World War II was one of, if not the most definitive event of the 20th century. It was a clash unlike any seen before – a war of technology and most importantly one of ideology. And hopefully, we’ve learned our lesson as a species and collectively agree never to do it again. So what better way to memorialize the event than by making several video games about it?
Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare is a mobile cover-based shooter where you play as a nameless grunt plunged into the chaos of World War II. You’ll fight on the beaches, the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, on the hills, and you’ll never surrender. Seriously, if the Allies had more soldiers like your guy, I think the war would’ve been over in a month. Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare is available on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.
This is a simple and surprisingly relaxing shooter, thanks to its automated movement (kind of like a rail shooter, really) and low difficulty. If, however, you’d like a taste of what’s to come or want to explore more of the game without fully committing, this guide’s for you. Before we begin, though, I should warn you that while ads in the game aren’t as intrusive as those in other games, you’ll need to watch ads to make the most progress.
In this beginner’s guide to Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare, we’ll be covering:
- Boot Camp – the game’s basics. The game does have a quick tutorial, but it doesn’t teach you everything
- The Armory – progressing and getting stronger. We’ll cover topics like getting new gear, upgrading the stuff you have, and getting more soldiers.
- Funding The War – where to get the resources you need to fund your war effort.
If you’re looking for a speedy breakdown of the game, feel free to skip to the “Quick Tips” subsections.
Boot Camp
Every soldier needs to run through the basics before being deployed. While Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare does have a tutorial, it consists of little but “hold here to shoot the guys” while glossing over some of the game’s other concepts, hence this expanded basics section.
Quick Tips:
- Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare is a cover shooter, meaning your character will automatically dip into cover when not firing. This is very important – don’t make yourself easy to hit!
- When aiming at enemies, your exposure bar will fill up. Once it’s full, the next shot that an enemy fires will hit you. Be sure to duck back into cover to refresh the exposure bar!
- Enemies will also take cover, but they’re not very good at it. Some of their body parts will still be exposed even when they hide.
- When moving through a stage, your character is invulnerable.
- Every enemy in the game follows a pattern of hide – shoot – do nothing – repeat. This makes individual combat trivially easy. In the case of multiple enemies, simply wait for when they’re all in the “nothing” state to counterattack.
- You have three gun types in the game – an SMG, a sniper rifle, and a machine gun. Your character will always switch to the required weapon type for the mission.
- You’ll automatically reload when you’re out of ammo. You can also manually reload by tapping the reload icon on the side.
- Make use of destructible objects. Vehicles and barrels can explode, taking out a large number of enemies, while toxic materials can leak out and deal continuous damage to foes caught in their AOE.
- Grenades do a ton of AOE damage, but you need to either watch ads or pay gold to replenish them.
- Medkits can be used to replenish lost health while in the field. Like grenades, you need to pay gold or watch ads to replenish your stock.
Cover
Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare is a cover shooter, meaning that your character will huddle into cover whenever he’s not shooting at enemies. While you’re in cover, you can’t take damage, because your enemies are terrible shots who don’t think of flanking you or using explosives.
You can literally leave the game running as long as you’re in cover, and your enemies won’t be able to hit you. Do, however, remember that you have to duck into cover to be invulnerable. This is very easy to forget, especially in levels where you have to use a sniper or a machine gun. To help you determine if it’s safe to peek out or not, you can use the exposure bar (my term) which appears as a red exclamation point while you’re aiming.
The exposure bar rapidly builds up when you’re aiming and out of cover. Once it’s full, the next shot that an enemy fires will hit you. Be sure to keep an eye on how exposed you are and duck into cover if things get dangerous!
Note that enemies will use cover too. However, they’re not as good at it as you…
…and it’s very easy to hit enemies when they hide or reload, though if you’re going for headshots, you’ll still have to wait.
Lastly, cover only applies during playable sections. If your character moves through a stage’s transitions, they’ll be invulnerable while changing position.
Patterns
Every enemy in the game follows a specific pattern, allowing you to defeat them without taking a scratch.
Most enemies – like the one in the image above – have an easy pattern of:
- Duck in cover.
- Peek and fire a few shots.
- Hang around a few seconds before retreating into cover.
- Repeat.
This means that you can reliably kill most enemies without taking damage if you just wait for them to finish their attack cycle before opening fire. And since this pattern occurs even when there are multiple enemies on screen, victory is simply a matter of waiting for all of them to enter their “cooldown” phase.
