WARBORN

I bought this game on a whim during a sale, not really knowing what to expect. As you can see, I have over 50 hours in it now; I was pleasantly surprised by how good it is, and it deserves a lot more recognition. Warborn is a turn-based, hex-based strategy game, very similar in gameplay to something like Panzer General or Warhammer Armageddon. The game has a forty mission campaign with ten missions per faction, and an overarching story that ties them all together. Online multiplayer is mostly dead, but there is an offline skirmish mode against the AI that has thirty pre-made maps plus a map editor, so there is plenty of content. With the basics out of the way, here is a rundown on the features that make this game a good choice for turn-based strategy enthusiasts: - [b]No RNG.[/b] This is huge for players who hate bad RNG in strategy games. When your units attack they are guaranteed to hit and do a consistent amount of damage every single time, and so are the enemy units. That means your success or failure is entirely up to your strategy: which units you choose to deploy, how you position them, and the order in which you take out the enemy units. - [b]Combat outcome preview.[/b] Every time you move and attack with one of your units, you can see a preview of which enemy units are in range and exactly how much damage your attack will do before you commit to the attack. If you don't like the outcome (or if you realize you have made a mistake) you can cancel the move and try something else. - [b]Good unit design.[/b] There are only ten unit types in the game, but each one has three unique abilities that make them very different from each other. In general, I found the units to be interesting and well balanced. There are no garbage unit and no overpowered units either, and all of them are useful depending on the situation you are facing. - [b]Unit matchups.[/b] The game has rock/paper/scissors combat where there are three kinds of attacks (kinetic, energy, explosive) and each unit has a separate resistance value for each damage type. That means unit matchups are really important; a unit that specializes in dealing energy damage might be devastating against one enemy but barely scratch another. This adds to the strategic depth and also to the point that each type of unit is useful in different situations. - [b]Terrain impact.[/b] Certain hexes have terrain features that not only greatly increase the defense of the unit occupying it, but also affect line of sight (some attacks need line of sight and others do not). This is a fairly standard feature for this kind of game, but it is well implemented here and your choice of where to position your units on the terrain really does have a dramatic impact on the outcome of the battles. - [b]Faction commanders.[/b] Each faction has a unique commander unit with special abilities that can be deployed to the battlefield once your have accumulated a certain number of command points. These command units are very powerful and it is fun to experiment with their abilities and see what they can do. They are also characters in the story with conflicting personalities and goals, and they help to give each faction its own flavor. One last thing: Don't be put off by what you see in the screenshots. The game is trying to emulate the visual style of 1990s anime and although I am not particularly a fan of that style, the game looks much better when you are actually playing it. Also, I recommend turning off battle animations in the options menu. By default, whenever one unit attacks another the game zooms in and plays a little animation of the two mechs fighting each other. That is what you are seeing in some of the screenshots, and while they are fun to watch the first few times, the game plays faster and more smoothly if you shut them off. In summary, Warborn is a quality game that had a lot of thought and effort put into it, and I found it an interesting and enjoyable challenge to earn the S-rank for all forty campaign missions. The gameplay design is excellent and I really appreciate the fact that the mission outcomes are entirely dependent on strategy rather than the caprice of RNG. If you like games such as Panzer General and Warhammer Armageddon then you might like this one, too.