Welcome back, soldier. It’s time once again to defend the ancient city of Palmyra from the terrorist savages. It won’t be easy. Actually, I’m sure this campaign will be at least double as painful – so make sure the quick save button is ready to see some heavy action. Syrian Warfare: Return to Palmyra is an expansion with five more missions for you to battle out in the Middle East. While it’s still the same old war, you will control a different group of men this time around.
Tiger Force
Instead of playing as the Police officer Anwar turned soldier from the main campaign, you play as the elite force “Tigers” with Suhail-Al-Hassan in the lead. He is a no-nonsense trooper who has no time for jokes or emotions, unlike Anwar. This makes him a bit of a stiff, but as it is, he is the right man for the job. While you do play as an elite force, you are crucially undermanned throughout the campaign. Frustratingly so at times, when the map scripting decides to throw a bunch of tanks your way when you are low on anti-tank weapons.
Overall, the scripting, the ongoing quests, and the objectives that pop up during the game are as great, maybe even better than the original campaign. However, since you are short on both men and equipment the “war” aspect never hits like in Syrian Warfare. On the hardest setting (realistic), you are essentially not allowed to lose any men, because every single soldier is worth his weight in gold. It’s that damn difficult, which plays into one of my most loathed gameplay segments of all – the forced save scumming. I have no idea how you are supposed to do any of these missions without saving or loading, as Return to Palmyra loves to throw you surprises when you think you are done with the mission. They are always tougher than the starting objectives too, so if you have taken any casualties of any crucial units, you might as well just say your farewells.
Another thing that I think made this campaign a lot more frustrating than it should have been is that the enemy got ATGM (Anti-tank guided missile) now too. It makes advancing with any vehicles, or helicopters, hilariously painful – especially when it comes to choppers. They have no defenses against this weapon system. With a vehicle, you can always pop smoke and hope for the best, at least. An issue with his, beyond their ability to nuke your units from our dear Earth is that they don’t play by the same rules. While your units come with four missiles before needing to resupply, these assholes can fire as many missiles as they want. Not the best design, and the same goes for artillery and the like. It makes everything long-range needlessly unfunny (& unfair) to handle in battle.
In conclusion
While Syrian Warfare: Return to Palmyra gives you more of the good stuff, sadly, I found some of the missions just a bit frustrating thanks to the things mentioned above. It’s not unplayable, and the battles are cool and entertaining when they flow, but compared to the original campaign there are way too many show-stoppers to be completely enjoyable. The last mission is hell on earth defined. Your mission is to capture an airport, and the terrorists are heavily defended with all kinds of stuff to ruin your day. Endless arty, and anti-air missiles, how much joy! Still, I recommend the DLC, if you can find it for cheap. It’s more of the good RTS gameplay from Syrian Warfare, and what more does one need?
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 