Well, I've beaten it on Baron... TLDR: this review is a *very* reserved recommend... Even its target audience might not want to buy Crown Wars due to lack of animation speedup, but someone with time to burn might enjoy pouring hours into this game customizing their troop models and watching the execution animations.
[h1]Good:[/h1]
-Excellent visual customization, 'Pimp My Ride" but for your troops. Extremely detailed once you get a few armor upgrades and missions under your belt. Like painting miniatures.
-Visually enjoyable. Good kill animations, overall a good balance between snappy/fast without overly sacrificing detail.
-Decent tactical complexity, with various damage types, status effects, abilities with interesting interactions.
-Varied challenges & maps - whilst grinding procgen missions eventually got boring, story missions always felt fresh.
-[i]Mostly stable[/i]; only crashed once, had some minor bugs which required a reload.
[h1]Bad:[/h1]
-Grindy as hell
-Limited itemization - in comparison to graphical customization, choice of mechanically different equipment is limited for most classes. 1 armor set, 1-4 "consumable" (they are 'expended' for that mission and will regenerate the next map, you don't need to buy another one lol)
-Storyline starts out interesting, but gets cringe as it progresses. [strike]I suppose that was unavoidable for modern Fr*nchmen.[/strike]
-Things just aren't explained well, the game doesn't tell you "Blunt damage is good against armor" etc
[h1]Ugly:[/h1]
-[b]NO SPEEDUP FUNCTION?!?![/b] Most of the animations are well done, but after the 999th time watching a single NPC slowly patrol back and forth I want to avoid wasting more of my life. Freaking Age of Decadence had animation speedup, and that game is 10 years older than Crown Wars.
-Sometimes the skill/item/etc description is misleading or outright deceptive. For example: the Duelist's Barracks statcard shows the stat bonuses from both sets of gear at the same time... but in missions he clearly only gets the bonus from a single set! Another is the Skirmisher's potential 2nd passive, one of which states "regain MP after killing an opponent with skill"... But it triggers on Skirmisher's skill use? I suppose it got buffed and they forgot to change the skill description.
