Ruadh: Warbands

20 minutes was enough playtime to realise that this game should be avoided. It feels more like a prototype than a finished game. There was no introduction to the game whatsoever, just a character select screen with some help overlays. There is no context around what you are doing, just click on the icon to start a combat. There was no choice of encounters, just click an icon to start a combat with some random enemies. There didn’t appear to be any branching paths or anything meaningful to do. The combat itself is underdeveloped. While it has a nice looking map reminiscent of Battle Brothers and the AI seemed quite good, the combat felt overly simplistic with terrain and distance playing no role in hit chances. There was no difference to my archer engaging an enemy next to them compared with an enemy far away from them. An archer can also disengage from melee combat without consequences. The combat has strange unbalanced mechanics with my second encounter being against vagabonds who can strike three times per turn and each hit grants them an increase to their max HP level! There were several graphical bugs with the weapon swing animation from enemies getting strangely further away …

It doesn't happen often to me, but Im actually angry at this game. It promise so much with awesome visuals, cool setting, even audio is really really good. But the gameplay... My God, how awful is gameplay. I've played one game for 30 minutes and the gameplay is so shallow that I know I've already seen everything. You have only 2 actions - move and attack. Every upgrade is just some passive boost to one of the few stats, but you stay with those 2 boring actions forever. To add insult to the injury, you have separate action points for moving and for attacking, so there is no depth even in managing those two actions. If even tried to refund this game, what I rarely do, but apparently it was sitting in my library for more than 2 weeks :(

A little too bare bones to be interesting. The items, while decent, didn't feel significant enough to differentiate between the different units.

Delightful little game! Well thought out and quick fun. You have to strategically think about where you want to move your unit and how you wish for them to be in a formation. The enemy is ruthless. Still even if your party is wiped out. You keep your progress position on the skill progression tree. Well worth the small price of the game!

#15 Game in my Pile-of-Shame Challenge! Sadly there are no more updates or anything else comming. It's quiet a cool base for a game, and i would have loved to see it grow. But it did not catch me at all. Since the team behind it, doesn't seem to do anything more with this game, i can't really recommend it.

Simple and playable little game with a no frills design aesthetic. Take your warband through a series of increasingly difficult skirmishes with a limited ability to see what is in the next fight. The game can create some "feels bad" moments due to the massive number of attacks on late game enemies, but if you build a solid team (mix of DPS, healing, and debuffs by reducing enemy hit chances) you can chew through the encounters with some sharpish tactics. There are no attacks of opportunity, but the maps have plenty of terrain allowing you to defend at choke points, etc. Ranged combatants are somewhat balanced by dealing less damage than their melee counterparts and starting with a lower hit chance. I thought the soundtrack really delivered and the graphics were fine for the type of game. Minimal cut scenes, very little text, and next to no hand holding.