Squad

1. Summary

Squad's reviewers agree on what the game is: a 50-versus-50 military shooter where a squad that talks, follows its leader and works with the vehicle crews produces moments they say no other shooter gives them. That teamwork, the noise and confusion of a real firefight, and a pace that sits between Battlefield and Arma are the reasons people give for recommending it, often after hundreds or thousands of hours. Mods are a second draw, above all the Star Wars conversion Galactic Contention, which reviewers say returned in late July 2026 and which some new players bought Squad to play. The negative reviews center on the technical state after the move to Unreal Engine 5. Performance is the complaint raised most often, and long-time players add that each update breaks something new while old bugs stay. The server browser, queues, vehicle handling and paid extras come up after that.

The gunplay has no consensus. The infantry combat overhaul's sway, stamina and suppression still split the community, and update 10.4, which reviewers start discussing in spring 2026, won back some players while losing others. Newcomers are split too: some find a welcoming squad that teaches them, others get kicked, sit in queues or never find the fight. Reviews grew warmer through the year, from 61% positive among those written in September and October 2025 to 75% between May and August 2026. The share fell back to 64% in September and October 2026, the weeks of the second free weekend and of the 10.6 update that edited reviews complain about.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Teamwork and voice comms with 49 strangersHigh

Hundreds of positive reviews give teamwork as the reason to play. They describe joining a squad of strangers, hearing a leader call the plan over proximity chat, and winning a point because logistics, medics, armor and infantry all did their jobs. Some tell readers to get a microphone and warn that the game punishes lone wolves, and they treat that as the point. One player put the appeal plainly: "There's moments in the hours of gameplay that you have in this game that makes it worth it." The same reviewers admit the experience depends on who you play with. "this game is MAKE OR BREAK dependent on your squad leader," one wrote. Another compared each match to a slot machine pull that pays out a decent game once in five or ten tries: "Every game feels like pulling the lever to a slot machine." Negative reviews raise teamwork too, mostly to say it often doesn't happen: silent squads, leaders without mics, and players who treat it like a run-and-gun shooter.

Cinematic chaos and soundHigh

Reviews describe artillery landing nearby, rounds snapping overhead, a medic dragging a teammate out of a road, and long quiet drives that end in a few seconds of panic. "Squad is the kind of game that can give you a boring 10 minutes followed by the craziest 30 seconds you've ever had in a shooter." Dozens of positive reviews single out the sound ("Best damn sound effects in the genre, seriously."), and some short ones call the game a "PTSD simulator" as a compliment. A smaller group says the newer muzzle smoke and screen blur hurt the effect, which belongs to the gunplay debate below.

A middle ground between Arma and BattlefieldMedium

Players keep placing Squad between the arcade shooters they grew tired of and full simulations like Arma. Positive reviews say it keeps the realism that matters (fast time to kill, roles, logistics, no kill markers) without Arma's controls and travel times, and several former Battlefield players call it the game Battlefield should have been. Some veterans of Project Reality, the Battlefield 2 mod Squad grew out of, praise it as a successor; others say it drifted from that game. The comparison cuts both ways: Arma Reforger is the game negative reviews most often tell readers to play instead.

Mods, led by Galactic ContentionMedium

Galactic Contention, a Star Wars conversion, is named far more often than any other mod, and some reviewers say they bought Squad only for it ("Bought this game for Galactic Contention and I am loving it!"). Reviewers say it returned in late July 2026, and nearly all the reviews that mention it from then to the end of August recommend the game. Veterans also praise mods like Steel Division and SuperMod for fixing what they dislike in vanilla. The catch, raised mostly by long-time players, is that major updates break mods for weeks, and some favorites such as Global Escalation are gone.

No unlocks or battle pass to grindLow

A smaller set of positive reviews likes that every player starts with the same kit and there is nothing to unlock, a relief after modern shooters. A few others miss progression and call the lack of rewards pointless.

Where players are split

The community and the server you land onHigh

The community gets both praise and blame, often in the same review. Positive reviews describe patient squad leaders who teach the basics and chatty, funny squads; one newcomer wrote "the community is great people are open and always willing to explain the game mechanics when you get lost." Negative reviews, many from players with only a few hours, describe the opposite: getting kicked from squads for being new or not talking, locked squads that leave a new player with nothing to join, and being shouted at even on servers labelled new-player friendly. "Joined first unlocked one, instant kick. Joined the second unlocked one, instant kick." Long-time players have their own complaint: frequent sales and free weekends flood servers with newcomers who don't use mics or follow orders. Experienced players' usual advice is to find a good server and stick with it.

