Video Game / Freeman Guerrilla Warfare

The official, straight to the point cover art of Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare.

Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare (no relation to that physicist) is a Wide-Open Sandbox aRPG / strategy game with a squad-level FPS combat module. If this doesn't make sense (we wouldn't blame you for it), it's essentially a modern-day Mount & Blade with guns.

Set in the fictional Slavic island nation of Cherniv torn apart in a bloody Civil War, you take on the role of a guerrilla leader, leading a band of insurgents to unite the island and end all hostilities. Whether you do this by forging alliances with the warring factions, or annihilating their armies and taking over their cities is entirely up to you - similar to that medieval game Freeman is taking inspiration from, there is no main Story Arc to follow, giving you complete freedom in the world from the get-go. Whether you prefer to act as a vigilante and hunt down pesky highwaymen, become a bandit and plunder villages to get what you want, or operate as a mercenary and take every job to get that sweet loot, the game lets you take a foothold on Cherniv in any way you see fit. Just remember that liberating the island can be a lot more difficult if you pick a fight with everybody...

Following a quick character generation (done both visually and by answering a set of questions for initial skill point distribution), Freeman plays on two layers: a 3D world map, allowing you to move around the island and manage your faction; and in an FPS combat module when battling your enemies. The latter also offers a tactical overview map on which you can command your squads by assigning waypoints to them and defining their basic combat behaviour.

Developed by Beijing-based KK Game Studios, Freeman launched in early access on February 1, 2018 and had its full release on October 5, 2019. Unfortunately, most of the developers were let go in November 2020 when the company has gone bankrupt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in February 2021, the three original founders of KK Game Studios resurfaced and announced that they started working again on Freeman, attempting to overhaul the game by bringing it more in line with their early vision. This remake was originally estimated to see a public test release at the end of 2021, but has been since stuck in Development Hell.

The team also planned a Prequel Spin-Off game for Freeman called Her War, a hardcore survival First-Person Shooter focusing on the early days of one of the in-game factions (and one of its recruitable NPCs). However, given the above circumstances, this project has been postponed indefinitely.

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The island of Cherniv awaits guerrilla leaders with guns, glory, freedom, and the following tropes:

• 24-Hour Armor: Although the player and character inventories have separate slots for upper/lower clothing and body/head armor, the latter can (and should be) worn all the time.
• All-or-Nothing Reloads: As typical in most FPS games, switching to another weapon while reloading results in the reload being interrupted, and the new mag/clip/round not being loaded, even if the animation was completed to the point of inserting them into the firearm.
• Anarchy Is Chaos: Played straight with the game's setting, which - based on the game's store page description - is set in an "anarchic world". This of course means that the island is thrown into chaos following a coup against the federal government, with armed bandits terrorizing the populace in the lawless countryside, and six major factions vying for the control of Cherniv.
• Arbitrary Head Count Limit: There are actually two in the Freeman: the Leadership attribute affects the number of people you can hire, while the Commanding skill defines the number of people you can deploy during battle. Unfortunately, the caps of these skills are different even if you have both maxed out, meaning that you can always hire more people than the amount you can deploy at once during firefights.
• Armour Is Useless: Strongly averted, given the loot-oriented Action RPG background of the game. Your base health is roughly enough to survive only a handful of hits, and even if you upgrade your Constitution attribute to max out your health points, you never become a bullet sponge if you don't wear any armor. Bulletproof vests and helmets are practically required, and your troops also agree.
• Arms Dealer: Every city has one, providing access to everything from pistols to rocket launchers.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: A given if you play as a bandit, but it can also be the case early-game if you hire mostly cheap gangsters in the villages, or can persuade most captured bandits to join your side.
• Artificial Brilliance: The AI mostly does a solid job both on the world map and during battles as well.
  • On the World Map, roaming parties are aware of their own strength, chasing only armies they consider weaker, and trying to escape well ahead from the stronger competition. As for your own armies, you can issue a wide range of orders to recruitable generals (Follow Me, Defend or Attack a City, Wait at a Specific Location, Support Another General, etc.) that they generally carry out well. They also try recruiting the best available troops in cities from their available faction funds, and also develop their cities if you appoint them as mayors.
  • During combat, squads typically move in loose formation, trying to make use of any natural cover they can find on the battlefield. They can also use special equipment (night vision googles, smoke and fragmentation grenades, grenade launchers and first aid kits) that helps either their survival or gaining the upper hand in combat.
• Artificial Stupidity: Despite the above strengths, this trope is also in effect, given that the game is a low-budget indie title from a novice developer.
