Battle Brothers

Battle Brothers puts you at the helm of a mercenary company who have fallen on hard times after the death of the last captain. It's up to you to rebuild and manage a gritty crew of mercs, and hopefully make some money in the process. The setting is a low-magic fantasy medieval world, with the usual appearance of orcs, goblins and undead - but the typical fantasy setting you might come to expect ends there. You are mercenaries - not heroes - and even should you choose to be honorable, most if not all of your men will not see a happy ending in this story. You will frequently be faced with the grim reality that you're replenishing your ranks with desperate men who hardly know which end of a sword to hold, knowing full well that you're sending them into certain death. I don't want to give the impression that the game is unfair though - yes, there is a little bit of a random element, but not so strict as to make things unwinnable merely by chance. Your choice of weapons and the formation of your soldiers is far more of an important element. Every weapon has its place - and the importance of choosing the right equipment and soldiers to match the situation is vitally important. On the down sides, the game can sometimes be a little slow-paced. It also seems ripe for modding, but there is no internal mod support. The developers delivered on all their promised content, but have also discontinued any further development aside from bug fixes. This is not so much of a fault for the game, but it is disappointing. Particularly, after you have some familiarity with the game, you will realize just how much more potential it could have.

One of the most addicting game I've played. Micromanagement of every single soldier from the choice of equipment to statistics and ability trees. Every factor play its role. If you equip all of your soldiers with heaviest armor possible, your team will run out of stamina very fast and render your soldiers unable to counterattack. When I spent a few hours with the game I compared it to The Darkest Dungeon, as there is no point in game where you can call yourself Overpowered. You will always struggle and choose between higher risk missions giving you opportunity to repair all armors and heal wounds, or low risk bounties just to survive.

Its fantastic. Its like a combination of Mount and Blade and the Xcom games. Its beautiful, deep, challenging and rewarding. The map generation system is great. The difficulty settings and sliders are intuitive and it does not have such a steep learning curve. And even after clocking in 10+ hours I am still finding new things and generally just realzing that I have barely scratched the tactical surface. If you like light fantasy RPG games that are difficult, but not impossible. With a strategy map like in MaB series and combat gameplay like XCom, this is for you. I truly recommend this game. Bless the developers :)

I feel stupid for believing it will be a good game and buying all DLCs without checking out the base game. Fool! It looks good at first, but in the first hour you basically get everything that this game has to offer, everything else is just repetitive. It seems (not sure about that) there's also a level-scalling, which deprives you of any feel of advancement. I also think that enemies operate on different rules than you, wich when added to RNG, makes the gameplay pretty bad experience. The graphics are really nice, and music absolutely awesome, but the most important thing - tactical aspect and gameplay - extremely poor.

What happens if you take Skyrim, X-Com, Game of Thrones and Mount & Blade and shove them in a blender? You'd get a delicious slurry that tasted a lot like Battle Brothers. Commanding of a band of mercenaries in a low-fantasy "Germanic" Middle Ages setting, Battle Brothers nails a fantastic atmosphere right from the start. Missions, random events and other flavour text are randomised, modular and feature surprising detail. No playthrough feels identical. While you face some fantasy threats (Orcs, Goblins, Undead), the majority of conflict is with human enemies. This varies from the GoT-like Noble Houses, other mercenaries, or bands of organised thugs. The flow of cash, contracts, the loss of your men and the mix of dark humour, triumph and bleak sadness really makes you feel like you're managing a motley group of tough men living a hard and dangerous life. Soldiers often interact with each other depending on their backgrounds. I had a Farmer and Fisherman arguing over which craft was superior, ending with an arm wrestle which lead to them becoming friends. I had a superstitious soldier become terrified after an encounter with walking corpses. And so on. If a town likes you, you'll have introductions that reference villagers buying you drinks, or cheering your arrival. For simple text, it all does an awful lot to make it feel like you're in a living world. The music is memorable and catchy (play "Mercenary's Rest" on YouTube if you want a taste) combat itself is also very good. While the art style initially didn't convince me, the combat is surprisingly vicious. Men scream, heads fly, blood pools, gruesome injuries occur and the way your men all look unique gels really well with the setting. The game is BRUTALLY hard, but once you learn a lot of the secrets behind it, it is actually fair. Many of the "OP" enemies simply require different tactics, and you must specialise your men to adaptable. All in all, 5/5. If you like strategy or tactical games. Buy it!