Battle Worlds: Kronos

Nach 77 Stunden kann ich sagen: Es hat großen Spaß gemacht! Battle Worlds: Kronos ist definitiv ein würdiger Battle Isle Nachfolger. Ist das Spiel perfekt? Sicher nicht. Ich könnte ein duzend Kleinigkeiten bemängeln. Aber das ändert nichts am Gesamteindruck. Mein absolutes Highlight war die allerletzte Mission. Man steuert 2 Gruppen. Eine davon eher im Guerilla-Stil. Die Zweite im klassischen Stil. Ganz am Ende noch einmal vom Angreifer zum Verteidiger. Großartig! Das Spiel empfand ich übrigens nicht als "zu schwer". Im Turtorial ist alles wunderbar erklärt. Einige Karten muss man ein zweites Mal spielen, um zu wissen "wie der Hase läuft". Das finde ich OK.

The graphics look nice and with a bit of extra polishing this could have been a great game... but unfortunately it isn't. I picked up the CD key for €1.60 and at that price it is good value for the money if you count the hours of campaign game play. But it is just so annoying to play.. The game's unit control feels a bit like a poor man's "Civilization". But the game unfortunately is incredibly slow paced - e.g. your are watching your units walk from A to B (you cannot set way points if these are not reachable within the current turn ) and you waste your time with unnecessary micro management (Examples: You land a plane on a carrier in order to refuel it, but instead of just refueling it automatically you have to do that manually as a separate step. Or when you want to load the four units from a harbor into a transport ship this has to be done one by one, etc.). The usability of the user interface in some instances just is bad (e.g. any interactions with the "harbor" building fall into this category). Similarly you have to check the "small print" to see that a unit has run out of ammo or if it is about to run out of fuel. Other important functionalities are difficult to notice, e.g. when upgrades are available for a unit. Extraction points are barely recognizable - nor highlighted on the overview map. The unit balancing leaves a lot to be desired (e.g. air planes are pretty much useless (due to their limited range and the constant need to refuel), whereas choppers don't need any fuel and can stay airborne indefinitely, etc.). Some of the game's mechanics are just brain dead, e.g. you can "body block" an air unit with ground/sea units. Some units have limited ammunition (e.g. 3 shots) and you need an additional support vehicle to get them new ammo (and it takes time) - unless the AI uses the same units, in which case they have unlimited ammo. Some maps then use a tower defense style mode where continuous waves of replacement enemy units are sent your way. You there have to NOT kill the last enemy unit or a full set of replacement enemy units immediately gets dropped from the sky right in the middle of your units. What a ff-ing ♥♥♥♥ show! The game's AI is quite stupid but it starts with a superior number of units. Consequently the campaigns tend to be more challenging right at the start while you still struggle to only take good fights and to capture additional troops.. it boils down to draw small enemy groups into fights one by one and the game's logic when respective enemy units are triggered to attack seems quite idiotic/unpredictable (you'll want to use quick save/load a frequently). But once you have reached a critical mass of units the game becomes rather boring, since small groups of enemy units will usually wait to be slaughtered one by one - even when more than enough reinforcements are just standing around nearby doing nothing (at that point the level will still take hours to complete). Unfortunately the game is still buggy: Right in the decisive phase of a game the "level up" dialog suddenly no longer showed (screen grayed out but no dialog)- making it impossible to actually use the experience points that my units had. Then the game also repeatedly crashed while reloading a map.