Gunplay, stamina and suppressionHigh

Weapon sway, short stamina, suppression blur and slower aiming arrived with the infantry combat overhaul (ICO), and players still argue about them. Negative reviews from long-time players describe soldiers with "noodle arms" who can't hold a rifle steady after a short run, and screen blur that decides fights. A smaller but steady group defends the system for slowing the game down and rewarding positioning over reflexes. Update 10.4 softened it, and the reaction split along the same line: "The 10.4 has significantly improved the gunplay," wrote one returning player, while an ICO fan answered that it "reduced ICO to the point where its back to call of duty and battlefield with infinite stamina." Both camps keep posting through the rest of the year.

Fireteam, the PvE co-op modeMedium

Fireteam, the co-op mode against bots that reviewers date to early December 2025, divides players. Those who like it say it is a gentler way to learn the game with friends; one reviewer said the "new game mode saved this game." Critics, mostly long-time PvP players, say nobody asked for it while bugs went unfixed, call the bots weak or unfair, and object that most missions are paid. "Forcing all players to buy the fireteam pack to play the rest of the missions even if the host has bought it is absolutely disgusting." Some fans share that complaint and wish more missions were free, and others found the co-op servers empty or locked.

Walking, waiting and paceMedium

Long walks to the objective, waits to spawn and matches decided far from the player are a running joke in both positive and negative reviews. Fans accept it as the price of the payoff ("90% walking, 10% the best combat action you have every witnessed."). Some new players, including people who came from Hell Let Loose or Battlefield, call it boring: run for minutes, get killed by someone they never saw, and start again. "Spawn in FOB walking for 10 min get killed by teammate."

A steep learning curveMedium

Reviewers who mention the learning curve usually describe it as worth getting through, with advice like "takes time to learn but afterwards it is amazing" or estimates of 50 to 100 hours before things make sense. The complaints come mostly from players in their first hours, who say the tutorial explains too little about roles, building and vehicles, and that the game expects them to know acronyms and uniforms already.

What frustrates players

Performance after the Unreal Engine 5 moveHigh

Performance comes up in 26% of negative reviews, more than any other problem. Some reviewers say the move to Unreal Engine 5, which they date to early September 2025, roughly halved their frame rates with no visible gain; others describe stutter when aiming through scopes and blur and ghosting from upscaling. Players with mid-range or older cards, including GTX 16-series owners who say DirectX 11 support was dropped, report they can no longer play a game they had run for years. "I love Squad but they rolled out an update that changed the system requirements and now I cannot play the game I paid for." The share fell over the year: 31% of negative reviews written in September and October 2025 raised performance, against 20% of those written from May 2026 on. Some edited reviews report the improvement ("WOW THEY ACTUALLY FIXED PERFORMANCE."), though others with strong hardware still describe drops to 30 to 40 frames per second in firefights and on forest maps.

Updates that break things while old bugs stayHigh

Update quality is the other big complaint, made mostly by players with hundreds or thousands of hours. They describe each patch bringing crashes, broken menus, audio bugs or vehicle problems, followed by hotfixes that add new ones, while bugs they reported years ago remain. "Every single update nowadays breaks more than it fixes." Individual reviewers name specific releases: one says 10.3 broke vehicles on several maps, another that 10.5.2 removed directional sound, and edited reviews call the 10.6 update a patch "rife with an extremely buggy new UI," adding a party system nobody asked for, a broken server browser and crashes. Launch problems recur too: endless black screens after the intro, Easy Anti-Cheat errors, a "Steam is currently offline" error that hid every server for some players, and crashes for some AMD users. Many of these reviewers still say they love the game and are writing in frustration.

Server browser, queues and regionsMedium

Reviewers say the browser lost its manual refresh button, shows wrong player counts and hides queue lengths, so a server listed as 97 of 99 turns out to have 22 people waiting. "Every decent server makes you queue for an average of probably 10-15 minutes." Players lose their place in the queue after a crash or disconnect, and some free-weekend players never got into a match ("tried to play this game on free weekened and sat in que for 12 minutes"). Players in Southeast Asia, India, South Africa, Oceania and the Middle East report few servers with playable ping, and English speakers in several regions say most populated servers speak Russian, Chinese or Arabic. Reviewers also report a run of DDoS attacks that took servers down in August and September 2026, mostly on weekends.

Vehicle handling and the stuck-track bugMedium

Vehicle players who praise armored combat and crewing often spend more of their review on physics. A repeated issue is tracked vehicles that stay stuck after their tracks are repaired, or sink into the ground, which reviewers say lasted for months after the engine move ("fix the Main battle Tank track / Track IFV's stuck on the ground bug its really ruin the experiance for us armor player"). Others describe trucks flipping on curbs, tanks stuck on small trees, and automatic gearboxes stuck in first gear. A few edits note partial fixes in early 2026 before the problems returned for some.

