I've been playing this game on and off ever since it came to Steam around late 2017. So I've seen how the game has been progressing and had a pulse on the various shenanigans that followed.
Developed by Anvil Games, a small studio based in the "country" of Malta. It was formed by Julian and Andrew Farrugia, who supposedly helped develop the Mount & Blade: Napoleonic Wars DLC back in the day. Developing the idea of "Holdfast" as a spiritual successor of sorts.
A fun game, all things considered, and really the only blackpowder era FPS game where servers are naturally populated most days of the week. However, even despite having tons of hours in the game, I must concede that it still has a while to go to fully live up to its predecessor. For the past few years, they have been wasting precious resources, time, and goodwill on chasing inessential ventures rather than focusing on the real impact aspects of the game itself.
This period of misadventures started around 2021, after they released the "Kingdom of Italy" update. Adding in basically a "Who?" faction before other bigger players in the conflict, like Austria, Spain, and the Ottomans. Once that was done, the updates trickled to one, maybe two inconsequential patches for the next year and a half. Going radio silent as they pooled their meager manpower into developing an entirely new mode set in a different era.
Eventually, they released their World War One gamemode in February of 2022. Quite the shock to many since one look at the engine showed that it was already struggling to simulate Napoleonic Era Warfare. How would this small-ass team, which still hadn't even fully developed the 1800s sides of things, take on the task of making a mode about a period about ten times more complex functionally with all they had available?
Well, truthfully, past the initial hype, surge of numbers, and optimism, they couldn't. On launch, it was decently enjoyable for what it was, but a few months in and the playcount for the WWI servers began to decline rapidly. There just wasn't enough to make it a real and fun portrayal of the First World War. So many things were still missing and would need to be added on later for it to even rival things like Verdun or Beyond the Wire, let alone Battlefield One. The game that they have been mirroring along with Dice in general, given how they redesigned the old charming UI to match the "Modern" ones, seen in those games during an update.
Of course, they knew it was barebones, but don't worry. They would keep developing it, just look at this
roadmap for 2022! Promising about 15 different things before year's end. Only about two of those things would actually be seen in any timely manner. Austria finally being added, just barely making it to the cut-off in December. Everything else in that grand announcement had them biting off more than they could chew since, for now, they would have attention split between two different games, essentially. Unnecessarily increasing the workload for a mode that over half the dedicated playerbase either didn't play or hated.
It would take the middle of 2023 for them to add in more real content like the howitzer, new maps, along with a full revamp of the Napoleonic Mode, but when I say revamp, I mainly talk about the exterior presentation of the game, since gameplay changes themselves were few and far between. You know things like the archaic melee, class balance, exploit patching, etc. All of that seems to just be on the back burner for now, with only mild tweaks here and there as the rest of 2023 and most of 2024 were spent on NOT focusing on anything that wasn't easy cosmetic changes. New badges, DLC for that Ridley Scott movie, DLC for weapon skins, whatever they could do to avoid fixing the core issues like making melee not terrible or giving some attention to the languishing Naval mode, which until the upcoming 2025 update, hasn't been looked at since 2019. A real sour spot for me since it's the only good age of sail anything on the market right now. The single reason I care somewhat about the game's development still.
Now, as of 2025, they have been getting a bit better in their deliberation on how they develop the game. Finally, improving and making optimization not absolutely terrible for people with low-end PCs. A massive issue since the early days. Probably should have been looked at a long time ago, but better late than never, I guess. They still are holding on to the WWI pipedream despite it being mostly a "flop", nobody plays it anymore except for one dedicated regiment, but rarely will you see servers populated. It wouldn't be so maddening if I also didn't know it was splitting an already stretched team while also diverting resources from the main game itself.
There's still a lot more I could say, especially about how the regiment side of things has stagnated, and the official Discord is holding them down to the opinions of the 1% No-lifers who don't want anything to ever change because that would force them to learn things past picking Guard or Officer and abusing "exploits" to stomp newbs like a discount Mordhou. It's a damn shame since this game COULD be so great if AGS wasn't so slothful and apathethic most of the time. I know they're an "Indie" team, but others with similar team limitations have done more with less, faster. Right now, an air of desperation can be smelt, so the future is uncertain, but maybe things could turn around for the better before all the players from this cross-platform Hail Mary leave.