  • On the World Map, recruited generals have a tendency to wander away from the city they're assigned to protect (leaving it vulnerable to attacks), and sometimes they also forget their orders (for example never arriving to the city they're supposed to attack). They also suffer from map navigation issues as well when ordered to follow you. As for city management, they also seem to be unable to repair damaged buildings after city riots or sieges, leaving that to you.
  • During battles, your soldiers' detection range is lower than you would expect, even if their related Line of Sight attribute is high. When sending elite snipers to the highest point of the map (to a location where you can easily pick off distant enemies with a good rifle), snipers equipped with the best possible scoped weapon would still fail to engage due to arbitrary distance restrictions. Squads also have a tendency of getting stuck in the terrain and not following their waypoints, especially during larger battles featuring more than ~100 fighters.
• A-Team Firing: Even when the opposing armies consist of high-level troops with good equipment, expect to see (and hear) several dozen rounds rattled off by both sides before the first casualties. Actually Truth in Television.
• A.K.A.-47: Mostly averted, with the majority of firearms using either real brand names or existing military designations. That said, some of them still use either fake names (like the Brügger & Thomet P26 appearing simply as the Coral SMG), or are using incorrect names (like the FN SCAR-H, which is called SCAR-L in-game).
• Amazon Brigade: The Valkyrie Female Fighters faction was founded by women who escaped from Uman Brotherhood slave camps, and are made up entirely of female guerrillas (sans their trade convoys, which are protected by the same male escort guards as in every other faction). You can also build your own all-female force if you play as a female character and recruit only women.
• Action Girl: You, of course, if you play as a female and are not afraid to fight in the frontline. At the same time, basically all recruitable female units and companions qualify to this trope.
• Arbitrary Equipment Restriction: Every weapon and piece of armor can be equipped only if their skill level requirements are met. Although understandable for balancing reasons (ensuring that better weapon and armor options are either getting unlocked gradually, or are available from the get-go only for characters with a military or sharpshooting background), this system still tends to result in downright annoying situations, with players or recruited troops for example being able to use the AK-74 assault rifle but not the M4 with the same Marksmanship level, or simply not being able to put on a stronger helmet just 'cause.
• Badass Army: Your guerrilla force can easily become this, if you take the time to regularly level up your troops (to increase their stats) and upgrade their weapons and armor to match their skill level. As long as you keep your army in top shape, and issue waypoints to their squads with the terrain (and other field cover) in mind, it's very much possible to defeat enemy forces larger than your army.
  • Played straight lore-wise with the Free Cossacks Army (who not only manage to hold their own in a two-front war against the Pozna Battalion and the Atov Federation, but outright win the battle), and the Valkyrie Female Fighters (who can stand their ground against the Uman Brotherhood's terrorists, despite consisting mostly of civilian women).
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: In Cherniv, every female guerrilla is beautiful and has her hairdo and makeup in perfect condition all the time. Even after a bloody city siege.
• Big Bad: Although the Wide-Open Sandbox nature of the game doesn't put much emphasis on the story, you can actually discover who started the Cherniv Civil War if you find and make friends with certain recruitable companions. Specifically, Sergey tells you that the war was orchestrated by his ostracized dynasty of local firearms manufacturers to take revenge on the government that failed to protect their business against the takeover of the local underworld. To that end, they sold weapons to the island's Atov Autonomous Region, who promptly attacked the rest of the island once it turned out they cannot secede from the island's federal republic by parliamentary measures.
• Black-and-White Morality: Played straight with the Uman Brotherhood and the Valkyrie Female Fighters. The former is a sadistic terrorist organization notorious for executing captured soldiers and civilians alike, and enslaving young women For the Evulz. The latter was founded by escaped female slaves specifically to combat the Brotherhood, and protect the civilian populace (especially women) against them.
• Blown Across the Room: Averted. Regardless of the calibre and distance, when killed or injured, soldiers simply crumple rather than getting cinematically blown away.
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted with players, who can only use as much ammo during battle as placed into their belt inventory (although it's possible to refill from the main army inventory if spare magazines are kept there). Played straight with the AI troops though, to prevent tedious army micromanagement.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The game's arsenal features several World War II-era guns. Makes sense, given the setting and that guerrilla armies make use of any possible firearm they can get hold of.
• Bulletproof Vest: Given the aRPG roots of the game, loot and gear is king in Freeman, so if you want to survive more than a couple of shots, you'll need proper vests and helmets for the job.
• Character Customization: Done by three steps when starting a new campaign. Firstly, you must answer a set of questions to define the character's starting gear, companions, money and skills. After that, you can do visual customization; and finally, you're presented with a Point Buy system, allowing you to spend some additional skill points on the character's extensive skill tree.
• Civil War: Of the multi-front variety, with seven factions vying for control over the island.
