others in the same group say the official servers without mods feel empty. What the mod scene costs players, from long downloads to breakage after updates, is covered under the frustrations below.

Big, unscripted moments with a good squad or friendsMedium

Playing with friends comes up in 6% of the detailed reviews. The stories are about helicopter insertions, truck ambushes, supply runs and comms chatter: "The fun comes from teamwork and player interactions, not constant action." Several solo players say the same game feels slow or boring on their own, so this praise depends on having people to play with (see the community split below).

Looks and sounds the partMedium

9% of the detailed reviews mention the graphics or visuals, mostly positively, and a smaller group praises the sound: lighting, night combat, explosions, the Everon terrain and gunfire audio. Arma 3 loyalists who dislike Reforger often still grant it the visual upgrade. The complaint attached to this praise is that the looks cost frame rate (see performance).

Gunplay and firefight tensionLow

Around 6% of the detailed reviews discuss the shooting itself. Fans describe weighty weapons, deadly ranges and adrenaline during long fights. A smaller group finds the recoil and hit registration inconsistent, especially on busy servers.

Where players are split

The community: teamwork on one server, trolls on the nextHigh

26% of the detailed reviews talk about the people they play with. Some describe communicative squads and veterans who help newcomers ("it does take a second to learn but usally somone will help"). Others describe teamkilling, griefers who dismantle radio relays or steal vehicles, slurs on voice chat and vote-kicks used as a joke, and 7% of the detailed reviews raise trolls, teamkillers or vote-kicks directly. Even a reviewer who recommends the game and prefers it to Arma 3 found it "Hard to just get on and play without being asked stupid questions or having your teammates blow you up and not even acknowledge they did it." Several reviewers say the reporting and moderation tools on official servers do too little against repeat offenders on alternate accounts, one calling the reporting system "a bit too lax."

Vehicles and helicoptersMedium

Vehicles appear in 20% of the detailed reviews, often as part of a story. Helicopter flights and crewed vehicles are behind many of the memorable moments players recount. The criticism is specific: ground vehicles that flip on rocks or rubber-band when the server desyncs, driving physics changes in updates, helicopters that can soak too much damage, no fixed-wing aircraft, and no native HOTAS or joystick setup (a small but angry group of flight-sim players; one opened with "FOUR YEARS LATER, STILL NO HOTAS SUPPORT!").

Compared with Arma 3Medium

11% of the detailed reviews measure Reforger against Arma 3, and both camps are well represented. Those who prefer Reforger point to smoother controls, cleaner animations, better visuals and quality-of-life changes ("Its a huge QoL improvement over ArmA3"). Critics say it has fewer features, fewer vehicles, a weaker editor and AI, and less singleplayer content ("Coming from ArmA 3, this is a downgrade in almost every single way but in graphics"). Several of the critics blame console support for simplified controls and menus.

A stepping stone to Arma 4Medium

10% of the detailed reviews call Reforger a tech demo, testbed or "paid beta" for Arma 4 on the Enfusion engine. Some accept this and enjoy it for what it is; others use it to explain why the base game feels incomplete or why updates destabilise it. One player described the cycle: "it is essentially a test sandbox for ARMA IV, meaning they break it with updates every 6 months or so and it takes 4-6 weeks to fully re-stabalize."

Supply runs, ranks and the slow paceMedium

About 9% of the detailed reviews discuss supplies, logistics, rank or the grind, and they are split. Some love being a cog in the machine: driving trucks, building bases, playing commander. Others resent spending long stretches hauling supplies or walking before any fighting, losing rank when a session ends, and rank-locked equipment: "If you play as team is fun but if you just want to play like any other game its going to be boring and a lot of walking." In the second half of August 2026 a change that reviewers say made deaths cost rank drew a wave of complaints (see the frustrations below).

Price and valueMedium

12% of the detailed reviews talk about price, value or refunds, and opinions differ. Fans call it worth every hour; others say it is worth buying only at a discount ("If you happen upon this game at a discount it's an absolute steal, full price is at coin flip for your 40 bucks"). Steam's two-hour refund window is a repeated sore point: several players say they used it up fighting crashes, mod downloads or queues before they could judge the game.

The learning curveMedium

7% of the detailed reviews mention the learning curve, tutorials or confusion. A number of reviewers call the curve steep but rewarding once it clicks. The complaints are mostly about the tutorial and interface themselves: several new players report tutorial courses that bugged out or crashed and lost their progress, and others find the menus and radial system cluttered and unclear.

Console crossplayMedium

8% of the detailed reviews mention consoles or crossplay. Some players like having friends on Xbox or PS5 in the same matches. More of these reviews are complaints from PC players, who blame console players for griefing and poor communication on official servers, console design for simplified controls and menus, and the cross-platform setup for the in-game mod workshop. A few reviews mention freezes and crashes on console as well.

What frustrates players

Crashes, bugs and disconnectsHigh

25% of the detailed reviews mention crashes, freezes, bugs or glitches, and 5% describe disconnects and lost connections on top of that. Negative reviews raise technical problems more often than anything else, and the complaints are concrete: crashes every 20 minutes to two hours, "GPU hang" errors, script and join-in-progress errors, server-side desync that sends vehicles into rocks, and being kicked from a server after a long drive to the front. Plenty of positive reviews carry the same warning: "very fun and realistic. BUT the game does crash often and you need a beefey computer for good fps." Crashes and broken updates are also what players with 100+ hours complain about most when they vote the game down.

