War of the Human Tanks - ALTeR

An active-time(?) system strategy/tactics game. Somewhat similar to Battleship mixed with a tactics game. Gameplay:[list] [*] Deploy units on the grid (there is a deployment area, usually a small section on the bottom of the map). [*] You don't take turns: time passes until a unit is ready to go (units have a speed rating, faster units move more often than slower ones). [*] Select a ready unit, move them, then either scout (scan certain tiles to temporarily dispel fog of war) or attack (attack fogged tiles to brute force it and hope for the best). [*] Hope that the enemy doesn't see any of your units so yours survive until their next action. You can see when the enemy fires onto random tiles so you can figure out the general area they're at (unless they're something like an artillery unit that has very high range but low movement). [*] Make progress upwards, clearing enemy tanks as you encounter them. [*] Once you clear all the enemy command tanks you win (or lose if they destroy yours first). You earn currency used to build units/equipment (necessary to replace those you've lost) and develop new unit/equipment types. [/list] If you like/tolerate anime plots (or are fine using the skip text function) and like the tactics gameplay you should try the first game. This builds off the first one in world-story (though deals with mostly new characters) and in unit types available (here you can eventually [spoiler]create variant units of both factions, leading to twice as many available (though they're mostly similar). Also, there are new unit types.[/spoiler]). You should also be fine with grinding maps for currency if you want to unlock/use a lot of stuff (going through the 100+ maps is a kind of grind even though they aren't the same maps). You should also be fine with getting hit before you can even act (you can generally change that by seeing where they hit and adjusting where you deploy units but it means continual reloading). Other thoughts[list] [*] Warning: According to a guide, 'there is a way to irrevocably fail' at unlocking something (which is a pretty annoying mechanic). [*] Warning about grinding in your first playthrough: [spoiler]An enemy gets stronger the more units you've destroyed (cumulative throughout the whole campaign). It was a pretty big difficulty jump for my first playthrough.[/spoiler] [*] In the first game the story changes 'routes' if you lose certain maps (otherwise there are no choices). It's unfortunate that the mechanic isn't really used much here. [*] There are only ~10 campaign levels but 100+ standalone story-light (story is spaced out, starts out slow) levels. [*] If you're not aware: 'MSG Skip (m)' on the top menu only skips things you've read before but holding 'Ctrl' (or using scenario skip) skips everything. [*] It's a shame that you can't save mid-mission anymore. [*] There should be a way to counter or re-activate modules after they're disabled by an enemy control tank. [*] I wish you could remove units from the deployment list (temporarily hide them with the ability to show them again later) because the list can get cluttered with units you have but don't want to use at the moment. At least let you mark units as 'favorites' and filter everything else out. [*] I wish it mentioned prior to battle if there's an enemy control tank. Not being able to equip life insurance changes my deployment (losing a unit also loses all modules equipped!). [*] There should be a way to see pre-equipped module descriptions and their effects. For example, Line-Mon shows mediocre stats but the module 'Choko's Overhaul' makes it much stronger than it seems (6 speed/move instead of the 3 shown). [*] The icon for 'Shooting Area' should show the proper target squares for 1 & 2 instead of it always being completely filled out. They do it for the self-burst tanks (range 0) but not the others. [*] Red can be somewhat hard to see on orange. [*] Once I misclicked a Ludwig and somehow got a huge recon bug (something like 9 full columns of vision until its next turn). [/list]