There’s just something about WWII games that I can’t get enough of. Even when everyone was sick of them in the early 2010’s I never wanted them to fully go away. Playing and learning about history through gaming is always cool to me. Whenever a new WWII game comes out it instantly pops up on my radar regardless of the genre, so naturally I was drawn to Sudden Strike 5 once it was announced.

If you are new to the series like I was going in, Sudden Strike has been around quite a while now; there are 5 games after all, and is a real-time strategy game set in the WWII theatre. You won’t need any prior experience in the series to jump into Sudden Strike 5, at least not from a narrative standpoint since there isn’t much story to miss out on that you can’t look up in a history book or on Google.

As soon as you load into the game you are met with three separate campaigns. One for Western Allies, one for the Axis and one for the Soviets. The Western Allies and Axis campaigns are essentially the same missions and maps, just from the opposite perspective, while the Soviet campaign is its own thing.

One thing I immediately have to give credit to the developers Kite is the fact that you can play an Axis campaign. For the longest time I’ve said someone should make WWII campaigns where we play as the Axis. Yes what they did was brutal, but it was also history and I don’t think there’s anything wrong showing the early parts of the war (the actual battles that is) through gaming.

Theatre Of War

Once you choose your campaign you will head to a little mini summary page that will describe the mission ahead. These do a decent job of explaining what you can expect and it’s quite important to pay attention to so you don’t miss something. You might think you are done with a mission once you’ve captured a town, only to find out there was a massive counter attack headed your way and you need to be prepared.

Next you get to choose your General. You get to choose from historically accurate Generals and their style. You can choose a defensive, offensive or tactical general. I seemed to always go for the offensive General as I liked my tanks having a bit more speed and power to them, but each map will dictate what you should probably use.

There are also up to four cards you can put on each of these Generals to add to your unit’s stats and abilities. You earn doctrine points by completing missions and earning up to three stars in each of those missions. These doctrine points can then be spent on adding cards or upgrading them. It is a nice touch that makes things a bit more unique, though I was there was more variety in the cards themselves.

Getting into the missions themselves, I liked how authentic and real things looked and felt. Kite has done a good job of designing the levels and giving a real WWII feel to the game which is what I wanted. You will then take control of your squad, anywhere from 100-300 units and are typically tasked with either capturing a town or defending it.

There are many outposts and checkpoints along the way that you will want to capture and control as well. These spots on the map are advantageous for a variety of reasons, whether its earning more prestige to get you more troops, helping you setup strategic defensive positions, or sometimes learning intel on the enemy.

There is a lot of strategy involved, specifically around the units you purchase when you do get prestige. They all vary in what they cost so you can’t just spam tanks, and your prestige is pretty limited. so make sure you have a plan going in. And there are A LOT of units to choose from. I mostly went with infantry and some tanks, but there were situations where things like artillery were needed.

Also a lot of the missions limit you on what you can call in for backup. Some missions I was only able to call in 10 tanks so I had to make sure I was deploying them in a strong group to mitigate the risks of losing them. Most RTS games let you just keep the units coming so there isn’t much fear of losing some, but not Sudden Strike 5.

The other thing you need prestige for is your air support. Air support isn’t always available, but when it is it is indeed very valuable. Calling in recon or an air strike saved my ass on many occasions. And naturally they are limited as well so you cannot go in and spam air strikes all the time.

The Game Changer

The biggest weapon at your disposal is the new armored train. The train is a true game changer and is the heavyweight of the game. It’s a bit puzzling that it doesn’t get introduced until near the end of the campaigns, but when it does you take notice. Not only is it powerful but it changes your strategy up since it is tied to the tracks, making your paths a bit different than if you don’t have the train.

Whenever they do another Sudden Strike game, or add DLC to 5, they should make the train a bigger focus. While maybe not as historically accurate as the rest of the game, it is good for the gameplay.

No Holding Hands

While you may not have needed to play any of the previous games for narrative purposes, you will be struggling game play wise if you haven’t. Sudden Strike 5 throws you into the deep end with just the most basic of controls and understanding of whats going on.

And with such a wide range of types of troops, tanks and artillery at your disposal, it is a lot to take in all at once. The tactical pause helps you take a breather and try to understand things, but it can still be quite overwhelming.

For example your infantry will show how many soldiers are in the unit you are purchasing. There’s an anti tank group that has 6 soldiers in it. It wasn’t until I was almost through the Allied campaign that I realized that those 6 units aren’t actually all anti tank soldiers, only 3 of them are as well as 3 machine gunners. So colour me surprised when I’d send 2 of those units into battle and wonder why they were struggling with a tank when I figured I had 12 guys with rocket launchers.

Now part of that is on me for not reading the fine print and understanding. But I feel like they could have done a better job explaining that to you in a beginning level. There’s a ton of these moments that I had, and even playing the game on easy I would struggle and routinely have to restart a mission because I felt like I was constantly learning stuff I probably should have known.

One of the earlier missions you start with a massive squad filled with tanks and infantry, but all the bridges are blown out. There’s some boats in the river that you can use for your infantry to get across, but not your tanks and vehicles. After sending my infantry across and very cautiously clearing out a bunch of outposts, a unit finally made a comment about creating a bridge.

I kept looking and looking and thought there is no way to repair these bridges. Turns out almost 30 minutes into this mission I could have had a repair vehicle create a makeshift bridge to get all the tanks across the river. Would have been nice to know!

Additionally the controls on console aren’t the greatest. That is always a risk for RTS games and controllers as they typically play much better on PC with a mouse and keyboard. Generally I can get by with the controls though, but Sudden Strike 5 was lacking just a touch.

Final Thoughts

Sudden Strike 5 is a solid, if unspectacular RTS experience. It feels authentic and immersive as a WWII strategy game, and really makes you focus on the strategy part of that in order to succeed. It’s clunky controls on console and lack of teaching the player the game hold it back from being great, but any RTS fan should find the experience enjoyable.

Sudden Strike 5 was reviewed on Xbox Series X. We’d like to thank publisher Kalypso Media for the review code that was provided for purpose of this review.

Sudden Strike 5 was released on April 23, 2026. The game is available on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S