Now's the time to try Broken Arrow, Command and Conquer's most brutal successor

Balancing games is important. It's no fun if one unit is overpowered, one character deals twice as much damage as another, or something is plain broken. That goes double for RTS games like Broken Arrow, which attempt to simulate army movements and intense warzones with equal parts efficiency and accuracy. However, Broken Arrow had a bit of a broken launch (nominative determinism at its finest there), receiving mixed reviews on Steam. Developer Steel Balalaika has been playing catch-up since. The latest attempt to listen to player feedback is Broken Arrow Patch 1.0.9, which rebalances pretty much all of the game's factions.

This game has a lot of potential, even if it's already pretty damn good. Ed described it as a more realistic Command and Conquer in our (mostly glowing) Broken Arrow review - high praise indeed. But the numerous bugs and balance issues held it back. Broken Arrow Patch 1.0.9 aims to fix that.

If Broken Arrow wants to be considered one of the best RTS games, it will need to keep on top of these issues and respond to player feedback quickly. If Patch 1.0.9 is anything to go by, though, the devs are on top of the complaints and trying to deploy as many fixes as possible.

First off, Steel Balalaika reminds players that it is continuing to work on server stability, its anti-cheat system, balance, surrender options, and leaving penalties. However, this patch alone adds the ability to restart missions and change map ambients to different times of day, among other quality-of-life changes.

There are also fixes that make the gold medal achievable in four campaign missions, but the biggest changes are the balance shifts. There are numerous tweaks to coastal troops, motorized infantry, guard tanks, special operation forces, armored brigade, stryker cavalry regiment, airborne infantry, and mechanized infantry. We'd be here all day if I listed all the changes, so you can check them out in the patch notes here.

This patch doesn't turn Broken Arrow into a perfect game, but it's a start to fixing some of its most serious problems. I recommend trying it out if you're into strategy games, and one day I hope it will be worthy of a place on our list of the best tank games. As long as the devs continue with the amount of support they're currently providing, it shouldn't take too long before Broken Arrow is mentioned in the same breath as World in Conflict or Warno.

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