Battle Brothers

The game is hard and unforgiving, but mastering its tactical combat is a very rewarding experience. The combat really is fun, as is customizing your soldiers, but the problem with this game is that it falls flat with its premise. The game is all about "experimenting", "taking risks", "losing is fun", but none of that is true because you will sink a few hours into a run and lose everything because in a ill advised combat you lost all your squad. Or you are at the mid game and lose 2 or 3 good soldiers, and from there its downhill as your inexperienced soldiers start to die as the game world only gets harder and harder with each passing day. People compare this to Mount and Blade, but that false. In mount and blade, you really can take a loss, lose everything and come back. Battle Brothers? You will reload for every encounter until you can manage to win or give up on that fight. You will restart the game 20 times just to find the perfect seed with the perfect conditions of the map and the perfect starting soldiers so you can have a chance at getting to late game. "Losing is fun" when the defeat is funny, its incredible, its bizarre, etc. Losing in Battle Brothers wont be like that. You will lose a combat many turn before it ends because an enemy got a lucky shot on your soldier, or you got a few bad rolls. You will lose your campaign many days before you realize it because you never watched a 3 hours video explained how to play the first 30 days of the game else your army wont get good ever. Its a good game if you like obssessing over min-maxing games, spreadsheets and tutorials. And really, the tactical combat is cool, even if the hit chances can be a bit annoying since you might as well find a gold nugget under your bed than finding soldier with good stats.

Beautiful, tactical, difficult. There is no glory, no honour. Just GOLD! You hire mercenaries (like cripples or Hedge knights), find contacts (depending on your reputation) and start making crowns to equip your band in preparation of the goblin, orc or undead invasions. Its great ! My only wish is a new type of save game, since it evolves a lot through trial and error. I had to save pretty much every time late game before I went in a dungeon, since if you lose 2-3 characters its devastating. Only save games in cities maybe. Also, more diplomatic content, since it can get a bit stale later on. Hardcore mode is ....... way to hardcore. Game is truly different. It has that Darkest Dungeon suspense when you are in a middle of fight. Things can go wrong in a second. Its something very satisfying to see one of your characters hit someone in the face with a mace, just for the sake of CROWNS! Speaking of, the economy is good, you need to be always on the move and get DAT CROWNS! otherwise your band of teeth less vagabonds, bastards, knights, nobles and plain ol' farmers will leave your party. There are plenty of armours, some weapons and a great deal of traits and character perks. Sound is great. Looking forward to the new DLC. What I hope to see in the future would be: Diplomatic options More special events Karma status Houses or Manors where you can buy late game and reach a completely new status of mercenary More content (unique items, special events, terrain layouts like village/castle defences) Either way, so far, the game is superb.

Check it out if you enjoy Xcom, risk management, it's-all-up-to-you-to-succeed style games. It's also very similar to Neo Scavenger, another brilliant game. This game is clearly a labor of love, it really is one of 'those' games, and it is hard, but the difficulty settings are balanced and the world's atmosphere, brought together by a beautiful artstyle and an incredible soundtrack will keep you feeling good even when you lose half of your company to a single mistake. GG

I found this game to be among the best I played in recent years. The graphics/art style is pleasant to look at. The gameplay is very fun and addictive, given you like turn based. Sound and music is also very decent. The Warriors of the North DLC music is simply amazing. As this game is RNG based, it is highly advised not to do your first playthrough in ironman mode. Make your first a normal playthrough, save often, and you'll come to enjoy the game before you get to hate it for its RNG like some ppl. Once you know everyting there is to know, you can go ironman if you want. I feel like some knowlegde of the game is required before you try ironman. Like the fact that most enemy factions basically come in 3 strength variants (tiers). For brigands for example, it's thugs, raiders, and then captains. For undead, it's ancient auxilliaries, ancient legionnaires and honor guards. At the start of the game, it's important to know which enemies you can take on and which ones to avoid. Facing a band of raiders (tier 2) on day 3 or 4 is not going to end well, most likely. That said, once you get to mid and late game, things get even more fun. The real enjoyment for me comes from looking for the mercenaries with the perfect starting statistics, and then building them into true killing machines. This, together with the hunt for named items. Like a hint of diablo-like loot hunt you could say. Then using these characters and that gear in the big noble house battles (like 35 vs 35 units), to absolutely devastating effect, is some of the biggest satisfaction a game can give. Leveling up your mercenaries goes via a talent tree you can choose abilities from. This way you can build toons with different specialties and tactics. I also find this to be a very satisfying system. The warriors of the North DLC is excellent, and a new DLC Blazing Deserts is in the making as of this writing. Can't wait for it... But other than that; a 5/5 and highly recommendable.

As long as you're willing to accept defeat and retry, this is can be a very addictive and fun turn-based sandbox RPG. Basically it's medieval XCOM combat with Mount & Blade exploration in-between, you get jobs, you kill the baddies and you improve your team of battle-hardened killers. The gameplay loop can get somewhat repetitive in nature after a while since there isn't much variety in missions, but the fights themselves are incredibly addictive and you're always getting that feeling of "just one more" after every job. There's many ways to build your squad, lots of different equipment and possible strategies you can go with, the game is all about experimentation and seeing what works and what ultimately doesn't. With that said, it is an incredibly unforgiving game and you WILL lose characters no doubt about it, sometimes because you made a mistake sometimes because the RNG is just screwing you (and it can screw you HARD). It can be quite frustrating at times, which is why I recommend you start at the easiest level especially because the game lacks a tutorial, as you can imagine it makes the early game very trial and error for better or worse. If anything, the only major complaint I have is the game makes a very poor job of explaining basically anything to you, from the game mechanics to what to expect from a mission and so on. So yeah, it's not a game for everyone but if you're into this kind of experience it can be very satisfying seeing your group of ragtag misfits surviving fight after fight until all hell breaks loose when you run into a horde of Unholds. Oh and I almost forgot to mention, the soundtrack is pretty good and it makes up a lot for the basic graphics and presentation, it's definitely worth a listen.