IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles

IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles built on the success of the first game and broadened its scope with a range of additional World War II fronts and aircraft, including fighting in Finland and other sections of the Eastern Front. It substantially expanded the roster of German, Soviet, and Finnish types and added new campaigns built on a more refined flight and damage model. This installment became the foundation for the entire subsequent line of expansions, including the Aces Expansion Pack and Pacific Fighters, which gradually turned IL-2 Sturmovik into a sprawling platform rather than a single game.

Compared to the first game, Forgotten Battles improved the visuals, fixed a number of shortcomings in the flight modeling, and added a more complex dynamic campaign that responded more effectively to the player's successes and failures in individual missions. The multiplayer component became one of the pillars of the game's popularity, as it allowed large-scale online battles with dozens of players on both sides of the front and also supported organized flying squadrons with a stable membership base. It was precisely these community servers and organized squadrons that gave the game a long lifespan well beyond a typical game's cycle — an unusual feat for simulators at the time — and many such communities kept running for years afterward.

The audio design and the atmosphere of combat over European battlefields stayed true to the spirit of the previous game, only with a higher degree of detail and authenticity in the engines and onboard weapons, including recognizable sounds for individual types of machine guns and cannons. Forgotten Battles is still cited today as one of the high points of the classic IL-2 Sturmovik era, meaning the period before later installments moved to a new game engine. For enthusiasts of World War II aviation history, it represented — and still represents — one of the most comprehensive simulation experiences of its time, even though the controls and interface feel archaic today and require a degree of patience to learn.

Why play it: For fans of aviation history looking for one of the most comprehensive simulation experiences of the classic IL-2 Sturmovik era, even though the controls and interface now demand patience.