Poor optimization and frame rateHigh

19% of the detailed reviews raise performance. Players with high-end hardware report low or unstable frame rates, stutter in combat and on full modded servers, and slowdowns over a long session ("Extremely badly optimized ... 50 fps with a 4090 everything on low"). A small group asks specifically for DLSS or better upscaling than the built-in FSR. Performance is also among the problems players who give up within their first hours mention most, next to crashes and trouble getting into a server.

Updates that break the game and its modsMedium

14% of the detailed reviews talk about updates, and the complaints come mostly from long-time players. They describe the same cycle each time: a major patch lands, mods and community servers go down until modders catch up, crashes and performance regress, and stability returns weeks later. "every single update, no matter how small, breaks every server and forces every mod to do another update," wrote one; another said "Every update seems to break something, servers constantly have mod version mismatches, and downloading dozens of mods just to join a server can take ages." The June 2026 update drew the most of these reviews ("Before this update the game ran smoothly, now I get weird glitchy fps and game crashes every 20-30 minutes").

Mod downloads, queues and getting into a serverMedium

10% of the detailed reviews raise downloads, queues or joining. Popular modded servers require many gigabytes of mods, downloads fail or have to be repeated, queues stretch to half an hour or more, and players report reaching the front of a queue only to be refused entry or kicked at the end of a match. "11 hours played and spent 6 hours in que," wrote one player, who also asked for a quick-join option. Some describe the official vanilla servers, the alternative, as empty.

Thin vanilla content and a weak solo sideMedium

12% of the detailed reviews discuss the amount of content, the campaign or the vanilla game. Critics say the base game has a small arsenal and vehicle list, little to do offline, and a short campaign with poor saves ("There just isn't enough content in the base game for me to care"; "Without mods, the game is honestly very boring"). Defenders point to Game Master, the PvE and co-op scenarios, and the steady stream of mods.

Trolls, cheaters and weak moderationLow

3% of the detailed reviews mention hackers, cheaters or DDoS attacks, and 5% describe admins and kicks. A few players report hackers giving themselves Game Master powers on official servers, others describe DDoS attacks knocking servers offline, and several say there are few tools to deal with repeat griefers who come back on alternate accounts. This overlaps with the community split above.

AI that falls shortLow

4% of the detailed reviews discuss the AI, more often to complain than to praise it. The complaints cover enemies that get stuck on terrain or ignore threats, sudden pinpoint headshots, little control over AI squadmates and unreliable AI supply drivers: "The AI often acts confused, gets stuck on terrain, ignores obvious threats, or reacts in weird ways."

Losing rank on deathLow

Reviewers describe a change in August 2026 that made dying cost rank and could flag players as renegades for accidents, and a few dozen reviews complain about it, most of them written that month. Players say it punishes attacking objectives and accidents such as vehicle crashes or being teamkilled: "Losing rank on deaths only makes sense if you gain rank when you get a kill."

Regional servers and pingLow

A small group of players outside the main server regions, mostly in Asia and Oceania, report very few playable servers and high ping: "Almost no playable severs, 200-300+ms pain constant connection errors."

3. The player conversation

The tone is affectionate and exasperated at the same time. Many of the positive reviews are short cheers ("best", "W game"), while the detailed positive reviews often read like warnings from people who intend to keep playing: they list crashes, queues and broken updates, then recommend the game anyway because nothing else gives them the same military sandbox. Two groups stand out among the negative reviews. Players with under ten hours mostly write about getting the game to work at all: performance, crashes, mod downloads and joining, and confusing tutorials, and several say they ran out the refund window before the game worked. Players with 100+ hours complain about change and stability instead: crashes, updates, the community and the rank and supply rules, and a number of them say they love the game while voting it down.

The score held steady through most of 2026. Monthly positive shares sat at 82 to 84% from February to May 2026, dropped to 76% in June 2026 when mentions of updates rose to 10% of that month's reviews, recovered to 84% in July, dipped to 78% in August, when reviewers report the rank-on-death change, and climbed back to 81% in September and 86% in the first half of October. The older reviews in the slice, written as far back as early access and many carrying later edits, are markedly cooler (62.5% positive) and bring up updates far more often than the 2026 reviews.

4. What the developers could do

Fix crashes and server stability before adding features. Crashes, bugs and disconnects come up more than any other complaint in the detailed reviews, often from players who otherwise love the game.
Stage major updates so mods and community servers keep working. Long-time players describe weeks of broken modded servers after each big patch, and June 2026, the month update complaints peaked, was the score's lowest month of the year.
Improve optimization and add modern upscaling. Players with high-end PCs report low frame rates and stutter, players who give up early name performance among their reasons, and a group asks specifically for DLSS.
Make joining a modded server faster and more reliable. Long mod downloads, failed downloads, queues that drop players and no quick-join option are a recurring reason new players give up.
Give servers better tools against griefers and cheaters. Teamkilling, vote-kick abuse, hackers on official servers and repeat offenders on new accounts run through the community complaints, and players call the reporting system too lax.
Revisit rank loss on death and the supply grind. The August 2026 rank penalty drew a wave of complaints, and other players across the year ask for less time hauling supplies and walking before they can fight.
Fix the tutorial and fill out the vanilla game. New players report tutorial courses that break or lose progress, and critics of the base game ask for more content, a better solo campaign with working saves, and smarter AI.
Add native joystick and HOTAS support. Flight-sim players say setting up a stick or pedals for helicopters takes hours of workarounds, a small group but one with very strong feelings.