Empires Shall Fall

On one hand, I can't say the game was bad; some of the unit designs I thought were pretty good (namely the diesels), and the music is okay-ish. The faction-specific upgrades are also pretty nice, though there really should have been some better attempt at icon variety. On the other hand, I can't say I liked the campaign's story. The ending was lackluster imo; basically a worse variation of Iron Harvest's series of events (the last mission as a whole is the biggest offender of the bunch). The backdrops are...not very good in my opinion. Very dull palette, would really benefit from maybe grasslands or snowy terrain. Character design was inconsistent for Blue League. I don't know why. All I know is we've got joan of arc, mechanic, and historically appropriate military CO for that faction. At least the Black Empire's ensemble have a consistent uniform of sorts. Really the game is just "okay". I wanted to like it but in the end I wasn't very invested in the game's story or general feel. Clearly there WAS an attempt at making an Advance Wars-esque game, but there's just a lot of things I felt should have been done better, most especially the ending for the game. 5/10 Game. Not terrible. Not really that interesting though.

I thought it would be a good Advance Wars clone, but the designs are rushed, the story falls flat, and the gameplay isn't saving the day.

Game is a great advance-wars like in every regard, unfortunately it has some serious technical issues, this game has crashed extremely hard on me twice in two days now, on a system that can borderlands 4 in 4k 100FPS. It completely bricked my system when crashing, forced my entire system into issues, my browser crashed and lost all cache data as a result, desktop broken, OS issues, full on system brick that requires hard restarting to even begin fixing the issues, and i have no idea why! The game has crashed for a 3rd time on me now, but it also crashes my entire system, resets my browser cache, bricks my graphics and desktop and entirely disables most OS features. The trigger seems to leaving the game open but idle on a monitor for about 5-10 minutes. I tried to ignore the issue for a while, but i can no longer keep playing this game based on the damage it is causing, I will probably need to reinstall my OS to be on the safe side at this stage. This is less of a game and more well disguised malware, and I resent having paid money for it. Doubt i'll be able to get a refund easily, so don't be like me and buy it in the first place!

It's mid. Upgrade system is not deep enough to provide meaningful strategic depth, though props for the idea. I'd love to see some kind of on-the-fly loadout you can use a tech tree to actually create, or some overworld management of missions, or some kind of extra layer of depth, but nope. Same infantry-bazooka-light tank-artillery mix, ripoff CO powers, slavish visual design, etc. Same capture mechanics, map objective design (but weaker), etc. If you're going to do something like this, play with engagement ranges or something, make it hex-based, provide some kind of flavor. Maybe if you're REALLY desperate for Advance Wars type content, give it a try, but otherwise don't bother. I think this game is a classic case of when gamers say what they "want", you need to take it with a grain of salt. No, no one actually wants a total Advance Wars exact clone. Look at the actual AW series for clues: Dual Strike brought in dual CO's, dual screens, more fleshed out nations, enough shifts in the formula to be interesting; Days of Ruin brought some more-unique on-map CO zone flavor and specific unit buffs/weaknesses, interesting cost decisions, etc. The contrast here is sad, because for example Empires Shall Fall just straight up tells you that repairs and merges are completely proportional in cost, and the in-battle veterancy upgrades do not provide enough variety to overcome that utterly bland design that I'm nonetheless positive people asked for without realizing why it's often not provided. If you want to scratch the itch, play a game that's much more of a spiritual successor, or gives you a strategy experience in a totally different way, like the brilliant Nephilim Saga or Unicorn Overlord or the Valkyria Chronicles games or Triangle Strategy or Battle for Wesnoth or actual Fire Emblem or Dark Diety 2, stuff like that, do you see the pattern? Creativity and risks matter. Wargroove is similarly more like Warsnooze for a reason! No one has out-Advance Wars'd Advance Wars because the genre isn't supposed to be this narrow.

