The missions themselves are quite challenging - perhaps a little too challenging for newbies in the very beginning. Enemies are typically barricaded behind well-planned and secure fortifications that require some brainpower to break into. You'll use all of the items, weapons, and ammunition that you scrounge from enemy corpses and containers, along with every soldier's stance and bearing available. Patience is a requisite of anyone who wants to play this one, as you'll typically spend most of your time crawling on the ground in sneak mode, setting up ambushes, or waiting for an enemy to expose himself to your sniper fire. Running and gunning your way to the goal will never work, even at the start of the game.
Missions are extremely long.
Even the first adventure, against a raider fortress set up in a conquered tribal camp, takes well over an hour to get through as you become accustomed to the game engine and gameplay. This setting is the default, and it allows all characters to move simultaneously with the expenditure of action points for all endeavors other than running and walking. Continuous turn-based play is an exciting alternative to the other options, but at the same time it eliminates a lot of the game's tactical element in favor of manual dexterity and mastering the keyboard hotkeys. Thankfully, you can switch back and forth between gameplay modes at any time. Everything is drawn with highly-detailed 2D tiles, albeit with some Direct3D support.