I’ve played a fair bit of IL-2 over the last year but I have not been able to get properly consumed by a campaign for a while. I’ve set out a goal to change that in 2026 and I’ve got a considerable backlog of experiences to look at. To get myself started on that path, I decided to start small and finish something I had started a couple of years back but never finished. Today I’m reviewing Against the Tide for IL-2 Great Battles Flying Circus.

Overview

This campaign is intended and bundled with the Siemens-Schuckert D.IV Collector Plane (review here) for Flying Circus. This is a really interesting aircraft that released back in 2023 and is available separately of any of the other volumes for $19.99 USD regular price.

The SS D.IV is a 200 horsepower, single engine, scout bi-plane that came into limited service in August of 1918 with just a couple of months of battles before the war ended. It’s also one of just two aircraft that were not part of a refurbishing effort to bring Rise of Flight aircraft to the more modern IL-2 engine and was created from scratch. It’s an all new type to the series in other words.

The SS D.IV is a bit slower than some of the other late war types like the Sopwith Snipe and Fokker D.VIIF, however, it outclimbs them both and has great agility. The stall is sharp but the handling is otherwise quite good. All of these factors come into play as you fly and fight your way through the campaign.

There are 6 missions, each with a reasonably lengthy briefing that provides a strategic overview of what is going on and teaches a bit of history (I know I learned more than a few nuggets) on the very late war air battles.

Missions to test the D.IV

The six missions are a kind of survey of the types of experiences that a late war WWI German pilot likely would have seen. A couple of scouting patrols, bomber escort, and bomber interception. Most of the missions have you making maximum use of the SS D.IV’s excellent climb rate to climb up to 4,000 or 5,000 meters before engaging in your mission. You will have to commit some time to these missions and my average play time was probably 40-ish minutes for most of them. A good chunk of that time was spent climbing… such is the life of a World War I interceptor pilot.

The title is Against the Tide, however, individual battles are well balanced in the sense that you’re never up against overwhelming odds. There are a good number of targets at times, yes, but its not an insurmountable swarm either. That’s probably just as well!

You’ll face off against a variety of foes here! Campaign author Jay =Jaegermeister= Yarbrough does a good job of throwing a good mix of opponents against you. Nearly all of them are from the newly organized Royal Air Force (replacing the Royal Flying Corps in April of 1918) and for that reason you’ll see a mix of Camels, Dolphins, and Snipes to dogfight with as well as Airco DH.4s and even some Handley Page 0/400 bombers that show up. These provide a good mix of air combat scenarios to engage with.

The 0/400s are by far the biggest challenge as their large size and ability to shrug off quite a few hits (plus their pesky gunners) made for a difficult interception mission. Even unescorted, it took repeated passes to try and bring a few of them down.

The SS D.IV quite a capable airplane but its not over powered either. I never really felt on the back foot thanks to good firepower and capability from the aircraft. You’ll find yourself at relative parity with some of the other late war aircraft with the Dolphin and Snipe offering the greatest challenge while the older Camel does feel slightly behind in many respects.

If you want a better sense of the individual missions, I covered the first mission in a journal back in June of 2023. Now, three years later, I’m finally back and quite satisfied with having finished all six in short order.

Action and challenges

The campaign offers a good enough variety in six missions to give you a really good taste of the SS D.IV and its abilities. Its a scout with an interceptor style of operation so you won’t find yourself doing ground attack duties but you will find a range of aerial targets.

Up in the sky with you will be a mix of friendly and enemy aircraft. The campaign is good at making sure its not just you and your flight that you see but others are up there from time to time as well. Its not quite as extensive as some of Black Six’s campaigns but there is enough to have a feeling of not being entirely alone either.

Similarly, the action on the ground is very well laid out. The map overview tells you a bit about the frontline activity which is good. More importantly, once you’re flying a mission those map markers are supported by a fair bit of ground action. Streaking tracers back and forth across the frontline and billowing clouds from the ongoing trench warfare supplements the built in artillery explosions that are part of the map. The overall effect is a world that feels relatively alive.

Now there are some issues that I had with the campaign as well. Nothing was game breaking and indeed all of the triggers and situations intended by the designer appear to have worked exactly as they should have. What I did run into were caused by the AI.

There were a few instances where I came across a battle between friendly and enemy aircraft where the enemy AI had decided to head for home. For whatever reason, they were so intent on doing that action that they completely ignored my wingmates and I as we made firing passes at them. Made for easy targets.

This happened in a couple of missions (including the last mission) so I’m guessing either something is up with the AI or with a trigger that is telling the AI head for home and ignore everything else going on. It may well be that something subtle has changed with the AI between the release of the campaign and now as well. It didn’t hurt the campaign progress but it was a bit annoying too when your enemies don’t acknowledge their peril.

There’s also the matter of the Flying Circus AI being a bit lackadaisical and not being aggressive enough – but that’s not the campaigns fault. If you’re a newbie pilot, this will be a fine experience that challenges your skills, however, if you’re a veteran of WWI air combat simulation, this will all feel relatively easy to manage.

Final thoughts

All in all, I had a great time reconnecting with Flying Circus and the D.IV through this campaign. Good structure, good variety, relatively fun objectives, and missions that had good length but weren’t overly frustrating to fly make for a relatively ideal experience. The not overly aggressive AI is not the campaigns fault though the sitting duck AI situation may be a specific quirk that could be fixed.

In a lot of ways, I appreciate these smaller more achievable campaigns that get you into the experience for long enough to have fun without seeming like a lengthy commitment. If you want to fly the aircraft some more, there’s always the Career Mode which will give you endless flying though without some of the personality of a handcrafted campaign like this one.

Bundled with the Siemens-Schuckert D.IV Collector Plane, this campaign isn’t an extra purchase, so if you already have the plane you have the campaign and not have even known about it.

Screenshots