This is long, and I apologize, but if nothing else, if you’re having doubts about buying it and you scroll through comments for second opinions, hear me out.

The real challenge comes when you fight enemies that have re-enforcement waves and/or are a level above you. This is one of the reasons why I said you stopping at the swamps was a bad decision.

And to be clear, this challenge can present itself at your leisure, and be possible (but very challenging) to beat a little past the starting point of the game. Look for red/yellow battles. You describing “one shotting” everyone tells me that you were fighting enemies that were below your level.

At the beginning of the battles, where you place your men on the randomly generated troop start points can be the difference between a decisive win and one of your party members dying. What strategies you’ve chosen to employ in your camp by your commander that buff your party in combat make a huge difference as well. Are you movement oriented, prone to repositioning frequently? Do you like your men to be closer together? Do you prefer using animals? Reliant on archers? List goes on as you learn more strategies for the table. There aren’t many, but they make a difference.

What skills your party members have, whom you’ve chosen to comprise your party, how you leveled them up and what specializations they have and what you’ve equipped them with as well is key (which is an obvious thought in any merc management game, but you really understated the combat and it’s variety) to whether or not you’re going to win.

There’s loads of variation that, while your review was good, you left out. The skill trees may seem limited, but having different members of your party of the same class with different subclasses and different skills to compliment each other expands upon it vastly.

I only came back to write again as I just had a battle that had me on the edge of my seat (even AFTER 180 hours) after deciding I didn’t want to pay the guards for being a dirty thief. I was outnumbered, and out leveled despite having 19 men on the field. Left 37 corpses in my wake by bottlenecking them and protecting my rear flank from the other group with bears / archers / aoe based / and multi-hit fighters. Tanks held the neck and switched out legionary style.

If nothing else, wait till it goes on sale. I think it’s worth the price.

I’ll be back to read more of your posts. Sorry for being such a fanboy of the game, but I’ve really enjoyed it and don’t think you gave it a fair shake.

It sounds as if you just wanted this game to be battle brothers and were upset when it wasn’t. I’ve played a ton of turn based mercenary games… and I’m not sure why, but this one has held my interest despite some of it’s forgivable failings.

There are ways to increase xp gain (at least now). There are adaptive (leveled to player) and level specific restricted game modes (each zone has a certain level of enemies). When you gave up at the swamps, eh. I would have kept going. I’m more grind forgiving when it comes to games, and tend to enjoy it.

As it stands, I’ve enjoyed the game quite a bit. The only reason I’m writing this is in hopes that others have the chance to do the same and give the devs credit where it’s due. I’m not sure of their intentions (as I haven’t researched patch notes/road maps), but as it stands, I don’t see a reason why this wouldn’t be a good investment.

You article is extremely well written and does cover the game’s inner workings to the T (minus the part about movement and attack not being able to be displayed). I just think you were a little harsh in saying basically saying “don’t buy it, play battlebrothers instead.”

But your site, your opinion. I enjoyed the article even though I didn’t agree with the overall message. Keep up the good work. I’ll check out Battlebrothers.

In the end, your review, combined with one hour of playing it to ascertain the basic outline of your analysis, saved me a lot of time I would have invested into something that ultimately would not have rewarded the investment. Thanks, and good read as always!