Had to force myself to stop playing this since I've spent like 24 hours on it in just the week since I bought it which probably isn't good. The game is a lot of fun though, it's still stupid that this isn't just an expansion for Verdun but oh well, people are still playing it 2 years in so I can't complain. Occasionally there were 3 or 4 servers that were all completely full so I had to wait to join, which literally never happened when I was playing Verdun even years ago. In that game and especially in Tanneberg you were lucky to find a server at half capacity on a weekend night, so having even a semblance of an active playerbase here is really nice. The gameplay also balances the back-and-forth trench warfare map design of Verdun with more open objectives and more varied geography in line with Tannenberg and feels like an improvement on both games. The increased verticality is one of the standout aspects, multiple maps have you fighting all the way up, or down, a mountainside (and few have both, as the maps in this game are very long if the attackers push all the way through). The fact that it's set in WWI at all makes it the most interesting multiplayer shooter I've played in years, and while it does feel a little more accessible than Verdun it's still very committed to accurately representing that conflict. You still die (and kill) in one hit, you still get blown up out of nowhere by artillery, you still get gutted with a bayonet from behind while trying to put on your mask since the enemy just dropped mustard gas on your trench, the guns still look, sound, and feel great, LMGs are still rare and very situational, but incredibly fun to use when the time is right, etc etc. My only complaint with the level of immersion is the lack of trench guns, I know they were only used by Americans who didn't fight on the Isonzo front, and the Germans explicitly outlawed them, but you could use them as some of the factions in Verdun. They end up feeling absent here despite the fact that it is more realistic to not include them. Also, all the LMGs are really weird and unwieldy, which I'm sure is accurate to the real Italian and Austro-Hungarian LMGs of the time, but they never feel quite the same as my beloved Lewis gun did in Verdun. Those are minor complaints, of course, and this game is still very good. Hopefully whenever they make another one of these (I guess in the Middle East or the Balkans? They're kinda running out of WWI combat theaters...) they have the good sense to just release it as DLC or an update for Izonso instead of splitting the player base a fourth time, but I doubt we'll be that lucky.

Nach Counter Strike ist Isonzo wohl der FPS der mich bisher am meisten gepackt hat, was ganz interessant ist, da Isonzo eine gegenteilige Philosophie zu Leben im Vergleich zu CS hat.
Während in CS ein Leben sehr wertvoll ist, da man nach dem Tod für die Runde raus ist, hat ein Leben in Isonzo erstmal keinen hohen Wert. Was wirklich gut ist, da Granaten, Scharfschützen, Artillerie, Bombardierungen, Mörserschüsse und Weiteres häufig zu einem unerwarteten Tod führen. Der Wert eines Lebens kommt stattdessen von dem Potential, dass erreicht werden kann. Wenn man direkt nach dem Respawn stirbt kann das etwas nervig sein, aber letztendlich ist es noch kein großer Verlust. Das Ziel ist es eine Position zu erreichen, bei der man großen Einfluss haben kann, indem man zum Beispiel in der Gruppe einen Kontrollpunkt stürmt, oder als Scharfschütze sich an eine günstige Stelle platziert.
Ich finde es wirklich beeindruckend, wie hier ein Spiel entwickelt wurde, welches die Kampfhandlung des ersten Weltkriegs recht authentisch ohne dabei übermäßig frustrierend zu sein.
Ich fand das Level Design schon bei Verdun recht beeindruckend, da die Maps doch recht abwechslungsreich waren, obwohl es eigentlich immer Grabenkämpfe waren. Isonzo ist noch um einiges faszinierender, da allein schon das Konzept von Grabenkämpfen in der Bergen eigentlich ziemlich absurd ist. Mit den ganzen Höhenunterschieden und verwinkelten Pfaden sind die Maps von Isonzo auf einem noch höheren Level.
Das einzige, was mich wirklich frustriert hat, war die Art und Weise, wie neue Ausrüstung freigeschaltet wird, da besonders beim Scharfschützen die Anforderungen teilweise wirklich absurd waren.

Good arcadey, meatgrinding fun.
Can get pretty damn frustrating considering people do not communicate and actual smooth brains take the officer roles. This kind of game asks that you play suicidally to take points; don't worry so much about your own k/d, just push and keep throwing yourself at the wall.

Class progression is a boring grind made worse by needing to do challenges after hitting level prerequisites so you can unlock shit for your loadout. You can expect around 12 hours to fully grind out a class going off my own play time as assault

Don't ask for a comparison to Tannenburg or Verdun, I never tried them. Going off what I've heard, this is generally just a Verdun expansion.