• Cold Sniper: Tatyana, one of the recruitable Pozna Battalion generals fills this trope to the letter, having the coldest and most bitter dialogue tree out of all the potential companions, even if the player maintains a very good relationship with her. She's also the best sniper of the Pozna Front, taking pride in her skills, and driven by taking revenge for her parents' death.
• Color-Coded Armies: Each faction has its own uniform pattern, making it clearly recognizable on the battlefield.
  • Valkyrie Female Fighters wear woodland uniforms with brown armor.
  • Atov Federation forces opt for Navy and Marine pattern outfits mostly using blue-grey colors.
  • The Uman Terrorists' wardrobe is dominated by red.
  • Free Cossacks Army troops utilize multi-terrain pattern digi camo uniforms.
  • The Pozna Battalion prefers yellow-desert camo outfits.
  • Chernivkan Front soldiers use jungle camo clothing.
  • The various outlaw factions also have their own staple colors, with Looters and Terrorists primarily using dark clothing, Pirates dressed in white-blue outfits, Cossack Rebels in green camo, Mountain Bandits in woodland clothing, and Desert Bandits in sand camo, as expected. The invading Alpha Forces (attacking the island in the endgame after the player liberates Cherniv) utilize desert camo uniforms with black armor.
• Combat Medic: Maria is the named example of the trope, being a former army doctor of the Atov Federation, and having the highest default Medical skill out of all the recruitable companions.
  • That said, the player and the rest of their recruited generals can also become this, if they assign enough points to the relevant skill levels. It's worthy to mention though that the game does not have a dedicated healer class: First Aid and Medical skills are purely passive skills, with the former increasing the chance of friendly units just getting wounded instead of dying when incapacitated by the enemy, while the latter increasing the healing rate of wounded units in the army.
  • Back in early access, this trope was played straight with Female Militia troops: they could be levelled up to Combat Medics, increasing the healing rate of their squad members and their chance of surviving incapacitating hits (their effect stacked above the player's First Aid skill).
• Defector from Decadence: Several named characters can join your army because of this.
  • Haaken joined the Uman Brotherhood only because he'd considered them the only faction strong enough to help him take revenge on the Atov Federation for his parents' death. He's happy to leave them once you can prove him you're just as strong as the island's Always Chaotic Evil faction.
  • Maria had to escape the Atov Federation after refusing to treat one of their notorious generals (Dimitro, who's also a recruitable companion, by the way).
  • Olga also decided to escape the Atov Federation after thwarting some Atov troops' attempt to rape a young civilian woman in the faction's capital city. The experience made her so disillusioned with the Federation that she helped Yuri, a covert Pozna Battalion agent (himself also a recruitable companion) in an attempt to blow up the Federation's leader. She later founded the Chernivkan Front, and declared war against her former faction.
  • Kostyantin, Olga's father (and one of the founders of the Atov Federation) also grew disillusioned with the Federation once his daughter had to escape, and thus willingly joins you if she's also recruited.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Zig-zagged. You can dress up your army to look exactly like another faction's troops, since everyone is using the same pool of clothing and armor that you can buy from shops or loot in battlefields. However, you cannot mislead other armies with this and pretend to be the fighters of another faction.
• Dialogue Tree: Of the simpler variety. When encountering outlaw parties or enemies, sometimes bloodshed can be avoided if the weaker party successfully attempts to pay up a protection fee. When meeting neutral or allied forces, you can also ask for advice or take quests from them. Recruitable named companions, however, have a static, linear dialogue tree, with players unlocking a new question each time they increase their relationship with said companion.
• Divided We Fall: The moral of the game, with the main mission being to end the multi-front Civil War and unite the island. Whether you achieve this by creating alliances with the warring factions or defeating all of them is up to you, though.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Zig-zagged. Averted with the AI troops, as ordering your squads to charge will have them sprinting and spraying their guns at the same time. Played straight with players though, as you cannot fire your weapons while sprinting.
• Elite Army: Your own guerrilla force of course, provided that they consist mostly of high-tier troops, with their levels capped out and equipped with the best available gear.
  • Lore-wise, the Atov Federation and the endgame Alpha Forces are also this, consisting of well-equipped and highly-trained infantry.
• Elite Mooks: Most factions have special units that can give your army a headache. CFR designated marksmen and Pozna snipers can easily pick off your men from a distance if they have the line of sight (that is, you don't use the terrain and vegetation for your cover). VFA shotgunners and FCA grenadiers are deadly at close to mid-range. And finally, Uman, Atov and Alpha machinegunners can effectively suppress your troops.