Quite similar to Advance Wars; it's quite obvious that it was inspired by it (What's an airport?). Major difference is that every time a unit kills another unit, it gets a field promotion, getting slightly more attack and defense. I love this feature; this is something I had always wanted in Advance Wars and other turn-based strategy games, to the point where I went and fixed and rebalanced a mod to get something similar to that into Wargroove 1. The only other TBS similar to Advance Wars I've seen have a level-up feature like this this is this old Symbian game called Ancient Empires 2, by the now-defunct Macrospace (later Glu). Another major feature is a perk system - every faction can add 0-3 buffs to individual unit types at the start of the game, and the buffs differ from faction to faction. It's quite interesting, and I'd like to see more. Now, the cons. -Navy does not exist. -Excluding Navy, there are about as many units as Advance Wars 1 or Wargroove 1, but this game doesn't really bring anything new to the table specifically with regards to unit types. Technically even less, since there's no navy. -There are very few skirmish maps, and they only allow you to play 2-4 players. No 5+ player maps here, nope. -Due to the above 2 points, I foresee this game getting very boring very quickly. While there is Steam Workshop integration for maps, there doesn't seem to be any modding support, so it's not unlikely this game will get sidelined very quickly. -The CO art is 3/10. Tolerable, but "tolerable" art isn't exactly recommended for a release. -The campaign story is bare-bones, but acceptable. That all being said, for its price, it's pretty good. Solid 7/10.

This feels like a romhack, and I mean that in a good way. A lot of care was taken in tinkering with the mechanics without changing the overall formula, and the result is an Advance Wars that's less spiky and wild, but still highly playable. For all the custom art poured into Wargroove, I didn't really click with its mechanics and gamefeel. But this I like. Some changes include: -no fuel management, only ammo -veterancy, giving you benefits for keeping a unit alive for a couple turns -temporary customization points to spend before missions, letting you tailor your strategy instead of being forced into a particular CO's playstyle -a lot of CO powers have been scaled back or given a secondary effect, and you pick a power from a list rather than just activating based on your star level (no iconic sami/eagle blitz, and the AoEs are less destructive, but the overall toolkit is wider) In terms of writing, it doesn't seem to be Empires' primary focus, but I didn't mind Days Of Ruin and I don't mind this. For a small team making a labor of love, this is a pretty big swing. And if you liked the feeling of just regular combat in Advance Wars, endure through the tutorial and get to the real stages. They're worth it. Edit: Cleared the first real campaign. My opinion is basically unchanged. The tutorial campaign filters a lot of people, and I think this is a shame. The stages in the real campaign are solidly designed. Nothing too special, but they feel like they'd be at home in the first advance wars. 2nd Edit: Upgraded gunners feel kinda busted. They're Advance Wars' AA, but can attack without being countered, they're cheap, they can ford rivers and climb mountains, they give you resources when they kill, and four of them can pick apart a tank without taking damage. They make tanks more valuable just by existing, which sort of forces the meta back into its intended rocks-paper-scissors loop, but it's basically not worth taking the two other infantry types when gunners exist. 3rd Edit: Cleared all campaigns, into the bonus content now. With ten hours under my belt, I think I can say that this game really sticks its technicals but is a little afraid of getting creative. I think gunners being cheap multirole superunits kinda holds it back from finding a deeply sweaty pvp audience---although I could be wrong here---and I think the writing being scanter than Advance Wars' keeps the audience from really investing in its world and characters. However, these are quibbles. Advance Wars is one of those games that feels like it's really easy to make, and then the path to designing it is full of pitfalls. Even if it does nothing else, Empires avoids those pitfalls, and this is to its credit. I hope we get more from this series, and I hope it finds its own voice. A second title could be really impressive.

Отличная игра, интересный геймплей, поддержим русский геймдеф

If you like advance wars you’ll love this game. Molto bene, 8.5/10

Worthwhile nostalgia

Just simpely awesome game. In the old days I loved to play Advance Wars and this game plays and feels like it. Can recommand to everyone who loves those kind of games. I hope they bring a DLC or another game just like this in the future. I have been playing this on my Steamdeck all the time and it plays wonderfull! This game will never leave my steamdeck!