"Gunsmithing to lose yourself in, wall-hacking AI to fight"
About
GROUND BRANCH is a first-person tactical shooter from a MicroProse-published studio staffed by veterans of the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. You build an operator from the boots up, assemble weapons attachment by attachment, then clear objectives slowly and deliberately, solo, in co-op, or in PvP. The draw is the mil-sim sandbox: no health regen crutches, lethal exchanges, and scenarios you set up yourself. After roughly a decade in Early Access it left that status in 2026, shipping with a two-mission campaign prologue, Terrorist Hunt-style PvE, night-vision operations, and Steam Workshop mod support.
Verdict
There is a genuinely good tactical shooter buried in here, and the moment you start layering optics and grips onto a rifle you feel why people have stuck around for years. The trouble is that 1.0 arrives with enemy AI that peers through walls and snaps to your head, a campaign that stops after two missions with no friendly AI, and performance that runs worse than it used to on a bigger install. Bring your own squad and treat it as a sandbox and it can still deliver. As the finished product a decade of waiting was building toward, it falls short, and the price of admission buys promises more than content.
You'll like it if …
- +you'd spend an evening perfecting a loadout before ever firing it
- +you treat it as a sandbox and bring your own squad of humans
- +slow, communication-heavy PvE is your idea of a good night
You'll dislike it if …
- −you want a finished single-player campaign with commandable teammates
- −erratic, wall-hacking enemy AI kills the immersion for you
- −you expect a 1.0 to run cleaner than its Early Access builds
Breakdown
- +Gunplay and the attachment system are the standout, with builds that reward tinkering
- +Deliberate, plan-first firefights punish running and gunning the way the genre intends
- −Enemy AI shoots through walls, sees in pitch dark, and teleports across the map
- −Difficulty lurches between braindead and instant-kill aimbot with no consistency
- −Movement feels stiff, and door interactions and camera response fight you
- +Weapon and operator customization runs deep enough to sink hundreds of hours into loadouts alone
- +PvE, PvP, and co-op modes plus Workshop mods keep the sandbox open-ended
- −Content has crawled for years: expect a couple of new maps and a gun or two over long stretches
- −The 1.0 campaign is a two-mission prologue, with the rest promised in later drops
- +As a sandbox it lets you stage your own scenarios rather than lean on scripted story
- −The launch campaign ships without friendly AI, gutting the squad-command fantasy it was built on
- −AI-generated voiceovers land badly with longtime players
- +Some players report smooth, high framerates on their setups
- −Image stays blurry even maxed out, and scope optics have been a known blur problem for years
- −Audio mixing is muddy and directional cues can't be trusted
- −Performance regressed at 1.0 with stutter on gunfire and grenades
- −The install ballooned from around 40GB to over 90GB with little visible return
- +Menu design looks the part before you start using it
- −The mission-select board glitches and the command wheel drops inputs
- −Crashes, limbs clipping through geometry, and AI stuck in walls persist
- −Controller support is partial and rough
- −Onboarding is close to nonexistent for a 1.0 release
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