• Enemy Mine: Happens regularly on the 3D world map, whenever an enemy that chases you is attacked by another enemy army that hates both of you.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Mountain Bandits and the Cossack Rebels field both male and female fighters in their marauder parties. The Chernivkan Front and the Pozna Battalion also qualifies to a lesser extent if you attack them, as both factions have a (recruitable) female general.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Many of the recruitable companions are far from being nice people, but are not as downright evil as their faction's notoriety or other companions' accounts would suggest.
  • Haaken is one of the two recruitable generals of the Uman Brotherhood, the game's Always Chaotic Evil faction who are known to Rape, Pillage, and Burn entire villages merely For the Evulz, leave no children, men and elder folk alive, and capture young females en masse to either sell them or keep around as sex slaves. Haaken insists that he finds this MO abhorrent though, and that he never lets his army carry out such atrocities (not just because of moral reasons, but also because doing so would make his troops so notorious that they wouldn't be able to travel anywhere without the alarms being raised by the local population well in advance). The only reason he joined the Brotherhood is that he considers them the only fighting force capable of taking on the Atov Federation, whose troops killed his parents.
  • Although most non-Atov companions describe the Federation as a fascist dictatorship with a cruel, barbaric army, the majority of the 4 recruitable Atov generals are far from being total monsters, even if they believe in their authoratitative regime. Kostyantin is genuinely concerned for his daughter, Olga (who happens to be the leader of Chernivkan Front, a faction in war with Atov), and is displeased with the unruly soldiers attacking local women in Atov cities. Vitaly turns out to have saved and looking after Miroslava, an ex-slave of the Uman Brotherhood (and another recruitable companion); while Oleg is just a by-the-book, if somewhat cocky intelligence officer with no clear hatred against the other factions. Even Dimitro, the snobbish, ruthless officer of the Federation has some redeeming qualities, despite the fact that he admits to have executed an unarmed civilian just to make a point in an occupied village, and admitting that he would do it again, if given the choice.
  • Fully averted with Finn, the other Uman Brotherhood general besides Haaken. Even his recruitment condition requires you to plunder 5 villages.
• Excuse Plot: Due to the Wide-Open Sandbox nature and the lack of a main Story Arc, most of the island's history and the main events of the Civil War can only be revealed by talking with named NPCs.
• Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: While far from being a hardcore tactical shooter (given that the characters' accuracy, damage, stamina and health is governed by their skills and equipment), the game still leans more towards the realistic end when it comes to battles. Most guns drop most soldiers in a couple of hits, gunfights happen over medium and long distances, suppressing fire with assault rifles, submachine guns and light machine guns is used liberally by all sides, and a sniper rifle or a good assault rifle with high-magnification optics is king. You also get exhausted after a couple seconds of running even with a maxed out Stamina attribute, just like the AI troops if they spend most of their time charging towards their waypoints.
• Fetch Quest: One of the typical quest types in villages and cities, requiring players to collect a certain amount of items.
• For the Evulz: The Uman Brotherhood is the game's Always Chaotic Evil faction, who consider the Civil War the perfect opportunity to achieve total freedom and "release their instincts" to their fullest. According to Finn, this latter means they should be allowed to take whatever they want by force, rape whoever they lay their eyes on, and kill whoever they want.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: You, especially if you picked the refugee or wounded conscript background. Tatyana, the Pozna Battalion's best sniper-general also qualifies, given that she was just a simple farm girl before she lost her parents to the Atov Federation.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In conversations, at least. The dialogue trees of the recruitable companions are static, meaning that characters always refer to their original factions in the present tense, and as if they're still a part of that faction, even if they've already joined you, or their original faction no longer exists.
  • Also applies to the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue of the game. Although the rolling text reveals that many of the recruited companions have died, retired or left the island after the main campaign, all of them are actually sticking around and will help you against the Alpha Forces in the endgame.
• Genre Buster: As mentioned in the page intro, the game combines elements of light tactical shooters, Grand Strategy and Real-Time Strategy games, Wide-Open Sandbox titles and action-RPGs. You fight in battles, command your troops, and lead your armies across the island as you manage your cities and party to fight more effectively.
• Going for the Big Scoop: How Maxim, the recruitable war correspondent almost got killed. As he describes you if you've got a a good enough relationship level with him, he wanted to go after the Uman Brotherhood to learn more about their intentions. After the Uman agreed to talk to him, he's been taken to a prison camp, allowing him to interview terrorists and prisoners alike, until the Brotherhood found out that Maxim was also in contact with the Valkyrie Female Fighters, the terrorists' arch-enemies, promptly imprisoning him as well. He eventually managed to escape though, thanks to another recruitable companion.