Remember – you’re not being timed here. Patience is the key to perfect clears.
Weapon Types
There are three weapons you can bring into battle:
- SMGs are fully automatic (well, most of them are) close-quarters weapons. All SMGs feature good damage, fire rate, and magazine size.
- Sniper rifles are for long-range engagements. These trade magazine size for pure punching power and accuracy.
- Machine guns are meant for handling hordes of enemies, with a fire rate and magazine size surpassing that of SMGs.
There are several guns of each type that you can equip, each with its own stats.
These guns can also be upgraded to improve their performance. We’ll talk more about upgrading and getting new weapons in the next section.
Note that your character is equipped with all three of these guns and will switch to the appropriate weapon depending on the mission.
Reloading
Because of how trigger-happy your character is, you may find it more prudent to do manual reloads than rely on automatic ones that will wait for you to exhaust your magazine. To reload, tap this button:
This is especially important with guns that have a high fire rate and a middling magazine capacity, like SMGs.
Destructible Objects
A good soldier should also be able to adapt to an ever-changing environment, and in Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare, this can be done by taking advantage of destructible objects.
Some stages will have items that you can shoot. Stuff like explosive barrels, hazardous material containers, or vehicles can be shot at – and if it has a health bar, you can blow it up to trigger something, like an explosion that can take out multiple foes at once. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
Grenades
You’ll eventually unlock access to grenades.
Tap on a grenade to toss it at the foe closest to your crosshair. Every grenade in the game – regardless of design – is designed to explode on impact. Once a grenade explodes, it deals a large amount of damage to every enemy caught in its blast radius.
While powerful, note that your grenades are limited and can only be replenished via gold or watching an ad (three grenades on a five-minute cooldown, and you can stack this); thus, use them sparingly and only when needed. Another thing you should watch out for is that grenades can’t land headshots, so using them can adversely affect your score.
Medkits
Last, but not least, are medkits. Like grenades, these are accessible via the button on the right side of the screen.
If you’ve taken damage, you can pop a medkit to restore some HP. Like grenades, medkits are “premium” items in that the only way to get more of them is by either watching ads or paying gold.
The Armory
Next, let’s talk about sprucing up your armory. We’ll cover getting new weapons, upgrading the ones you have, and increasing your roster of soldiers.
Quick Tips:
- To upgrade your weapons, you’ll need to collect cards. Each level requires a certain number of cards; the higher the level, the more weapon cards you’ll need.
- You’ll also need cash to increase weapon levels.
- Clearing stages earns you progress towards unlocking new weapons. Note that once a weapon has enough progress, you need to watch an ad to unlock it.
- If you don’t watch the ad, you can go to that weapon’s slot in the armory and then pay cash to unlock it. Just watch the ad the first time.
- You can also shell out gold to buy premium weapons.
Upgrading Your Gear
First, let’s talk about making your guns better. To level up a gun, you’ll need to get enough cards of that gun – yes, those cards that come from crates – to fill up its experience bar. Each level makes a gun slightly stronger by boosting some of its stats.
In the image above, you can see that my M2 Hyde is currently at level six, and I need 34 more cards to bring it up to the next level. You can also see the stats that my SMG got from levels – they’re in green.
The higher a gun’s level, the more cards and cash you’ll need to level it up.
Unlocking New Stuff
Your starter gear is adequate, but why settle for “okay” when you can have “amazing”?
There are two ways to unlock more gear:
- After playing a mission, you’ll earn some progress toward a new gun. Once the progress bar has filled up, you can watch an ad to permanently unlock that weapon. Note that skipping the ad will forfeit unlocking that gun – for now – so always watch the unlock ad!
- The other way is by paying gold, though thankfully, this only applies to certain premium weapons.
If you choose to pass on the ad to unlock a gun, don’t fret. You can unlock that gun by going to its slot in the equipment screen and then paying cash. Seriously though, just watch the ad.
Switching Soldiers
Lastly, you can switch between Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare’ playable characters, once you’ve made enough progress. Each hero has different health, stability (recoil control), and reload speed.
As of writing (June 10, 2024), there are only two playable heroes: your default Private Ryan as well as Sergeant Brad, who you have to buy. Let’s just hope that there’ll be more free playable characters down the road.
Your characters can be upgraded in much the same way as weapons. Once you unlock the heroes menu, you’ll be able to level up your heroes by spending cash, and once you have enough cards, which will boost their stats slightly. Though levels aren’t strictly necessary for progression, the extra health, recoil reduction, and especially reload speed do make for a smoother game experience!
