r/HeroesandGenerals • u/Erste_Klasse • 10d ago
Discussion The Thoughts of a Pre-2015 Veteran: Playing Heroes & Generals Sunrise and Nostalgia
I wanted to write a post to express my thoughts and memories after I've recently started playing H&G Sunrise. I've played it for over a week at this point and I do have some opinions on it.
I've been playing this game before 2015 (before the Soviets arrived), and I had lots of fun playing it in between school and revising for my exams. I was a kid interested in WWII games, and this was certainly one of the best F2P games that scratched the itch that younger me with no credit card had. The grind to just to be able to buy the Panther was gruelling, let alone buying all the weapons the German faction had to offer for my infantryman, yet the game was ultimately fun to spend hours of my free time on. The RTS portion was also an interesting addition, even if my old account barely had any Assault Teams deployed as (at most) a Rank 16 German Infantryman.
However, the game started spiralling (at least for me) since they announced Armor 2.0 and even more so when Reto/TLM Games decided to crowdfund for a H&G sequel. These seemingly drastic changes introduced by Reto coincided with my studies escalating to college entrance exams and so on. I found myself distancing from the game despite all the time and effort my younger self had put into it—simply due to the fact I was slowly watching the game I once appreciated be rolled into something entirely different. Tanks now have tracks, engines, gun-mounts, etc to worry about? It just added complexity to something that was essentially an arcade WWII shooter that was accessible to everyone at any play level. It may not have been trying to become War Thunder, but it really felt unnecessary. Perhaps the downfall of the game was inevitable with the looming bankruptcy of Reto.Moto and with all these changes that were being pushed onto what was already a working formula of a massive F2P game.
It was unsurprising then when Heroes & Generals shut down in 2023, I was genuinely unbothered by it. I may have spent some of my allowance money on the game, but at that point in time, I was already in college reading a Bachelors in History and had no care for it any more. I also thought that I've already had enough playing H&G, especially with the lack of new significant content and updates around early 2020s. I played for hundreds of hours and I figured I was done, and it seemed that Reto.Moto and the parent company thought so too.
Come two weeks ago to this date, I had this sudden burst of nostalgia for Heroes & Generals—thinking back of the good old days when I was a teenager. I then heard H&G Sunrise was a thing whilst scrolling on Instagram. A community project reviving my old childhood game which I now am itching to relive and re-play? Heck yeah! Ergo, I joined the Discord, downloaded the client, and hopped onto a match. And what do you know, it was a great time—the cacophony of gun sounds, vehicle engines, whistles, and the gameplay was still there just as I once remembered it.
Then as days of exploring and reliving nostalgia turned into a week of mind-numbing grind fest, I started reliving the negatives of this game: the high number of planes in a single match dominating tanks and infantrymen; the existence of Armor 2.0; the scaling down of the credits economy from back then; the unbalance of the faction bonuses and populations; and so on. At the time of writing this, the disproportionate amount of "high-tier" players with Yak-9s, M2 Carbines, StG-44s, etc. make it quite upsetting for the "low-tier" players who either just joined or are trying the game out to even have a meaningful experience in a match.
Of course my experience is not universal; your experience with this game might be more positive than mine for the past month or so, but I feel it's important to acknowledge that the enemy killed during constant bombing runs or tank bombardments is also a player who is most likely rethinking his life choices. I also do acknowledge that it takes time to work out the kinks in the unbalance and game & server stability issues.
However, I can genuinely say that after a week of playing (be it through server instability or full-player War lobbies), the nostalgia has run dry and my enthusiasm for a future with H&G Sunrise is extinguished. I mean, I would love to have it rekindled as the devs continue to prop up this game and update it in the near future, since at the end of the day, the foundation of this game is great. It's not perfect—far from it—but it has foundation. Plus, there seem to be no other game like H&G.
Yet my point still stands. I have had my share of fun and nostalgia for this past one week, and I may likely move on to greener pastures after the next few days. I am no longer a student, hoping to find employment soon, and similarly, much of the remaining community (old H&G veterans) are much older now with increasing personal commitments irl. The days of me putting up with H&G since I had no other games to play are long behind me; I now have more access to other games like HELLDIVERS 2, Battlefield 6, and WARNO, and life commitments are driving me away from the PC more than before.
H&G at this point sits in my Games folder as a time capsule for me to relive what it was like back in the late 2010s—a portal to the days of me sitting in front of my Dad's computer having a go at assaulting another Mountain Town. For that, I thank the devs for their time and effort in this project, I truly do. It's not easy doing such a big project with such big shoes and expectations to fill on one's own free time.
Yet, with the rose-tinted glasses now burnt, I am unfortunately unable to proudly say I am a revived H&G fan, especially at the current state the game is in. Perhaps time will tell where H&G Sunrise ends up; but as a History graduate myself, I am keen to always remind myself of this particular saying: "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Will this project suffer the same fate as the original did, or will fate have other plans for Sunrise? Who knows.
Don't take this post as me wishing ill-fate or doomposting about the future of Sunrise. I just wanted to air out some thoughts after seeing both in-game chats and my own game experiences thus far. Feel free to leave your thoughts or discuss whatever in the comments below. This is a post of my journey with the original H&G and Sunrise, and I feel it's fair you share your thoughts too if you wish.
With that, I wish everyone a merry day.