• Great Offscreen War: Basically every named battle that the recruitable NPCs describe to the player, given that the actual campaign starts after all those battles have occurred.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Applies to the Chernivkan Front, the Pozna Battalion and the Free Cossacks Army. While none of these factions are known to have committed any atrocities during the Civil War, they're still determined to unite Cherniv solely under their own banner, at the expense of the other factions.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: You can safely play this against the Uman Brotherhood, given that they're hostile to you by default, and that the in-game lore paints them as an utterly barbaric Always Chaotic Evil terrorist group.
• Gun Accessories: Of the simpler variety. Weapon customization is limited to silencers and optical sights. Black markets, however, sell customized weapons with additional upgrades (such as increased bullet velocity or extended magazines).
• Hates Everyone Equally: The default MO for the outlaw factions who attack anyone on sight who's weaker than them.
  • Also played straight with Yuri, whose recruitment condition is to be at war with all factions (even with his own, for some strange reason).
• Heel–Face Turn: Applies basically to all enemy generals if you capture them after a battle, and persuade them to join your army.
  • Lore-wise, Olga plays this trope to the letter. She assisted Pozna spies carrying out assassination attempts against her native Atov Federation, after she'd witnessed Atov troops attacking a young woman, and growing disillusioned with her father's army.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted. You'll want to grab a helmet (or any kind of headwear if you have a low Armor skill) as soon as you can, given that you are far from being bullet-spongy otherwise.
• Hero of Another Story: Victoria, the leader of the Valkyrie Female Fighters, who was set to be the main character in the Prequel Spin-Off game Her War, focusing on the early days of the faction. As most developers were let go at the end of 2020 due to the studio's bankruptcy, the game has been postponed indefinitely, as the remaining three developers committed to focus on Freeman only.
• Hollywood Silencer: Played straight both with pistol and rifle silencers. Both make weapons go pew-pew when you attach them to your weapon, regardless of the caliber.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted. Players can carry two primary weapons, a sidearm, and a limited amount of ammunition, first aid kits or grenades that use the same belt inventory slot. AI troops can also wield only a primary weapon, a sidearm (that they are not using though, if they have a primary weapon equipped), and three additional items (night vision goggles, grenades, first aid kits, or an NPC-only grenade launcher).
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Coupled with the above-mentioned A-Team Firing, sometimes you'll be amazed at just how much effort low-level fighters with low Marksmanship values put into missing their targets. Thankfully, you don't need to replenish their ammo at least.
• Intrepid Merchant: You can become this over time, if you decide to make money on buying discounted goods in one settlement, and then selling them in another where there is a demand for said goods (bartenders and village elders can tip you off about these locations for a small fee). This can be taken to another level later, once you have one or several cities, and set up trade convoys with factions you have active trade treaties with.
• Intrepid Reporter: Maxim, who covered the Cherniv Civil War for many years, and was Going for the Big Scoop when decided to go after the Uman Brotherhood. It didn't end well for him. He is also one of the few named characters who canonically dies after the main story, due to stepping on the toes of the local underworld with one of his hit-pieces.
• Karma Houdini: There are surprisingly many of them.
  • Finn, the sadistic mass murderer of the Uman Brotherhood. If you recruit and keep him around until the end of the game, the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue states that he eventually left the island to escape the wrath of the surviving citizens.
  • Dimitro also counts to an extent, after all he's the other named NPC who admitted to kill an unarmed civilian without remorse. Like Finn, he also leaves the island after the main campaign, but for different reasons: he gets disowned by his father due to his failed mission at Leonid's fishing village.
  • The Kostopoli family may also count. Despite Sergey admitting that they were the ones who orchestrated the Civil War, neither Petro's nor Sergey's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue text suggests that the clan was ever brought to justice for sparking the war.
• Keystone Army: Zig-zagged. Should you be incapacitated during battle, a pop-up message appears, stating that your troops have retreated. However, the dialog still allows you to select whether to retreat, retry the battle (with your HP almost completely depleted, though), or order the army to engage without you, thus auto-resolving the encounter.
• Level-Locked Loot: Weapons and armor both have arbitrary level requirements, with better gear equippable with higher Marksmanship and Armor skills, respectively.
• Little Useless Gun: Zig-zagged. Even entry-level pistols deal a respectable damage against early-game enemies, like Looters or lightly armored guerrillas (assuming you can actually land your shots). However, you definitely want to upgrade your arsenal with higher DPS firearms once you take on higher-level enemies, like Terrorists, Cossack Rebels, or the Atov Federation. Using top-tier weaponry is practically required against the Alpha Forces in the endgame.
• Long-Range Fighter: It's recommended to keep around several sniper squads and rifle fireteams in your army, as these fare much better in the mid-game and end-game, and can support your shotgunner, sub-machinegunner and assault rifle squads. Otherwise, trying to close in with a high-level enemy squad late game will usually wipe out your lower-level units.
