Warbanners

Overall a good game of the genre, but there are few problems: potion spam on both sides, magic completely dominates battlefield economics as the losses you would take are never compensated to mission payout so you need to take every advantage and cheese mechanics, some missions are setup for your failure and you have to replay them for better results. Passable merc story. Good semi-linear battlebrothers-before-battlebrothers.

This really could be a great game—it has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, one relatively small design choice drags the whole experience down: the hit percentages. Attacking an enemy from the front usually comes with only a 40–50% chance to hit. I understand the intent. The game wants you to improve those odds through smart positioning and flanking, and that’s a solid idea in principle. The problem is that, in practice, you often can’t get into those ideal positions. As a result, many encounters devolve into round after round of misses—miss after miss after miss—until a unit eventually goes down. The same applies to the enemy. They miss frequently as well, which only makes battles feel longer and more drawn out rather than tense or tactical. Instead of dynamic engagements, turns start to feel repetitive and predictable. There was simply no need for the base hit chances to be this low. You could still reward smart positioning and flanking with higher accuracy while keeping combat engaging and believable. As it stands, the excessive randomness undermines the pacing and makes what should be exciting fights feel tedious.

Kind of impossible to recommend for $20 when Wesnoth is free, but there is a kind of janky tabletop skirmish game charm here. All of the rules are pretty simple but there's enough of them that the game simulates lots of little things. Lighting can matter. Movement type can matter. Consumables are important. Every creature on the board feels like it could be represented with a pewter model and has some juicy keywords in its statblock. Honestly, I'm in a weird position where if you handed me this as a book, I'd be arguing that it was $20 easy. But as a video game, it feels like it might be more reasonably priced at $5. I think I'd recommend Warbanners to folks who'd play a solo tabletop skirmish game. It is 100% in that wheelhouse. For folks looking for a Fire Emblem or a deeply polished srpg, this absolutely isn't that. Go in expecting a bit of eastern europe, a bit of character sheets and basements, and you'll have a decent time.

Warbanners is a tactical fantasy RPG that focuses heavily on difficult turn-based combat, mercenary management, and careful long-term planning. It clearly draws inspiration from older strategy games that prioritized challenging battles and meaningful resource management over cinematic storytelling or modern accessibility. Instead of overwhelming players with flashy presentation, the game concentrates almost entirely on building a mercenary company, surviving brutal encounters, and gradually developing a squad capable of handling increasingly dangerous missions. While the game suffers from rough visuals, harsh balancing, and some outdated design choices, it still manages to provide a surprisingly deep and rewarding tactical experience for players who enjoy unforgiving strategy games. The story follows the Silver Griffins, a mercenary company led by Roderick, as they become involved in a larger conflict filled with political tension, undead threats, betrayals, and war between kingdoms. The narrative itself is fairly traditional fantasy material involving mercenaries caught in dangerous events far larger than themselves, but it works well enough as a framework for the tactical gamepl…

Good game.

Warbanners is a retro feeling (and looking) strategy game that still has modern sensibilities. You take your small group of mercenaries through a curated campaign against undead hordes, orc mobs and occasionally elves, humans and dwarfs. The story follows Roderick, a mercenary captain with a troubled past who becomes embroiled in a plot involving an evil cult of necromancers and eventually unfolds into a potentially world ending apocalypse. The gameplay is solid, you get to build your force from a pool of a dozen units with support from non combatants that add various buffs (e.g. instantly killing a random enemy at the start of battle or allowing you to summon an allied, non-controllable unit). You also have three 'hero' units that are unique but offer good versatility without being overpowered. The battles are fair from what I've experienced and there are are a few difficulty setting to choose from ranging from easy to brutal. A smallish 20 hour game that doesn't overstay it's welcome and offers a solid experience for the price. I only had one major bug where the menu buttons wouldn't work properly on the map screen and in order to save I had to move my cursor a few inches …