The most bland, degenerate tablet-game-from-2010 "strategy" I've ever seen.
"Cutscenes" are just stills from an AI generated "Visual Novel", the entire budget of the game went into the intro movie, which does not represent the gameplay at all nor does it even have the same type of atmosphere: grim and depressing in the intro, wacky and cartoonish in the game.
The whole roster of your squad leaders is DEI hires. Uininteresting "ethnic" characters with flat personalities. A collection of basic stereotypes, as ironic as it sounds, in a woke-ified "diverse" game. There's the 'Strayan, the Mobster, the "hard as nails" driving jeet woman, the "we wuz" Sheniqua "special forces" sergeant, who sounds like her best suited role is something like a helpful and cheery shop consultant, the washed out marine, a body-positive girl scout with a machinegun (that character would die of a heart attack if they heard a firecracker go off a mile away in real life), and a few more.
There is no strategy. Everything is on one level only, so no vertical tactics either. No garrisoning the buildings (except the towers, but they only survive maybe one-two hits before they collapse). Forget X-Com and Terror From The Deep. Forget any turn-based strategy released in the past 30 or so years. It's all just moving around the same maps, with the same buildings, shooting the same enemies on the horisontal level. Basic chess has more strategy than this.
Level design is bland and ambiguous, in a bad way. You can't tell what you can and cannot shoot through. You can't tell what cover is durable and which isn't. All maps look exactly the same, except there are "biomes", that means that either there's white ♥♥♥♥ (snow), yellow ♥♥♥♥ (sand) or green ♥♥♥♥ (woods, or something) as the main theme. It's all the same buildings and rocks otherwise.
The "tactical map" that gives you missions to select from isn't a map at all. It's just a few "campaigns" -- a small set of randomly generated missions, around four or five, where you can choose which path you take (there are like two choices per campaign, and all they give you is either extra friendly troops or a percentage of buffs or debuffs to you or your enemies, nothing cool), that happen to be on these "planets" (biomes) with the same procedually generated operations. So essentially there are like... three-four mission types per "campaign".
The vast majority of modules for your ship are a numbers game (+10% this -20% that, +1 to this skill +2 to that skill). You get oribtal cannons, some other things like map reveal. Otherwise they are about as uninspired as it gets.
Enemy variety is lacking too. You mostly got the bandits and "xenos" (♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI-generated "please-don't-sue-us-over-copyright-claims" Starship Troopers movie bugs). That's about it.
But this isn't even the worst. There are two main parts to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
The first culprit is the toxic as ♥♥♥♥ community and developers with and Ego the size of VY Canis Majoris, filled with sycophants that will report your and harass you if you say anything about their favourite Battle Brothers games (devs will not touch them even if they outright insult you or say things against Steam's Discussion Guidelines) or this... "game". I've had people ouright insult me cause I've said that the game is lacking in tactical terms, people raiding my account and reporting me because I've said that I don't think that Battle Brothers is a good game, so watch out if you do criticise anything there.
The second part is the obnoxious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI. For example it will bomb you from the fog of war at the edge of the map with artillery that you cannot see yet, with no spotters or line of sight to your troops. Yes, there is the "intelligence" level that will tell you where the enemy units are on the map before you position your troops, but you are positoned too far to reach them in one turn (yes, there's the tactics skill that allows you to position your troops further in, but it's not close enough) and good luck trying to storm an MLRS, protected by snipers and machineguns, across an open ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ field. And yes, that MLRS will ♥♥♥♥ you up even if your squads are tactically spaced.
Not only this, but the AI knows your range, so they will stay out of your effective weapons range as if possessing teleapthic powers or the perfect knowledge of your equipment with some kind of a satellite overhead that tells them your exact positon.
There is, of course, the dreaded "1HP rule" that turn based games have nowadays (Wasteland 3 as an example) where you fire all you have at an enemy for them just to survive on 1HP and shoot half your team on the next turn.
A special mention goes to the friendly civilian AI, where they will either charge towards the enemy with no guns running AWAY from the extraction zone, or they will sit behind the "cover" of a flimsy fence and die on the edge of the map if they DO have guns, waiting for you to rush towards them as they try to fight a horde of power armour clad and RPG totting pirates with their baseball clubs and BB guns.
The final, extra part, is the absolute lack of direction and overall blandness of the game. It feels like a fever dream input into the AI as a prompt. Like a mix of Aliens-at-home, mixed in with Starship Troopers-from-Temu, and the chinese copy of Wasteland 2/3. This is a recurring feature that can be attributed to almost all of the Hooded Horse published titles -- they lack character and feel like off-brand copies of actually good titles. You can try to compare it to the C&C and Warcraft clones of the 90's-00's (very unsuccessfully), but at least those clones have had a lot of character (KKnD is the prime example). This one is aggressively... "beige", neutral, insipid, faceless.