• Mercenary Units: The island has several mercenary camps, allowing you to hire expensive but well-equipped and well-trained fighters.
• Mook Maker: The various outlaw and terrorist camps dotting the overworld map are basically this, spawning roaming outlaw parties until they are destroyed.
• More Dakka: Played straight unfortunately with the Alpha Forces machinegunners, who can easily wipe out lower-level squads even from a distance, due to their night vision googles and high Marksmanship skills. At least you can also get the same feeling when wielding a light machinegun. Let those bullets fly!
• No Name Given: Although you can name your character, none of the NPCs ever refer to you with it. Even the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue text at the end of the main campaign calls you just "Grand Marshall".
• North Is Cold, South Is Hot: Played straight with the overworld map, with the northwestern region of the island covered in snow, while the southeastern segment being an arid desert.
• One Bullet Clips: Interestingly, this trope was averted in the early-access versions (where the game was actually counting ammo in individual magazines), but has been played straight since the full release. The common ammo pool was probably introduced partly because the game is primarily an Action RPG with FPS battles (rather than a tactical shooter), and partly due to the various issues concerning the original implementation:
  • Unlike other shooters with magazine-based ammo management (like the ARMA-series or Insurgency: Sandstorm), used magazines in Freeman were always discarded upon reload, with the remaining ammo of the replaced magazine going to waste.
  • Players could end up with different amounts of ammo with the same number of magazines equipped, depending on the ammo capacity of their current weapon. For example, equipping four 5.56mm magazines resulted in a total of 80 rounds when using the 20-round-capacity AR-15, but a total of 120 rounds when using the 30-round-capacity SCAR instead.
• One-Man Army: You can easily pull this off with a good weapon and enough ammo. Since the enemy AI cannot sprint like you, it is entirely possible to pick off dozens of enemy troops with a sniper rifle or with an assault rifle with good optics (such as the Groza), as long as you frequently relocate, use the terrain for cover, and keep your distance from the enemy.
• Off with His Head!: You can execute captured prisoners and enemy generals. While this nets you no cash and prevents you from recruiting them as well, executed prisoners increase the compliance of other hostages, making it easier to persuade them to join your party.
• Overworld Not to Scale: As typical to most aRPGs with a Fantasy World Map, locations (like cities or villages), map decoration (like trees) and generals representing armies appear much larger than they actually are.
• Paint the Town Red: Downplayed. While the dead definitely bleed, the blood effects tend to be rather limited.
• Punch-Clock Villain: With the exception of the Uman Brotherhood (and the Atov Federation regime to a certain extent), the troops of all the other main factions are essentially this if you pick a fight them, given that the in-game lore paints them somewhere between good and neutral.
• Psycho for Hire: Finn, one of the Uman Brotherhood generals is a bloodthirsty sociopathic Jerkass, who rejoices in Rape, Pillage, and Burn, executing entire villages and raping captured women For the Evulz. He is also completely willing to join you after capturing him if you prove your worth by plundering 5 villages...
• Permanently Missable Content: If you capture a recruitable enemy general, executing or selling them make them disappear forever. It's quite obvious, but still important to note, given that you get no confirmation pop-up dialogs for these actions.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Your starting stats and equipment are defined by the answers you give during the initial character background quiz, and the manual skill point distribution afterwards, rather than your character's gender. Gameplay-wise, the only difference between male and female characters is that you can only romance companions of the opposite sex.
  • Slightly averted with hirable AI units though. Lower-level female AI units typically have less health than their male counterparts on the same level.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Given the turbulent Slavic Civil War milieu and the high number of warring factions, your army can easily become this if you're open to recruit from all available sources (and frequently persuade your prisoners to join your side regardless of their unit type and stats). Also, given that the 28 recruitable companions come from all factions and sides of life, your tight-knit top brass can also easily qualify for this, with ex-bandits, former terrorists, female guerrillas, cold-blooded mercenaries, civilians and professional soldiers fighting side-by-side with you.
• Rape as Backstory: Surprisingly prevalent: out of the 10 recruitable female companions, this trope is played straight with 3, and zig-zagged with 3 other:
  • Anna, Ludmila and Oksana admit during their conversations to be rape victims.
  • Victoria has almost been raped by Uman terrorists while being in captivity, but has been saved in the last minute by Georgiy, another recruitable companion.
  • Subverted with Miroslava: although she's been sold as a sex slave by the Uman terrorists, her buyer (Vitaly, one of the recruitable Atov companions) turns out to have purchased her merely to be his soul mate, and does not sexually exploit her, much to the girl's surprise.
