Battlezone 98 is, and remains, a classic and what most people will probably think of as the creator of the "commander amongst his troops" genre. Set in an alternate universe Cold War where the space race has turned into a space war between the US and Russia over a magical substance called 'bio-metal', Battlezone sees the player take command of a series of battlefields from within their trusty vehicle, driving back the dirty commies/capitalist pigs from map after map. The remaster is incredibly faithful to the old game, with some updated graphics and the rest of the game untouched. This, of course, means that all the problems of the old game is still there. The physics engine is still a riddle of the ages, your vehicle still handles like a drunk bucket, your ammo and health bars deplete in less than a minute and leave you camping out for five minutes waiting for the armory to replenish you, the computer still cheats like a one-eyed bandit that summons enemy waves from the ether and your allied ships are still as reactive and intelligent as a blind turtle on sleep medication. The game features little to no tutorials and your objectives can at time be painfully oblique, helped not at all by the fact that you are pretty much forced to be everywhere at once and babysit your base (or alternatively leave it to be shot to pieces by the endless waves of foes) while slowly progressing through the level objectives. At its best, Battlezone is a very fun command-your-troops-from-the-front strategy set in a fascinating setting, where you glide through the landscape with your trusty wingmen dealing death by anti-tank missiles. At worst it's a game that will cause you to obsessively save and load (or just restart the level) every twelve seconds as you struggle against the interface, the terrain, your allies, and an at time altogether punishing gameplay. I still love this game, but picking it up now made me realize just what an incredible improvement Sacrifice was to the genre.
Chroma Squad is a tactical RPG in the vein of XCOM, Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, but with a very simplified interface and very little character building or 'deep strategy' required; 'point and punch' will get you through much of it. It has a delightful and very light-hearted tone, poking gentle fun at the Sentai genre (if you don't know what 'Sentai' is, think of 'Power Rangers' as a TV show genre; Japanese live-action superhero series) and full of quirky characters and ridiculus but well-designed monsters that look straight out of a 90ies low-budget Sentai series and tons of shout-outs and references. It refuses to take itself seriously and refuses to get punishing to new players unless you intentionally crank up the difficulty, and I'm perfectly ok with that. People into tactical RPGs might find it a bit too simplistic and easy, and people not into Sentai might find the story beats a bit silly, but its combination of gameplay simplicity and lighthearted story serves as a great introduction to both genres. And the cheesy menu theme has glued itself to my psyche.
The new King's Bounty series has given signs of petering out ever since Armoured Princess. As a veteran of King's Bounty the Legend and Armoured Princess/Crossroads, I booted up this version expecting more open-world roaming through a clichéd land of light-hearted shenanigans. Instead I was greeted with an introductory sequence containing blatantly imbalanced combat that overstepped the line from 'challenging you through resource management' to 'heavily punishing you for being not-perfect', an on-the-rails sequence of maps with no resources or chances to rest and restock instead of the traditional open maps that rewarded exploration and out-of-sequence gaming, and empty surroundings devoid of the detail and life present in the two first games that suggests this game was built on both sparse budget and little time. I would recommend starting a new game in any of the earlier titles over picking this up.
