Battle Cry of Freedom is an American Civil War shooter in the vein of a milsim by Flying Squirrel Entertainment. Hundreds of players per match with multiple game modes like siege and capture the flag, and multiple classes from riflemen to musicians. It’s North versus South in the time of muskets, cannons, and perhaps most importantly, the bayonet.

I sunk seven hours into Battle Cry of Freedom and had an absolute blast. There are a lot of fun mechanics and options in the game that I haven’t seen anywhere else. For example, keeping your powder dry when you cross the river, otherwise it gets wet and you lose everything but the one shot you have left in your rifle. You can also choose different types of music to play. There’s folk music like Dixieland and other songs of the era, to orchestral, to an original score that’s very likeable. You can choose one category in particular or all three. Also you have the ability to play in first or third person. Additionally having ‘non combatant’ musicians drumming and playing tunes to buff nearby soldiers is a great addition. I’m happy to see developers expanding into new mechanics and options like this.

The voice chat is about what you’d expect for a civil war era online video game. Mostly funny, but occasionally someone wants to use no-no words, or even worse, blare their terrible soundboard. Luckily you can mute individual players, and the admins were booting people playing the soundboards regularly. People talking about things that are in-context to the era, or semi-roleplaying really adds a lot to the game for me.

There seems to be some kind of input lag or graphical issues still. The musket collision with walls needs some work, it would often raise up when it shouldn’t. There is also a weird issue with turning. My screen skipped frames very occasionally if I turned too fast.

Your life as a soldier in Battle Cry of Freedom is often short lived and on edge. When to reload becomes a big part of the gameplay. Getting stuck with a bayonet in the middle of a 17 second reload happens often. You’re constantly under pressure since the rifles of the day weren’t super accurate, and enemies love to charge like the movies.

My big recommendation would be to fix the stamina drain. You can sprint for 10 seconds, and the regen is pretty slow. The battlefields are absolutely massive though, and you’re often out of breath, making your journey from spawn point to the line of battle dreadfully slow. This may be part of some attacker and defender balance, but I would absolutely try to balance that a different way. My smaller group would be the windage effect. While unique, it needs better explanation or it just leans towards the too technical side.

I liked Battle Cry of Freedom more than War of Rights, it’s just a lot easier to jump into and start shooting. While it’s slightly more on the arcade side, I think it overall has better quality of life things that will improve replayability like weather effects and night maps. If you like Battle Cry of Freedom, I would still recommend War of Rights and/or Hell Let Loose, which is a similarly parts arcade to parts milsim in a WW2 era.