Commandos: Origins Review

Commandos: Origins arrives as Claymore Game Studios' attempt to revive one of PC gaming's foundational tactics series, a prequel set before the events of the original 1998 game. With 1,843 reviews sitting at 79% positive, the reception tells a story of a launch marred by real technical problems, followed by a gradual, still ongoing recovery in player sentiment.

A launch defined by crashes and lost progress

The most severe and consistent complaint in the review sample concerns the game's condition at release. Multiple April 2025 reviews describe crashes that corrupted save files entirely, with one detailed reviewer explaining they nearly wrote a positive review before a crash rendered every save unusable, forcing them to restart from scratch. Others report stuttering and frame drops on hardware that should comfortably exceed the game's requirements, alongside AI and pathing bugs that could break missions outright, patrolling enemies freezing in place, alarms failing to trigger correctly, and end-of-mission statistics reporting entirely incorrect information. For a genre built around careful, save-scum-friendly planning, bugs that corrupt saves specifically undercut the format's core appeal.

The tactical core still works

Set against the technical rockiness, the fundamental gameplay loop draws real praise from reviewers willing to look past launch issues. The tension of positioning specialist commandos, snipers, spies, sappers, to eliminate or bypass armed patrols without triggering alarms is intact and, for series veterans, genuinely nostalgic. A new coordinated command mode, allowing players to queue simultaneous actions across multiple commandos rather than acting one at a time, is specifically praised as a meaningful addition that wasn't present in the earliest games, giving players a tool to clear groups of enemies at once rather than relying purely on one-at-a-time stealth kills. Several reviewers describe the difficulty as appropriately punishing, closely mirroring the challenge of the original trilogy rather than the more forgiving pacing some modern tactics games favour.

Missing the depth of later series entries

A recurring and more nuanced criticism comes specifically from fans who grew up with Commandos 2: Men of Courage and Commandos 3, rather than the earliest games in the series. These reviewers point out that Origins strips back systems those later entries introduced: there's no inventory system for carrying and managing collected items, no ability to pick up weapons or clothing from downed enemies, and underwater mechanics, including diving, underwater mines, and environmental hazards, are absent entirely, replaced with a simplified "stealth swim" limited to specific shore access points. One particularly detailed review frames this as the game choosing to emulate the more primitive first-game formula rather than building on the series' most elaborate later achievements, calling the result "a hollow shell" of what longtime fans hoped for, even while still logging over 30 hours of play.

An unfavourable shadow from Mimimi Games

Several reviewers explicitly measure Origins against Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Desperados III, and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, the celebrated spiritual successors developed by the now-closed Mimimi Games. The comparison is consistently unfavourable: reviewers describe Origins as feeling less polished, slower to load, and more limited in its command systems, while acknowledging that Origins is constrained by being a direct revival of an older formula rather than a fully modern reinvention. More than one reviewer explicitly mourns the closure of Mimimi Games in this context, framing Origins as an adequate but disappointing torch-bearer for the genre in their absence.

Writing and presentation feel thin

Beyond mechanics, several reviewers note the game's narrative framing is minimal, missions feel disconnected from one another with little overarching story beyond the general war effort, in contrast to the more structured campaigns of Desperados III. Voice acting and mission introductions are described by more than one longtime fan as blander than the original trilogy's, which several remember fondly for its distinct character work despite its age and technical limitations.

Signs of meaningful improvement since launch

Reviews from later in 2025 and into 2026 paint a noticeably calmer picture than the April launch window. Recent reviewers report having no major technical issues, describing lingering problems as minor annoyances, an interior camera quirk in one late mission, occasional frame drops when using enemy vision cones, rather than the crash-heavy experience defining the earliest reviews. Sentiment in this later window skews strongly positive, with several reviewers explicitly recommending the game as a satisfying modern take on the classic formula, suggesting the post-launch patch cycle has done real work to stabilise the experience.

Price and playtime

On value, reviewers are split along familiar lines. Several note the campaign runs long, with completionist playthroughs stretching well past 100 hours for players chasing pacifist runs and optional objectives across every mission, and a handful of the most enthusiastic reviewers report replaying the campaign multiple times. Others push back on the asking price specifically, arguing that a game built on a decades-old formula, with a launch as rocky as this one, doesn't justify a premium price tag regardless of how much content it contains. A small number of reviewers mention the optional objectives specifically as a weak point: unlike in many tactics games, completing them here often provides no tangible reward, and in at least one case an "optional" objective sits directly in the player's unavoidable path through a level, undermining the sense of meaningful choice the format is meant to offer.

Final Verdict

Commandos: Origins delivers a genuine, challenging return to the tactical stealth gameplay that built its series' reputation, and for longtime fans of the original trilogy specifically, that's likely to be enough. It launched in a rough state that damaged its reputation and cost it real goodwill, and it consciously omits systems that fans of the series' later, more ambitious entries will miss. With most of its technical issues now reportedly behind it, it's a solid, if imperfect, tribute to a beloved series, one that plays it safer than genre rivals from Mimimi Games but still delivers the core tension that made Commandos worth remembering in the first place.