Enlisted explained: how the free-to-play WWII squad shooter actually works

By William Cooper, responsible editor · Published 21 September 2026 · Written for BRIGÁDA 972 s.r.o. · Sources · Corrections policy

Most online shooters give you one soldier. Enlisted gives you a squad: you control one soldier directly, the rest are run by the game, and when your soldier falls you carry on as the next one. Almost everything that feels different about the game follows from that single decision. This page explains the mechanic, what a match actually looks like, how matchmaking decides who you meet, and — the part marketing pages tend to skip — what the game asks you to pay for.

What Enlisted is

Enlisted is an online first-person shooter set in the Second World War, developed by Darkflow Software and published by Gaijin Entertainment — the same publisher behind War Thunder, and built on the same in-house Dagor engine family. It is free to download and free to play, with optional paid content described further down this page.

The game ran through closed and open testing from 2020 onwards and left that testing period with a 1.0 release in April 2024. It is an online game first and last: there is no story campaign, and practice against bots exists mainly so you can learn controls and maps rather than as a mode you would play for its own sake.

It is worth being clear about what Enlisted is not. It is not a hardcore simulator with hour-long rounds and enforced realism, and it is not a small-team arena shooter either. It sits between those two, and the squad mechanic is the reason.

The squad mechanic, which is the whole point

You do not pick a class and spawn as one soldier. You assemble a lineup of squads before the match and bring them into the battle one at a time. Inside a squad, you personally control one soldier; the others are controlled by the game and follow simple standing orders — follow me, hold this position, and so on.

Three consequences follow, and they shape every match:

• Dying costs you less, and means less. When the soldier you were controlling is killed, control passes straight to another soldier in the same squad. There is no respawn queue and no walk back from base. You lose a body, not your presence on the objective.
• The map is far busier than the player count suggests. Because each human is fielding a squad, the number of soldiers moving around an objective is a multiple of the number of people playing. That is what produces the crowded, noisy feel the game is known for.
• Squads run out. Once every soldier in a squad is gone, you deploy the next squad from your lineup. Losing squads carelessly is the real cost of dying, and it is what eventually pushes a team off an objective.

Be realistic about the AI soldiers. They will move where you tell them, hold a position, and shoot at enemies they can see. They do not plan, they do not read the objective, and they will not save a badly chosen fight. Treat them as extra rifles and extra lives, not as substitute teammates.

What a squad can be

Squads are specialised. Riflemen are the general-purpose line squad; assaulters carry automatic weapons for close work; snipers are small squads built around range. Vehicle squads are a special case — a tank crew or an aircraft crew is effectively one vehicle plus the people needed to run it.

The one role that new players routinely undervalue is the engineer. Engineers can build, and the thing they build that matters most is a forward rally point, which lets your squads deploy near the fighting instead of walking to it. A team with engineers building rally points behind cover will usually beat a team of better individual shooters who are all walking.

What a match looks like

Most matches are one of two shapes. In the attack-and-defend shape, one team must take a series of objectives in order while the clock runs down, and the defending team wins by simply not letting that happen in time. In the symmetrical shape, neither side is the attacker, and objectives can be taken and retaken by either team.

Alongside those there are practice matches against bots and custom matches, which are useful for learning a map without costing anyone a round.

Progression, battle rating and who you get matched against

For most of its life Enlisted split progression by campaign: you levelled up Moscow, or Normandy, or Berlin, more or less separately. A major update in 2024 replaced that structure with a single unified progression and battle-rating matchmaking, so that equipment rather than campaign choice decides who you meet.

The practical effect of battle rating is the part worth internalising. Your equipment puts you in a band, and the game tries to match you with players in the same band. So unlocking better weapons does not make your matches easier — it moves you up against people who also have better weapons. Many players deliberately keep a lower-rated lineup because they prefer the games it produces. Neither choice is wrong, and neither is a shortcut.

The exact number of bands, and the current faction lineup, are the kind of detail an update can change. Check the official site rather than trusting any third-party page, including this one, for the current numbers.

What it actually costs

Downloading and playing Enlisted costs nothing, and the squads, weapons and vehicles reached through ordinary progression are genuinely reachable without paying. That is the honest part of “free to play”.

The other half of the model is a store. It sells premium squads, premium vehicles and weapons, a premium account that increases what you earn per match, the paid track of a seasonal pass, and cosmetics. What you are mostly buying is time: a shortcut past grind, plus access to specific pieces of equipment.

Whether that crosses the line into a competitive advantage is a genuine argument among players, and this page is not going to pretend it is settled. Premium squads sit inside the same battle-rating system as everything else, so buying one also pushes you up the ladder. If you want to know what a particular item does before spending, look at it in the in-game store, where the contents are listed. We quote no prices here because they change and because a stale price is a misleading one.

Where it runs and what you need

On PC the game is distributed through Steam and through the publisher’s own launcher. On console it is a download from the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S stores. Cross-play between the three is supported.

On PC, expect to create or link a publisher account even if you install through Steam — the progression is tied to that account, not to the storefront. We are not reproducing system requirements here, because they are exactly the kind of figure that goes stale; the store listing carries the current ones.

How it compares, if you are coming from something else

Who it suits, and who it does not

It probably suits you if you want a Second World War setting with infantry, tanks and aircraft in the same match; if you like objective play more than duelling; if you want to be useful to a team without having excellent aim; or if you want something substantial to play without paying first.

It probably does not suit you if you want a single-player or story experience; if AI-controlled soldiers on the battlefield bother you on principle; if you dislike progression systems where better equipment brings tougher opponents; or if you want a game with no store in it at all.

Questions people ask

Is it genuinely free?

Downloading and playing is free, and progression is reachable without paying. There is a store, and it sells time and specific equipment. Both of those things are true at once.

Do I need an account with the publisher?

On PC, expect to create or link one even when installing through Steam, because progression is tied to the publisher account.

Is there a single-player campaign?

No. There is practice against bots and there are custom matches, but the game is built around online play.

Can I play with friends on another platform?

Cross-play between PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S is supported. Cross-play behaviour and any opt-out settings can change between updates, so confirm before you plan around it.

Is it pay to win?

Players disagree, and we are not going to settle it with a made-up verdict. The factual points are: paid content exists, it mostly saves time, and it sits inside the same battle-rating matchmaking as everything else, so buying stronger equipment also raises the level of opponent you face.

What we could not verify

Sources, and what takes precedence

This page was written from the publisher’s own published material about the game. Where anything here diverges from what the publisher says, the publisher’s information prevails — it is their game, they change it, and this page is a snapshot dated 21 September 2026.

• Official Enlisted site, including update and patch notes — enlisted.net
• Gaijin Entertainment, the publisher — gaijin.net
• The Steam store listing, for platform details and current system requirements — store.steampowered.com
• The in-game store, for what paid content contains and what it costs today

More detail on how we choose and check sources is on the sources page and in the editorial policy. If you think something on this page is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and log the change on the corrections page.

Published 21 September 2026 by William Cooper for BRIGÁDA 972 s.r.o.. Illustrations on this page are original SVG diagrams produced for zlatina.online; they contain no material from the game. Last reviewed 21 September 2026.