Of all the things I had in my “maybe this will happen in 2026” bingo card, playing Theatre of War wasn’t one of them. Going back and finishing Elden Ring? Yes, sure. Do a full campaign of War In The East 2? Who knows? Maybe finally review Into The Breach, a game I have been wanting to talk about since it came out in 2018! But playing Theatre of War? Didn’t even cross my mind. In all honesty, I didn’t even remember this whole series existed, and I have several physical copies of it hanging around.

Color me surprised when, just last week, I learned that Theatre of War Rearmed was a thing. I have to admit that I was not expecting much from it, but looking at its YouTube trailer and seeing that this is the work of a sole developer trying to bring back this obscure and forgotten franchise to the limelight, and that he has been working on it for 4 years, I was curious. On top of that, there’s a very generous playtest on Steam that gives you access to 11 missions across three campaigns, and 2 standalone scenarios, as well as 9 tutorial missions, and there’s plenty to bite your teeth into.

For context, my experience with the franchise was far from being good, or even satisfactory, for that matter. If my memory doesn’t faulter, I think I have played the first Theatre of War, as well as the second, and from what I can remember, the control scheme was an absolute mess, and units either didn’t respond, or didn’t act properly to your commands, but the worst offender was the game’s performance, which was downright attrocious, to the point I could seldomly squeeze more than 2 dozen frames out of it. It should come as no surprise that I dropped it rather hastily.

So, what of Theatre of War Rearmed? Is it any good? Well, it’s a World War 2 real-time wargaming, I have to say that things are shaping up rather nicely. After a couple of hours getting the tutorials done with and most of the missions played, I’m highly inclined to think that we might have something interesting in our hands. I also need to add that I was going into it with literally zero expectations in terms of quality, so seeing this being actually fun to play was quite a surprise and a pleasant one at that.

Let me start off with the most insurmountable of hurdles: the terrible framerate of the originals. I could not get into the game, even if I wanted to, because it was smoother to be running a PowerPoint presentation and clicking on my mouse every once in a while than it was to run the first Theatre of War games. Fortunately, the Rearmed edition runs smoothly, and I never even witnessed a drop in FPS, no matter how complex or intense the scene was. Now I can get into the game.

What we have here is a sort of mix between a World War 2 arcade RTS game with the scale of a Graviteam Tactics game. Do let me explain. Maps are massive, engagement distances are huge, and things like armor penetration, ballistics, unit morale, cover, and fog of war play pivotal roles in shaping the battlefield. At the same time, the game plays like a traditional arcade RTS, as players drag-and-click to order units around, but there’s a smaller pool of options to fine-tune their units’ behaviour.

Do you know how, in Combat Mission, you can decide exactly what sort of movement your units can make? Imagine that, by simplifying by moving, attacking, and assaulting, as well as stances (prone, crouch, standing, and stealth). Artillery and air support are modelled by a simple select and click on the map, and a couple of seconds later, all hell will rain down on the enemy. There’s no need for complicated and convoluted spotting mechanics or multi-stage selection on how many shells and with what type of intensity they need to be fired at. This simplicity instantly grabbed my attention and had me going over literally every available mission on the playtest.

Commanding infantry and armor across vast battlefields and setting up grand advances all over the frontline led to some spectacular engagements, and some memorable moments too, like my troops scrambling to find a way to deal with the French B1 tanks in the first mission. Capturing an enemy town just to be faced with a massive counter-attack out of nowhere, and even micromanaging your last remaining soldiers to stealthily deal with stragglers before they deal with you. The missions here are well designed, but I won’t tell you that they don’t feel a bit overwhelming sometimes, as you’ll never know if the game is going to pull your leg later down the line, and what you think might be acceptable risks to complete the mission might actually end up being just halfway through.

Speaking of that, the missions in Rearmed are quite long, which is a treat for a playtest, and this makes them equally nail-biting when it comes to managing your forces, because, as I mentioned before, you might think that the mission is coming to an end, take some risks, and then be surprised that there’s a whole company with armored support coming for you. I cannot fault the game for doing this, after all, such is the nature of war, and no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

The playtest is filled with plenty of different types of missions that will provide a lot of different challenges, from infantry assaults, armored clashes, and even some stealth segments, but these don’t work all that well, to be honest. Pretty cool for something free.

Unit control is tighter than I expected, and super responsive, and that’s something I always see as a sign of good quality. I cannot tell you how much I dislike games with floaty controls. There’s absolutely no reason to artificially make unit responsiveness sluggish for “realism”. However, movement isn’t without fault, and your troopers will struggle to navigate cluttered areas with edifices. Even tanks control just fine, and react as soon as you tell them to.

Now, with all this praise, what can Theatre of War improve upon? Pathfinding can certainly be improved, as we have seen, and a field of view tool could certainly come in handy. But the thing that’s currently most annoying is the accuracy of everything. It seems like all armies are composed exclusively of family members of Vasily Zaitsev and Chris Kyle, and this goes for infantry, tanks, machinegun positions, anti-tank pieces, and all else. While some games go to the other extreme, which is arguably more realistic, but also way less fun, having laser beam accuracy at 200 or 300 meters isn’t all that great either.

Something else I have seen quite often is the inconsistent armor behaviour, with several cases of mid to late war heavy tanks bouncing rounds on the paper-thin armor of light tanks. While this isn’t impossible, how often it happens is mathematically improbable.

Anyway, I have rambled enough, and I’ll go back to it once it releases for a review. So far, Theatre of War Rearmed is looking promising. The performance improvements, the balanced mix of realism and arcade, and the fun spectacle of it all have made me look forward to its release.

Support Strategy and Wargaming

I do what I do in Strategy and Wargaming because I love to do this, and I’m never going to stop. If you would like to support me with that, you can  buy me a coffee for a dollar  if you’re feeling generous.  If you can’t, no worries, Strategy and Wargaming will always be free, and I’d love to have you around!