  • Zig-zagged with Olga: Although she herself has not been assaulted, she turned against her native Atov Federation after preventing a group of Atov troops raping a young girl.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Played straight with the Uman Brotherhood, who rejoice in raping captured young women, slaughtering entire villages, and burning them to the ground For the Evulz.
• Resignations Not Accepted: The backbone of Igor's backstory. He was a member of an elite mercenary group that didn't take kindly of "colleagues" who wanted out of the business. He worked around this by faking his own death.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The two revolvers in the game have high damage and muzzle velocity properties. Their ammo is also relatively inexpensive, but you're likely to loot some of them after almost every fight anyway. All this makes revolvers a viable sidearm option, especially if you have a good Marksmanship attribute and high Pistol skills.
• Romance Arc: Downplayed. Although you can romance certain companions of the opposite sex once your Relationship reaches a certain point, gameplay-wise this only means an extra unlockable dialog option (or two, if you count the subsequently unlocked break-up dialog as well).
• Ruritania: Played straight with Cherniv, based off the impoverished Eastern-European ex-Soviet countries, with an underdeveloped infrastructure mostly limited to small cities and villages. While its location is never clearly identified, in-game conversations with Anastasia, a local history teacher state that the island's native population consisted of Nordic tribes, and Cherniv itself was founded by Slavic tribes who migrated to the island "from the south" somewhere from the East European Plain. This places the island somewhere to the Baltic Sea, White Sea or Barents Sea region.
• Ruthless Modern Pirates: Played with. The northeastern snowy section of the island features a pirate outlaw faction, whose faction flag is a blue-ish recolor of the Jolly Roger. However, while their bases are typically situated relatively close to water, they are still just another variant of the other land-based bandit factions (as the game features no water-based transportation methods).
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Haaken leaves the barbaric Uman Brotherhood as soon as you can prove him that you are just as strong as the terrorists (in other words, you conquered at least one city).
  • Gameplay-wise, your fighters can also play this straight if you let their morale plummet by not replacing their fallen squad members, not rewarding them periodically, or fail to pay them on time...
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Averted, given that most firefights take place well over 50-60 metres (or even more, if you manage to position your snipers properly, or you're using a rifle with a high-magnification scope). The only reason assault rifle squads don't engage at longer distances is because of the terrain and foliage limiting visibility.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Zig-zagged. While shotguns deal high damage at close range (and the Striker-12 also has a high DPS thanks to its revolver mechanism), their advantages are situational at best, and are only viable options during city battles. In most cases, assault rifles outperform them on the field.
• Simultaneous Arcs: Some of the recruitable companions backstories play this straight by intersecting at certain key events of the game's lore. For example, Leonid, Dimitrov and Irina all tell you different sides of the same story: the Atov Federation's conquest of a small fishing village. Leonid successfully led an armed resistance against the invaders, Dimitrov was in charge of the defeated Atov occupation force, while Irina was banished from the village by Leonid because her father had betrayed Leonid's militia at the beginning of the occupation.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Played straight if you outgun the enemy forces: even if they are hopelessly outnumbered, they always either take a stand on the field at the beginning of the battle, or outright charge your lines instead of trying to escape. They only start fleeing once they suffer major losses.
• Storming the Castle: City sieges are essentially this, requiring you to either capture a set of control points or eliminate the defense garrison to take over the city.
• Straw Misogynist: Played straight with the Uman Brotherhood, who seem to harbor immense hatred towards women and consider them little more than mere sex toys. The reasons of this extreme bias are never touched upon (not even their recruitable generals provide any explanation for it), but it still explains lore-wise why the Valkyrie Female Fighters and the Uman wage a Guilt-Free Extermination War against each other.
• Stripperiffic: You can easily dress up your female character and troops with clothes that don't exactly fare as battle dress uniforms. Wardrobe with low armor levels include skinny jeans, miniskirts (paired with knee-high fashion boots), or revealing camisoles and tank tops.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The fight against most factions essentially boils down to this, as the majority of them have their own specific strengths and weaknesses.
  • Atov Federation troops are well-trained and well-armored, with a notable headcount advantage at the start of the campaign. However, they lack heavy support units (like grenadiers).
  • Free Cossacks Army parties excel at close- to mid-range combat with their assault and grenadier troops, but lack long-distance sharpshooters.
  • The Pozna Battalion are the exact opposite of the FCA, with most of their armies consisting of rifle and marksman units, but lacking heavy infantry.
  • Uman Brotherhood armies are large in numbers, experienced, and focus on close- to mid-range combat, but their gear are the worst out of all the factions.
  • Valkyrie Female Fighter units are fairly balanced both skill- and equipment-wise, and cover a wide range of combat roles. However, their soldiers have lower HP than similar male units of the same combat role.