Funding The War
As an adage goes, “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” While I’m not completely on board with that statement, we can’t deny the importance of getting resources in any game. Thus, let’s talk briefly about how to maximize your earnings in Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare and how to nab some bonus goodies.
Quick Tips:
- Your stage clear rewards are based on three things: kills (you’ll always 100% this), headshots (counts once per enemy, only lethal headshots count), and health (whatever your health was at the end; taking damage and healing doesn’t affect this score).
- Always watch an ad to multiply your earnings as progression is woefully slow without ad boosts!
- Clearing 10 stages nets you a crate, which gives you not only basic supplies but also weapon cards, which can be used to improve your weapons.
- As with stage clear rewards, one of these prizes can be multiplied by watching an ad. Always do so.
- You unlock bases as you progress through the story. Each constructed base gives you cash per minute. You need to manually claim this cash, and you can duplicate your cash reward via an ad.
- Developing bases costs steel. Steel will start dropping from stage clears and crates once you’ve unlocked bases.
- Tasks are Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare’ version of quests. Each Task you complete nets you some cash as well as experience for the Task bar.
- You can claim crates at certain Task bar experience thresholds. The last crate has better stuff than the regular ones.
- The shop has free crates, grenades, and cash that you can claim via watching an ad.
Stage Clear Rewards
After each level, you’ll be given rewards based on how well you did.
There are three criteria on which you’ll be judged:
- Kills. The more enemies you kill, the bigger your score. As you have to kill every enemy in a stage anyway, you’ll always get a perfect score here.
- Headshots. Each killing headshot you make on a different enemy adds one count to this tally. Landing a headshot that doesn’t kill an enemy doesn’t count toward this score!
- Health. The more health you finish a stage with, the bigger a bonus you’ll get. As Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare is a cover shooter, it’s easy to always nab a perfect score here, given some patience. Note that this only takes into account how much health you had when you cleared the stage – if you took damage, used a medkit, and finished the stage at 100% health, you’ll be given full credit.
Each of these criteria will give you some money based on how well you did. And because there’s no time factor in scoring, this means that you can take your sweet time in a mission and still get a perfect score. No rush.
Next is the ad roulette:
The ad roulette will multiply your earnings, from a minimum of 2x to a maximum of 10x – IF you can get the timing right. More often than not, you’ll land on 3-4x, which is still a respectable amount. Naturally, you’ll have to watch an ad to use the roulette, though I will advise that you should always use the ad roulette as progression in Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare is painfully slow!
Crates
You’ll get a crate for every 10 missions that you complete.
Crates contain two things. First is cash, which is kinda meh, but you’ll need lots of the stuff. The second, more important prize you get from crates are weapon cards, which can be used to upgrade your gear, which we’ll talk about in the next section.
Now, when a crate opens, one of its contents will have an ad bonus tacked onto it. You can watch this ad to double that reward. As with stage clear rewards, you always want to do this as progression is slow without ad assistance.
Note that you can also watch ads for crates on the weapons screen.
Bases
Once you clear the Normandy chapter, you’ll gain the ability to build bases. Bases require steel to be built, which drops from crates and stage rewards as soon as you unlock base building.
Bases aren’t just for sitting around and looking pretty. Each base that you complete generates income every minute, with higher-level bases generating more profit. You can also choose to watch an ad to double the amount of cash you get from a base, and you should do so, especially when it hits full capacity.
You can access your bases from the main menu once you’ve unlocked them. You can also choose to watch ads in the base menu to get some free steel. Note that only your most recent base generates cash, but its generation is tacked onto that of your previous bases (so each new base generates more cash).
Tasks
Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare has quests in the form of Tasks.
Each Task that you complete not only nets you some cash but also grants some experience to the Tasks bar. At certain experience thresholds, you can claim a crate from the Tasks bar, with the last bar having the best stuff.
Shop Freebies
Lastly, there are some freebies you can nab from the shop.
You can get some crates, grenades (though we’ve already covered that), and cash from the shop by watching ads.
To The Bitter End
The road to the end of the war will be long and arduous. But if you just keep calm and carry on, victory will be within your grasp before you know it.
That concludes this beginner’s guide to Frontline Heroes: WW2 Warfare, and I hope I was able to introduce you to the game’s mechanics that aren’t point and shoot. If you have any suggestions or corrections to make to this guide, let us know in the comments area below!