Developed by Ukrainian-based Best Way, Soldiers: Heroes of World War II let players run in four campaigns – USSR, UK, USA, and Germany. Each campaign has five missions that involve anything from obliterating the entire army to sneaking into enemy territory as a lone soldier. All four campaigns have region-specific structures, vehicles, and even soldiers who speak in English with an accompanying accent. There is a 4-player co-op mode through a hub or IP linking, but no head-to-head versus.

Most missions start you off with a few units and vehicles, but it’s not uncommon to start out alone. Instead of full scale war fare Soldiers requires you to use more covert strategy than other titles. Take out a soldier near another and an alarm will sound for more backup. You’re forced to do as much as you can with what you have, and build on resources as you come across them.

Tactical controls are straightforward. Players have key commands at the bottom right of the screen to assign soldiers different stances, issue fire commands, eject soldiers from vehicles, and more. Soldier inventory can be managed just by dragging icons in a bag to a picture of the soldier. Direction is easy to give to one or a mass of units. Drag over a whole crew to send them one direction, or click on one soldier to go it alone. The cursor changes in order to show the commands allowed for the selected solider(s). Run it over a soldier and the cursor becomes a crosshair. Pass it over a fence and an icon to jump over it will pop up.

A fine element of Soldiers is that there’s multiple ways to approach any situation. Tactics rather than artillery are required when soldiers are outnumbered. At the start of one mission, a soldier is required to take over a cargo ship and take out the lighthouse light so that reinforcements can stage a surprise attack. The soldier is armed with a knife and several bullets. A player can try to run and gun his/her way through or sneak in with the knife. War with multiple units also need to be planned ahead. The maps in Soldiers are big so there are multiple entry points that you can start attacking from. Players can make use of enemy inventory or vehicles when their down and make use of the environment to their advantage. Destroy an enemy vehicle when its near enemy soldiers and watch the explosion send them flying in the air.

Soldiers runs on a decent engine. The frame rate runs at around 30fps with completely destructible environments. Trees sway in the wind, tanks run over everything, enemy spotlights pierce through the night, and explosions do damage to surroundings. The flybys that give you a look of the area are very choppy for some reason, but during play it's fine. The music is orchestral and similar to the scores heard in other WWII-based games. Every time a command is issued soldiers say a phrase – at times repeatedly – and there’s not much variation there.

There are some war casualties that players need to be aware of. The AI is very smart. Probably too smart for newbies. Even on easy mode, soldiers will react with gang reflexes in shooting you to a pulp. You can’t get much past these guys, which should keep veteran strategy gamers thinking. At times soldiers will run in left and right motions even after they’re ordered to head in one direction. Enemies and your own soldiers can be hard to spot. Soldiers aren’t highlighted when they are not in action and enemy soldiers shooting at you in foliage can’t be spotted in an overhead view. Vehicles (even a big old tank) can be taken out pretty easily by enemy fire, which is a shame since it seems to last about as long as a soldier.

Soliders: Heroes of World War II is a quality strategy title with some issues. If you can face the difficulty and other things that may contribute to mission failure, feel free to enlist in this program.