  • Outlaw factions (like bandits, outlaws, rebels, pirates or terrorists) may differ in gear, equipment and skill level, but are typically either lightly-armored or lack long-range units.
  • This trope is averted though with the Chernivkan Front and the Alpha Forces, albeit for the opposite reasons. The Chernivkan Front is meant to be the first main faction that you can defeat, and as such, they have the least number of cities, protected by the weakest regular troops out of all the main factions, with no particular strenghts and weaknesses. On the other hand, the Alpha Forces (appearing one in-game week after the main campaign is completed) are essentially the Demonic Spiders of the game, easily outclassing any other faction in skill and gear, and invading in ridicuously huge numbers, making Zerg Rush the only viable tactics against them.
  • Back in early access, the available vehicles were also built around this trope, with some of them good against infantry, while others geared toward fighting enemy armor. In turn, some of the hired infantry could be levelled up to anti-tank specialists to specifically counter enemy vehicles.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: A recurring quest in villages (and sometimes in cities as well), tasking you to take some locals with you, and level them up in battles.
• The Atoner: Zig-zagged with Sergey. Although he has nothing to do with the Civil War personally, his family sparked the conflict by supplying the Atov Autonomous Region with weapons in the hopes that they'd then declare war against the Republic. Sergey then left his family and joined the war effort to help ending the hostilities, and atone for the sins of his family.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Some of the outlaw factions (specifically the Terrorists and the Cossack Rebels) have a tendency of spawning in ridiculous numbers, even if they don't have any bases left in the area that they overrun. This is especially problematic with the Cossack Rebels, whose marauder parties are easily on par with FCA or Pozna armies (being the most heavily armored outlaw faction of the game), so they can easily steamroll regular factions and even take their cities if their numbers are left unchecked for a couple of in-game days.
• The Horde: The above-mentioned Cossack Rebels, who can easily steamroll their neighboring major factions if their numbers are not cut back from time to time. Played horribly straight with the Alpha Forces as well.
• The Unfought: While players can learn from Sergey that the Civil War was orchestrated by his family of firearms manufacturers, the Kostopoli family is never actually encountered in the game, and there is no way to hunt them down for their evil machinations. This is especially baffling because the island they're operating from is clearly present in the overworld map (although it's impossible to travel there, given the lack of usable sea transportation).
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can definitely play as Cherniv's saviour, helping out villages, cities and neutral factions, sparing outlaw gangs if they're willing to pay up for their lives, and unite the majority of the island without bloodshed, simply by creating alliances with most factions. On a smaller scale, this also applies to your army: fighting carefully with your troops and ensuring that they are in top shape (that is, frequently levelling them up and improving their gear to match their skill cap) can easily result in completing the main campaign with many of the troops you started the game with surviving until the endgame. On the other hand...
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...nothing stops you to get what you want by stealing, extorting or plundering villages, execute prisoners en masse, or to conquer the island through blood, sweat and tears if you wish. Just note that conquering the island by force may be a bit more difficult if you're at war with everybody.
• Villain Protagonist: You can easily be this from the get-go if you select the bandit leader background, and play the above trope straight.
• Walking the Earth: Pretty much what you (and your party) are doing until you get your first city. Averted if you heavily emphasized the city official background during character creation, and thus start the campaign with your own city.
• We Have Reserves: The modus operandi of the Alpha Forces in the endgame, boasting a higher headcount than the other factions of the game combined (!). The fact that they field the best soldiers (both stats- and armor-wise) doesn't help either, so players should go to war against them with the same mentality, and should hire as many fodder troops for distraction as possible.
  • Also applies to the Uman Brotherhood and the Cossack Rebels to a lesser extent. The Brotherhood typically fields the least amount of parties and its men are not that well-equipped, but their armies have the largest headcount out of all the faction parties. The Cossack Rebels on the other hand are roaming around with an impressive amount of medium-sized marauder parties, consisting of 15-40 fighters each.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The game summarizes the remainder of the recruited companion's lives with this once the main mission (uniting the island) is completed.
• Zerg Rush: While you can use careful tactics and positioning to win the day, you can also just simply hire cheap militia troops, and then order them to charge an enemy's position en masse to secure victory by attrition. While this is not a viable early game tactic, once you have built up a solid economy (and especially once the invading Alpha Forces landed in the endgame), militias barely cost anything to replace. Plus, survivors of the rush will gain a lot of experience and can be re-assigned to your better squads.
  • Back in early access, this was also the MO of the Uman Brotherhood, who had a tendency of rushing enemy armies and cities with dozens of cheap scout cars (sometimes without any infantry escort).

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