Crescent_Star

I want to give this game a higher rating, sadly it has some issues that prevent me from giving it a 9 or even a 10. The goods. Firstly, I *love* the way the game shakes up this genre with an open world! I love that the game doesn't just do mission to mission with maybe something between. It's actually an open world with many different ways you can go to progress. The designs are pretty cool I do enjoy seeing what new unit I come up on. Art design is generally well done mixing 2d with 3d in a way that doesn't feel like it's in the uncanny valley like I see many games fall into. Gameplay is fairly solid I don't see much wrong mechanically. It's unique in it's style I just wish.. Well I'll put that in the bads. Story is pretty solid one when you get into it with pretty good voice acting. Though it is a bit on the basic side overall with your generic rebellion vs empire plot. The interactions between characters well make up for that, though. They make you want to continue to see how the story develops. The bads. Several things knock off points for my overall score of the game. The opening parts of the game. Honestly these were just.. bad. Not spoiling but the first hour of my game was just ripping on it because they honestly, in my opinion, put their worst foot forward. It wasn't until I was done with they lengthy tutorial/prologue before I actually got to see the best it has to offer and how great it was. The animations, or lack there of, is one of them. It's the tired mobile style of trying to simulate movement by simply morphing a single image. This leaves an uncanney taste in my mouth that won't go away. From pushing full plate mail quite far to simulate breathing to moving a body part just by rotating that portion of the image. It could have been handled much better. Combat is a bit iffy to me personally. I enjoy the idea of being able to change how your character acts, but I have issues with how it's presented. The idea is that you script an ai for your units to use. Attack a if enemy damage is x, guard if condition is y kind of thing. I think a lot of my issue boils down to how it really isn't explained why order these tactics. Honestly if they explained it by (character) delegating moves in the tutorial it would be more acceptable. Personally I would love they move towards hybridizing it with a JRPG and giving you the option to play it out personally or letting the ai do the script. Overall the game is pretty fun and I'm glad I pushed through the opening to see a better game behind the crud. Maybe if they make a sequel it will build on these parts and make an even better game.

This game is very much a love hate relationship with me since it's beta. On one hand you have good and unique gameplay designing with vehicles not seen in other games. It has plenty of vehicles, modes, and ways you could enjoy it... Then there is the other hand. The game is very unbalanced using the guise of 'realism'. The economy is complete and udder trash tier. You lose money per match the higher tiers you go even if you're an average or decent player because they include repair costs without the payout to recover those losses. The ability to max out one tree for one faction for one vehicle type can take thousands of hours because of low rewards or the outright punishment of losing money per match. Then there is the elephant in the room. The devs are some of the pettiest people I've seen in gaming. Gaslighting and blaming the community when they're finally fed up with bad practices that has been happening for years. Removing negative posts or constructive critisism on their forums and ignoring other means of communication. So petty they removed the steam logo from their website because of the bad reviews from people fed up with their stuff. I wrote my original negative review on steam around 2018 calling out these bad practices and finally people are waking up to it after recent controversies. Nice to have you guys finally on board. Don't get complacent and let Gaijin know that their practices are no longer acceptable. Don't stop at a small step to 'fix' the economy, demand them balance the game, fix the bugs, and finally listen to the people who actually give a crap. The game gets a 1/10 until the problems are fixed and that 1 is just because there is a good game under the hood of a destroyed economy.

The game is honestly such a dumbed down version of the gold paradox makes it's sad. It has great concepts and does keep me coming back but I feel it's just because we're in a desert of good grand strategy content. The devs have a skeleton crew working on balancing and fixing it which falls hardcore behind on content with each patch. Moders do more with a small group of free development then the core team can. Even still it can be fun at times even if pdx hates players with the random rolls. Do not buy this game! I say this simply because it costs over $200 to get the full experience.

The game is pretty bland for the most part. It's all right for a game you semi mindlessly play. It really does feel a bit tedious in the long term. It would be a good logistics game but the moment you zone out oop you slip on absolutely nothing and that itch you started scratching turns into your character falling over. The story is weird and convoluted with elements that leave you scratching your head and questioning the rules of this world and why everything isn't already dead. You can rebuild roads but it takes so much resources and by the time you're done you've pretty much have no reason to use them. My takeaway is that it could have been better but instead of doing something great it tries doing everything and falls short on it all. It's still a fun experience at times and I wanted to actually see it through to the end.

Peak advance wars in my opinion. Story was fun, gameplay was spot on, and the new mechanics were definitely welcome. I love swapping between high altitude and ground in clutch situations to help the other. The dual strike mechanic was super fun to play with. Messing with different commanders to see how they play off each other was great. Sadly I doubt we will get a good follow up to this title.

Honestly this game is not as good as I had hoped. The dialog is just horrible with one note characters and a plot so bland a 3 year old would fall asleep. Honestly cringed way too many times. Art direction is mixed it has some ok sprite work when it comes to the overview but the characters are ugly as sin. It honestly feels like the modern day use low quality pixel art and pass it as retro when the devs don't understand what made retro games good looking. Combat is barely serviceable. Too many units just counter each other and themselves it seems like. It makes it hard to bait or attack units with things you can build. Honestly this game is a hard pass. "No honey we can't buy Advance Wars, we have Wargroove at home."