Wartales

I find this a very fun and indepth roleplay game. Has fairly engaging quests and world, where you choose how to approch it your way. The consuqences for your actions are very fair and enjoyable at the normal difficulty. Combat can be harsh, but if you dislike loosing your player characters you can lower the difficulty to prevent them from dying permanantly. If you like a medieval, harsh and fun exploration game, then this is what I would say is for you ^^

A good balance of story, strategy, and minigames (mining, blacksmithing, etc)

I like it a lot, the setting, the party management, crafting, the story. It's well polished in almost every detail. Not a single crash or bug so far. Small gripe that i have, is that my GPU (2070 Super) gets super loud, even though the game doesn't look very demanding. DLSS would be helpful (*wink, wink*).

Wartales is a very good game. It has almost everything that has made Battle Brothers good plus graphics and mini stories for each region. Your mercs will level up, will have better gear they bought or crafted themselves, they will get better at fighting and at other activities - each of them can have different profession to use in camp or other locations: i.e. minstrell can earn some coin in towns, thief will open locks and steal, miner will gather ore and so on. Most such activities come with their own minigames. All that is fun, and a lot of recipies to unlock mean you will have more fun with them the longer you play. Battles are good, need planning, positioning, taking in mind synnergies between your mercs and their skills and equipment. You will also need numbers, as even the best fighter will get choped to pieces easily if outnumbered. You command a company of mercs, so your main activity is fighting. And that means losing your health and damaging your gear. So you need supplies, and you will have to buy them for money you earned on contracts. Some time it will mean that you will take a contract to dispatch a band of deserters and after that you will go back to town to earn your fee and spend most of it on repairs, medicine and replacements, then take on another contract. Each region has its story, built by your decisions on different occasions. It is nice, but you will have +/- two option on each of story locations. They are fixed, so don't expect a lot of difference if you choose to start your adventure anew. All in all very good game.

Too "structured". Does not allow for creativity in battle. Doesn't vary terrain. Doesn't give terrain bonuses. Needs more variance in opponents (tougher AND easier opponents...) You do not need EVERY fight to be a brawl to the death against equivalent or better foes. Sometimes you bully...sometimes you GET bullied (Run AWAY! Run AWAY!) Developers are very controlling with how the game is played (sometimes with ZERO notice "Are you SURE you want to walk into a dark cave without at least a torch? We PROMISE we'll make you regret that decision.") Unfun.