Braveland

The gameplay is simple, the tactics aren't difficult to master, but I played it through in an afternoon. Braveland Pirate is significantly longer. Don't look for deep strategy. The obstacles on the battlefield are merely obstacles to movement and don't have any effect as far as cover.

I bought it for $1.99. It reminds of the original King's Bounty back in the 90s combined with a board game with neat cartonish graphics. Nice user interface, simple rules and attention to details. The game doesn't pretend to be an AAA title and you can clearly see what kind of gameplay to expect after wathcing the trailer on gog. The gameplay is entertaining enough for an adult. I played several hours already and had fun. Hexagonal batlefields are repetitive but with well drawn backgrounds and different types of enemies are varied enough to be fun even in your 20th or 30th battle. The difficulty is well balanced. The game is indeed linear but I don't care. It has peasants and archers and knights and several other units. It's so fun to see peasants attack in large groups. Reminds me of my childhood with King's Bounty. It's worth the two bucks I paid.

It's a great tactical combat game. There's very little else going on here. It's great in small bursts, 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Do one or two fights and then put it down. If you play for longer than that the game gets incredibly tedious. It's pretty much the same from start to finish. If you can pick it up on sale then it's a great little game to pass the time while you're waiting on dinner to finish cooking in the oven or before bed or any other time you've got 20 minutes to kill.

Pretty limited tactics game, main focus is on positioning and target priority. Units have physical or magic resistance, health, damage and move rates and one special on cool down. Player also gets some global spells that charge over time. There are about 7 different units, with up to 5 types on your team at a time. Can also buy some gear that boosts your army. Game takes about 3-4 hours. It's a linear path with branches all along it to either side with shops, troops, or permanent buffs. Background looks okay, characters are cute but very limited in animation (move, attack, death animations). Only two music tracks, world and battle. Story is also bare bones and complete superfluous. Dialogue becomes predictable in nature very quickly: "We hate/want X, but you're here now, so we'll attack you instead" or "we like to attack people, hey you're people, we'd like to attack you" Bottom line the game's cheap, and is a quick diversion if you just want something to pick up for a few minutes or a short tactics game to blitz through between larger games.

A clean, simple, colorful HoMM knockoff. Braveland, played on normal difficulty, took me about 4 hours to complete every battle including all side quests, and I only lost a battle once the entire game. I played it for the most part with my 5 and 6 year-olds, and it (mostly) held their interest. They were quite excited when we beat the final boss. The game uses most of the mechanics of HoMM series (one counter per turn, range penalties, etc.) without explaining them, assuming familiarity with not just the genre, but with that specific series. So, essentially, it's VERY short, VERY easy, but can satisfy an itch for a coffee break watered-down HoMM experience suitable for small children. (No blood and guts, no swearing, no adult situations.)