Paid emotes, skins and mission packsMedium

Long-time players object to paid cosmetics and the paid Fireteam missions, often citing earlier promises that content would not be sold separately. Many of these reviews tie the spending to the bugs, saying money and time went to skins and DLC instead of fixes. A small number of positive reviews say the cosmetics are optional and the game has no grind.

The unskippable intro videoLow

A few dozen reviews complain that a loud introduction video plays on every launch and can't be skipped, and some say the game then hangs on a black screen. "Get rid of the intro video and fix your server browser its been actual years."

Large patches and reset settingsLow

Players report downloads of up to 50 GB for small updates, long file verification, and settings or keybinds reset after major patches.

Telling friend from foeLow

Some new players say they can't tell teammates from enemies, because uniforms look alike and friendly markers appear only up close, and they end up team-killing or hesitating. "You actually have to look at uniforms or your map to decide whose friendly and whose not." Some suggest colored armbands or tape.

CheatersLow

Some reviews say cheating, especially wallhacks, has grown and that anti-cheat does little. Others say they have rarely met cheaters.

Removed HOTAS and controller supportLow

Helicopter pilots say joystick and HOTAS support has been removed, leaving mouse and keyboard only, and one ties the loss to an overhaul of the keybind and input system. Most of these complaints were written in 2026. "They removed Hotas support. Flying is now nearly impossible."

Microphones not detectedLow

A handful of reviews say microphones that work everywhere else aren't picked up in Squad, which matters in a game built on voice. "i cant get any mic to work which sucks in a game where communication is key." Some reviewers say turning off Windows audio enhancement fixed it.

3. The player conversation

Many negative reviews open with how much the writer loved the game, list their hours, and then explain what broke it for them, and many positive reviews admit to bugs and poor performance before recommending it anyway. Edited reviews go both ways: players who switched to negative after the engine move, and others who switched back once their frame rates recovered.

Who raises what differs sharply. Players in their first hours, many from the free weekends, talk about queues, crashes, performance, getting kicked from squads, not knowing who is an enemy, and long walks. In the late September 2026 free weekend, 42% of the 173 reviews marked as received for free recommend the game. Players with hundreds or thousands of hours focus on update quality, the gunplay overhaul, vehicle bugs, monetization and a sense that the developers don't listen. Players who came for Galactic Contention in late July and August nearly all recommend Squad.

Reviews written in September and October 2025 (61% positive) are full of the engine move. The positive share climbed to 75% between May and August 2026, the months that include update 10.4 and the return of Galactic Contention, then dipped to 64% in September and October 2026. Reviews from those weeks bring up the free weekend, DDoS attacks, the new rival Wardogs and the 10.6 update; reviews written from 1 October 2026 were 69% positive. Arma Reforger comparisons run throughout, and Hell Let Loose and Wardogs come up as well (Wardogs appears in 45 reviews, mostly negative ones that tell readers to play it instead or say it runs better). One block of text criticizing the developers' priorities was pasted into 24 separate reviews, almost all negative. A large share of reviews are one-line jokes or memes, mostly positive, with no detail.

4. What the developers could do

1. Restore performance on mid-range PCs. Performance is the complaint raised most often in negative reviews, and players with cards that ran the game well before the engine move still report scope stutter, blur and low frame rates.
2. Test updates harder before release. Long-time players describe patches like 10.3 and 10.6 breaking vehicles, menus, audio and the server browser, and they ask for fewer regressions over new features.
3. Fix the server browser and protect queue spots. Players want the refresh button back, accurate player and queue counts, a held queue place after crashes, sturdier protection against the DDoS attacks reported in 2026, and official or better-distributed servers in underserved regions.
4. Fix vehicle physics and the stuck-track bug. Armor players say permanently stuck tracks, sinking vehicles and curb flips ruin matches and were left unfixed for months.
5. Give newcomers a better start. First-hour reviews ask for a tutorial that explains roles, building and vehicles, clearer ways to tell friend from foe, and new-player servers that live up to the label instead of kicking learners.
6. Let a whole Fireteam lobby use missions the host owns. Players object that every member of a lobby has to buy the missions, and they link paid content to unfixed bugs.
7. Make the intro skippable and keep settings across patches. It is a small fix for a complaint repeated across years of reviews, alongside resets of settings and keybinds after updates.
8. Bring back HOTAS and controller support for flying. Helicopter pilots say losing joystick support made flying nearly impossible and drove some of them away.