Athena Crisis

Seems ok, but why the always online? No offline mode?

Athena Crisis - Turn Based Strategy, is a spiritual successor to Advance Wars. I really enjoyed this game at first. It has some similar gameplay mechanics and adds in way more units. But also some changes that makes the game a lot more challenging compared to Advance Wars games which I was able to beat without any guides. For Athena Crisis I got stuck in the campaign and had to resort to guided to beat a few missions then realized this game is not fun anymore. Some missions the enemy has overpowered units like zombies that steal your units via infection including tanks and battleships, how on earth does a zombie bite or scratch infect a tank or battleship? Your cities and bases do not hesl your units or resupply them. And the bases do not contribute to your economy. I know not everyone wants an easy game but I like to relax with my videogames. Well I got my nostalgia kick from the game and enjoyed the beginning of the campaign at least.

An incredibly strong contender for the spiritual successor to Advance Wars. Especially love that the game on top of having 70 odd official campaign missions, there are hundreds more fan made. There are hundreds of hours of content I've barely made a dent in for £4! Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much of an audience or online community which is a sad downside but again hours of great content, a well designed and put together game with loving care put into the art. Give it a go, if you hate it feel free to give me grief in the comments 😂. If you want to trial it, the prequel campaign is free on the app store.

This game, even on E.A.S.Y has way to many levels that are just outright unfair to the player, where it feels like your forced to do specific moves and just bash your head against the wall until you either find the right ones, look up a tutorial on youtube or just rage quit. Your given practically no information by the game outside of the basic tutorial. You cannot change the keybindings and they are EXTREMELY awkward to use. And this game while it is also avalible on mobile, which being blunt feels like the intended platform with PC just being a sloppily made port where the bare minimum works and that's good enough. Also Map editor items are locked behind getting specific skills so even if you encounter say, the Super APU that itself doesn't work for unlocking them in the editor, you need the Skill of the same name found through a secret to actually unlock them for the editor, and while this is more on the nitpicky side, how you unlock some things is by buying them with Stars, Stars mind you that the game creates situations where getting them even on the easiest difficulty is just unreasonable to the average player. Otherwise it's fun, but the issues are glaring and do drag it down and make the game way more frustrating to play then it needs to be. Also when first opening the game your greeted by a Login Menu, which can be infuriating to get by as it simply tells you to login, with no way to actually create an account, the fix? Close the game and reopen it, hope it recgonizes your on Steam. EDIT: Played a few more levels up to "Awakening", and wow... the Zombie unit sucks, it's genuinely just infuriating to go against, anyways leading into a point I forgot to add, the game like the throw dozens of "problem" units at you, Brutes, Super APUs, Zombies, the game has an obsession of creating unfair scenarios involving these kinds of units that are only normally available through skill (during the campaign you only get one skill slot btw so good luck picking a skill that'll actually work for the level rather then your own tactics), and this leads back into the first point against this game originally, this game doesn't feel like one made for just a casual playthrough given that the EASY difficulty still manages to be extremely unfair in multiple scenarios to players, and several of the problem units end up forcing you to take slower turns, Zombies they turn a unit they hit to their team, so you can't bring any skills that grant you units like the Super APU since if they get hit, their now YOUR problem (despite it being a V.E.H.I.C.L.E yeah they turn VEHICLES too not just Infantry) forcing you to spam indirects on a fog map where you don't have the economy for indirects (the game loves to do this to you btw, where it'll want you to use "X" strategy but not make that strategy good to use, and Awakening gives you tons of tents... a building that heals and resupplies Infantry... on a slow map... where Infantry are nearly useless if their not Snipers or Pioneers (because they can't attack even if they get turned), and all the buildings you want are knee deep in the dead's side of the map, and your essentially fighting a 2v1... but if you take too long they'll start building more regular units meaning your essentially on an invisible clock, on a level where the heavy handed incentive is to go slowly... and the Problem Unit denies you the ability to use your own Problem Units on them (if you bring the skill for the unit, like if you bring Super APU, you are NOT building Super APUs even though if your bringing the skill for them, you'll likely WANT to build Super APUs)... units that mind you are really good at speeding UP fights more often then not. Brutes take 2-3 indirect shots to kill and they frequently hit harder then Heavy Tanks and their on nearly every single level for the first stretch of the campaign and they end up being so over used that in the one secret level where you get to use two of them... your just greeted by several new units that make them completely useless... one of those units is the Game's Megatank equivalent (because why not)... and the tactic is to just use Indirects... again... Super APUs can breath on most units in the level you fight them, and the unit will just die more often then not (their literally the only Problem Unit that is a problem by their own merit since the A.I will actually launch attacks despite holding a superior defensive position), forcing you to go slow otherwise even Heavy Tanks will risk just dying for free because Super APUs hit THAT hard. And this is just a few examples I felt like adding after the Zombies reminded me that I forgot to add some.

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Ein sehr guter Indie-Titel, der sich an dem "Wars" franchise orientiert, aber selbst durch Innovationen überzeugt. Der Karten/Kampagnen-Editor bietet sehr viele möglichkeiten um seiner Kreativität freien lauf zu lassen, auch wenn anfänglich die auswahl ein wenig eingeschränkt ist da man einige Einheiten und Biome durch das abschließen von Kampagnen freischalten muss bietet die große Menge an Content die bereits verfügbar ist mehr als genug fortschritt um eine sehr umfangreiche Auswahl zu verfügung zu haben. Die Balance zwischen den Einheiten ist sehr gut, es gibt viele einheiten welche stark sind aber signifikante schwächen haben, und sehr viele Nischen können durch eine große auswahl an Fähigkeiten abgedeckt werden, je mehr man Spielt, desto mehr möglichkeiten kann man finden um seinen Spielstil neu zu erfinden. Das Invasions-system ist womöglich die beste Innovation meiner Meinung nach, allerdings hat dieses einige Probleme, welche aber nicht vom System her rühren, sondern von der Ausführung, nähmlich dass Spieler, welche einen Kristall nutzen und so ihre Kampagne zu einem Multiplayer Spiel machen, und dann sofort afk gehen können für potenziell verschwendente zeit sorgen, da es nicht immer sofort klar sein kann ob dieser Host nun verstanden hat dass das Spiel nun "Life" ist. Das kann dafür sorgen, das Spieler die versuchen den Host zu unterstützen (was durch eine restriktion, welche dafür sorgt das bis ein Host gewinnt, der aller-erste Invader ein verbündeter ist hervorgehoben wird), so nicht nur zeit sondern auch einen Kristall verschwendet haben, was eventuell frustrierend sein kann. Es gab zwar verschiedene lösungs-ansätze, aber ob sich einige technisch umsetzen lassen können steht in den Sternen. Alles in allem ist dieses Invasions-Feature trotzdem das Beste was diesem Spiel hätte passieren können, da es in kombination Kampagnen zu erstellen und zu veröffentlichen für enorm viel Wiederspiel-wert sorgt.

it's kinda crazy how much game you get in this game for the price. even the base campaign and prequel are a significant amount of content, but if you add all the community content (and especially the curated content) there's a truly incredible amount of stuff here. very much worth it, especially if you like advance wars. it also has some amazing and necessary QoL stuff like undos for turns and actions, stuff that any game like this honestly NEEDS to catch up on (looking at you Wargroove)