First of all, the game is free. It is an open-source, turn-based strategy, fantasy-medieval game. I am not a big supporter of "open source" game/apps; or rather, I do not really care much about them or the whole "open source" movement or whatever. Most open source games I've tried sucked anyway.

I downloaded and tried out Battle for Wesnoth back in 2006 or 2007. I was not too impressed. The graphics were horrible. Sound and music were non-existent. The interface was clunky. Campaigns and storytelling were disconnected. Tutorials were confusing. So I wrote it off as another amateur production.

Last week I came across this game again in the Android Market. I checked out the Android version and, I thought, wow, the Android version was way better than the Windows version. So I downloaded the Windows version again. And, whoa. The developers have certainly been busy. They have been seriously upgrading and improving every single thing in the game. It is like a completely different game.

Graphics. Sounds. Music. Interface. Campaigns. Stories. Tutorials. Everything is excellent and comparable and even than most commercial games. I am especially impressed by its installation process, which asked me where I want to installed the my program files *and* save games, (they could be in different directories.) The game then asked me how I wanted to save/remove my save games and gave me plenty of options for saving and auto-saving games. Most commercial games do not even give me that choice.

The main campaigns are actually quite good. I am going to use WarCraft III campaigns as the direct comparisons because of the similarities (i.e., they are both strategy games, medieval-fantasy settings with elves and orcs and magic and whatever.) Wesnoth campaigns and stories are superior to those in WarCraft III, (except the Night Elf expansion campaign, which IMO is the strongest and most interesting campaign in WarCraft III.) Wesnoth campaigns and stories focus on characters (unlike WarCraft III which has poor characterizations and inconsistent character motivations; like, WTF did Prince Arthas turn evil?!? Like Anakin Skywalker, Arthas' characterizations were inconsistent. His motivations were confusing and never fully explained. It's like he just woke up one day and decided, "hey, I think I am going to be a bad dude from now on.") Some Wesnoth campaigns have interesting and greatly varied branches and folks.

So many open-sourced and volunteers-made games have failed and collapsed. It is amazing how far this free, volunteers-developed game has progressed and improved in the past five or six years. Seriously, everyone should download it and check it out.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Battle <span class="bold">for</span> Wesnoth

Agreed with everything else though :)

NNNNNNNNNoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Eh. yeah, sorry about that. I put substantial ammount of time into battle for wesnoth TRYING to like it, HOWEVER ... fucking hit rolls! Basically, I would love that game if there were no "to hit" rolls and if they put some sort of defence modifier instead. I fucking hate relying on one of my strongest units to just see it being unlucky and not hitting the target even ONCE - so the only option to play harder maps in this game is to save/attack/reload/save/attack/reload and prey to GOD you get a solid hit. The game even encourages this approach!

Argh, this game annoyed me to no end after some time.

I love Wesnoth but I know where you're coming from. My enjoyment of the game would be much greater if I could see the actual dice rolls that caused my character to miss 5 times in a row on favorable ground. :/

Heh, it would require some tweaking of the game system, but I really, really think that some sort of damage modifier with 100% hit rate would be far more suitable for a game like this that heavily relies on tactics. I'm quite sure I would appreciate the game far more, because it has so many things I love in strategy games - and not only that, it does them right!

Yeah, this is the same issue I had with the game. Given that the hit chances are often under 50% there's just way too much of a luck factor in how battles turn out, such that it tends to override a lot of the strategy.

So I take it some of you have never ever played an average table top strategy game? Warhammer, Hords, Warmachine, Dystopian Wars (this is steam punk warships, tanks and airships and everyone must see it!) to name but a few.

The idea of random as a mechanic has a well founded place in the strategy world and it adds a layer of unpredictability into the battlefield. Granted one can happily rage when the Dice Gods turn against you, but its still no less tactical, its just a different kind of tactics.

I love that game, but it can be really annoying. I love the style, the graphics, most of the gameplay, the music, etc. The greatest annoyance is the luck factor in battles. A little luck involved is okay, but losing a level 4 Elven Captain or whatever to a half dead level 1 baby orc because of constant extra bad luck is irritating, especially when it happens often. At least the whole saving/loading is fast. I kept using the exact same moves each reloaded turn, constantly hoping that "this time I'll hit that guy at least once", and the differences in outcome varied from every enemy dead with no friendly losses to all my guys dead without accomplishing anything.

I'd be okay with silly luck things if I was playing multiplayer with friends, but I don't like the AI being lucky.

Man, I loved that game. One of my favourite TBS games, alongside Heroes of Might and Magic.

I wrote a pretty substantial commentary/guide/walkthrough/let's play monstrosity on it back in the day, and it was one of the most entertaining writing exercises I've done in a while.

Except all sides of the conflict have a similar starting position, as opposed to wesnoth where computer gets bigger and bigger advantage over the player on subsequential maps. I believe wesnoth's multiplayer is bound to be good.

Oh, also... Dice rolls usually don't end up in complete miss, only in case of extemely unfavourable circumstances

Hit rolls made me want to rage toss my keyboard and bust my mouse. Yes, literally, it could get that bad sometimes. It made me sooooooooo frustrated, and I absolutely ADORE tactics based games like these. I've still got on older version installed, but I never touch it.

Yes.

BTW, it's listed on the free games thread
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/community_stickies_compendium_2_0/page1
which is linked to in the community stickies thread
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/community_stickies_compendium_2_0/page1

As Fenixp already touched on, this works fine when both sides have an even distribution of forces. However, in a game like Wesnoth where the AI is almost always given superior forces a few bad rolls affects the human player disproportionately. Additionally, the way that the Wesnoth campaigns are structured only compounds this. As the campaign progresses the computer is handed stronger and stronger units, but the human player can usually only acquire equally strong units by retaining leveled units from previous stages of the campaign, so losing some high level units late in the campaign to a bad roll or two can quickly put a player in an unwinnable position. It's a case of various gameplay elements working fine on their own, but becoming an exercise in frustration when combined.