War Theatre

I was personally disappointed. After seeing the art style and concepts in the video, I decided to give it a try while it was on super-sale, so I only payed a dollar for it. But judging this game on it's initial $10 price tag, it feels very early access. There is a campaign here, but very little story line. You may get a line or two of dialogue at the start and end of a fight, but nothing more, which felt disappointing in a world that would seem to have plenty of lore in it. All factions are unlocked at the start, but besides hero abilities, there isn't anything to tell them apart. Even the units are all unlocked immediately and all identical, which left nothing to look forward to and no sense of progression. There is no tutorial as well, and although it is a simple enough game, there isn't a sense of "working yourself up" towards a greater goal or larger battles. Unless you specifically attack a unit you are weak against, most units die in one hit, resulting in a game where you just swarm each other with units until one team is gone. Or, alternatively, just swarm the enemy hero and burn through their health bar in 5-8 hits, instantly winning that match. All in all, this …

Nice graphics for what looks like an Advance Wars clone, but sadly the game itself is hideously bad. There's absolutely no strategy involved: almost every attack will completely annihilate an enemy unit - which means that gameplay is limited to unitspamming and blobbing. For a turn-based tactics game that is an absolute no-go. Don't even get it with 90% discount. It is simply not worth your time.

War Theatre is, immediately a game which draws your eye. The artistic style of this game is a standout, capturing the harsh & hellish nature of a ruined land marked by long & unrelenting war in a way that is at the same time enthralling and oddly beautiful. Gameplay is something likely familiar to anyone who has played one of any number of handheld wargames. Each turn your units can move, which is affected by terrain, and attack. Combat features a rather simple rock-paper-scissors dynamics. Infantry beat Air which beats tanks which beat infantry (oh and depending on the map water units get thrown in which are effectively new infantry/tanks). Positioning, support and some degree of foresight is helpful. Each army also gets a special character (otherwise both sides have access to the same units) whose special abilities are what really tailors your game style. I like that this means each army has the same core experience (once you learn how to use infantry effectively in one force it can carry over to any other hero), but learning the heroes and their abilities can be quite confusing. The one thing that the game would benefit greatly from is something demonstrating what the heroes…

It really isn't very good. The UI is clunky, the AI is poor, and one-hit kills are way too common for a game of this kind. It also runs quite choppily, and so looks way worse in motion than it does in screenshots. Very much not recommended.

A pretty fun game so far, I'm pretty terrible at strategy games though. This company is severely under-recognized in my opinion. I played Plague Road on the Playstation and loved that game as well. Only complaint is that the game is very laggy and crashed once, but the artwork is great. I would recommend for the programmer to make it run a bit smoother.

gamesense