Battle Isle: The Andosia War

A lot of quite nice ideas somewhat ruined by various bugs and lack of userfriendliness. To name a few things that I see as positive: * weapon range and sight range differences make scout units important * the supply system is actually quite well-thought out (why some reviewers assume that they wanted to get rid of supply depletion for units?) * the free movement of units makes things interesting, the infantry being able to venture into steeper hills etc. Bugs and polishing issues: * ability to unload troops from transport when there is no guarantee that they'd be able to load back * AI constructing buildings right on top of my submarines (yuck!) * a bit illogical stats for some units (why is a transport plane so good at scouting?) * autopilot for transport landing is missing... * enemy units with reserve fire will not fire on a transport that has landed, nor on units that were dropped out of it (unloading from transport obviously doesn't count as movement in their firezone). * no reasonable clue as to what will the next mission be (with recycling last battlefield status for the start of new mission, which is a nice idea, I'd appreciate the ability to redeploy my armies at least a bit, and the game should protect me from leaving my whole army right next to where the enemy will spawn in the next battle). All in all it's an entertaining game (once you learn about the glitches and how to avoid them), but totally different from previous BI games, so it can be hard for your expectations...

Its easy to try to compare this against BI2+3 which are some of my favourite games, but you can't, its wildly different other than some familiarity with the unit names (like you know what a ranger, buggy, skull, samurai are from the previous games). GoG have done a great job with the installer. I own the original game, and tried and failed to get it to install on modern Windows. Even older GoG downloads would install but then not configure or play correctly and would really irritate me that it seemed to re-test all the screen resolutions every time you fire it up, thereby screwing up all the other windows of other things I'm already running on my PC at the time. The latest one I tried works perfectly, even in 4K resolution and then looks awesome, but see some notes here to get 4k working here - https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Battle_Isle:_The_Andosia_War Its a bit of steep learning curve trying to manage 6 resources (which I compare against other games like TA, Warcraft, etc which have 1-2 or at most 3) and trying to complete missions before you run out of resources is genuinely difficult in some places. But it works really well once you are used to it, and love the researching and upgrading units. Even knowing exactly what to do, the enemy still surprises you and drops off units and knocks out your energy relays exactly where you don't expect him to, so you have to react to situations fast but also plan several turns in advance for what units you will need where, as it takes a long time to build them and ship them to the other island. I feel I should play the game all the way through and make notes about what I did wrong and the surprises the enemy pulls on you so I know what to do better next time. Only negative I will give it is the economy / military island logistics don't really work so well multiplayer (if you can even find someone to try to play multiplayer with). So I more enjoy it for the single player campaign which is much better thought out.

I vaguely remember playing the first mission of this game in my childhood, so pulled by the nostalgia I decided to give this game a go. Frankly speaking? I feel like this game is an RTS in TBS skin. The gameplay is solid, although EXTREMALLY sluggish. There is a realtime basebuilding aspect to the game, but I think it is more important to discuss the real meat and potatoes of this game. The turn based combat/movement. This game provides you with a lot of units which need to be individually moved. Some may argue that the game does have a box select and move system. That is true, but it also is incredibly temperamental, some units move some don't for some reason, if they move they might decide to move backwards and forwards until their turn units run out. The game has a pretty interesting logistics system, which, yet again, is hampered by the turn based nature of the game. You will spend dozens of turns trying to bring those pylon trucks to the shore, and then to their position. It gets a little bit better after the 6-7th hour mark once you get flying transports. Speaking of the 6-7th hour mark, this is roughly the time I finished the first "Mission". I count a mission to be moved to the next map, and the first map has 3 sub-missions. I may have been a little too careful with my gameplay but I think that's still pretty inexcusable. It really is a shame, since the game has some serious atmosphere in it.

This game is really for hardcore strategy fans. It is not a casual game, and it has little in common with Battle Isle I-III. But once you get used to a rather unwieldy user interface the game has its moments and is quite immersive. I could ignore the few abnormalities (call them glitches) as they seem completely marginal to the game. Bump up the grade to four stars if you play in multiplayer, but all players (max. 8) need to be familiar with the mechanics. Again, this is not a casual multiplayer game. Though, matches only take 1-2 hours. But if your mates are into it you will experience thrilling fights with many tactical options and elements of surprise. This game is definitely worth its price when on sale.

i enjoy it, because it have a big research tree and a complex economy. when attacking enemies however it goes into turn based mode. it is very time consuming. i spent about 6 hours on one game. it is however fun to just play it for the real time base building. it is also a plus that the "town hall" produces a little of each resource, so that i never truly run out.