Enlisted: the complete guide to the WWII shooter where you command a squad
You don't play one soldier — you play a whole squad. How Enlisted's squad system changes a WWII shooter, which campaign to start with, and what to expect free on PC.
Free to Play · EnlistedPlay Enlisted free on PC▶ Drop In & FightEnlisted looks like another WWII shooter in screenshots and plays like something quite different. The hook is simple and it changes everything: you do not control one soldier, you control a squad.
How the squad system actually works
You bring a small group of AI soldiers into battle and directly control one of them. The rest follow, take cover and shoot. When the soldier you're controlling dies, you don't go to a respawn screen — you take over the next man in the squad and keep fighting. Only when the whole squad is gone do you swap to another one.
The practical effect is that death feels like attrition rather than interruption. A firefight you'd lose in a normal shooter becomes one you can grind through, three bodies at a time.
It turns every engagement into a small tactical problem instead of a single duel you either win or restart.
— Sofia Reyes
Free to Play · EnlistedPlay Enlisted free on PC▶ Drop In & FightSquad types, and why you shouldn't specialise early
- Infantry — your backbone. Reliable, flexible, and where new players should spend their first hours.
- Engineers — build ammo crates, sandbags and rally points. Unglamorous and quietly decisive in objective fights.
- Snipers, mortars, flamethrowers — powerful in the right moment, dead weight in the wrong one.
- Tanks and aircraft — yes, they're in the same matches. They change the flow of a battle completely.
A common new-player mistake is loading up on specialist squads before you have a solid infantry core. Keep it boring early; the toys reward you more once you understand the maps.
Which campaign to start with
Battles are grouped into historical campaigns — Moscow, Normandy, Berlin, Tunisia, Stalingrad and others. Populations shift over time, so the honest advice is: pick the front that interests you historically, and if queue times feel long, move to a busier one. You are not wasting progress by trying two.
Is it pay-to-win?
Fair question for any free WWII shooter. Paid squads exist and they are convenient — they save grinding — but the free progression genuinely works, and skill with an ordinary rifle squad beats a premium squad used badly. Treat purchases as time-savers, not power spikes.
Who it's for
- WWII fans who find standard shooters too thin on tactics.
- Players who want infantry, armour and air power in the same match.
- Anyone who hates respawn screens — the squad system nearly removes them.
If you'd rather command the vehicles than the men, the same publisher's War Thunder is the other half of this coin.
Enlisted is free, it's specific, and its central idea is genuinely its own. Worth an evening to see if the squad loop clicks for you.
