If the title gives you any indication, I'm not a fan of this current iteration of this game. I purchased it full of excitement and enthusiasm, and you may look at the playtime on this review and think "well he's barely played it!" That in itself is telling, that you can find all of these issues.


Let's start on what this game does well, it looks beautiful, it has paid homage to its inspirations, whilst being uniquely itself. The units are detailed, interesting and I think at least in way of vehicles, identifiable from one another. There's charm, love and detail in every sprite, every animation, enough that I think the game does look good to play. The COs themselves have designs that are striking, sort of. There is a lot in art direction and design that points you in the right direction in terms of how you should feel about something introduced. So, good job artists, you're off the hook for what's to come.


Ho boy, as an author myself, I understand how difficult it is to pay homage without being derivative. Warside is not achieving that. The character dialogue feels robotic, unnatural, and without personality. You may think that's just the nature of the first faction (more on that later dw), but then you meet the second faction, and whilst they try to act like a angst-riddled love child of Flak and Ragna, they fail to do either personality trait justice. They're annoying but also predictable, you can guess what Scourge is going to say before his text box has even populated. There are subtle plot threads being woven but it's being done in a way I just don't care about, setting up a potential love interest in a TBS game with a single "I wonder if he's watching", like come on. Please. I will touch on this more in another heading about UI, but the lack of in-depth dossier is also hurting this game.


Whilst I'm going to refer to both, I'm going to begin with a statement that always needs saying. I am not looking for THE NEW ADVANCE WARS, or WARGROOVE BUT MODERN. What made me love Wargroove was how it could say 'we love advance wars, we're doing our own thing with that' and did it well, in my opinion. Even the less-favourably reviewed sequel has continued to do it's own thing. I say all of that to state I welcome change and innovation in a genre

So let's talk about some stuff I've noticed. As at time of writing, they could change of course. The biggest game play faux pas is actually in the next section, about UI, it'll make sense if you get there:

- HP Values, there is some weird rounding going on that I do not understand or perhaps it's no rounding at all!, I have watched the battle animation, I have watched my unit take the tiniest bit of a scratch to his full health bar, and his HP is showing as 9, I've merged a unit of 4 and 6 HP and again ended up with HP of 9. This may make mathematical sense within the context of your game and I'm sure all the formulae are working correctly behind it, but this just... isn't a good thing to present to your user in this way, because your user doesn't see your formula, they don't see the calculations, they see what you show them, and you're showing me what my mind is identifying as, weird numbers.

- Building capture is faster, but stalls the AI as you can attack and cap in the same turn, multiple units can be built from one building making pushing very stubborn, and repairing has removed all strategy. No more 2hp repair to be in a correct damage threshold, repair the unit fully or don't repair at all.

- Factions + Armies; COs belong to Factions, not dissimilar to what you may already know, each CO has their own power, but each faction has access to specialisms, special units or tactics that make them play unique, a great idea on paper, refreshing and new, I'm doing to stop referring to the point I'm about to make in the UI section, and just make it now!



No Confirmation - That's right, there's no wait order or fire order or attack order. Meaning when you click, that better be the exact thing you wanted to do. Annoying but not the end of the world, except it has removed a way that long term fans of the genre like to order their attacks. You cannot move adjacent to a unit and then attack, and you must be very precise with your mouse to see the attack from different tiles, because the second you click next to something, you're gonna go stand there and shake that dangerous tank's hand and say "You first mate".

No Dossier - One of my favourite things to do in these games, is to open up dossiers and give them a little read. It wasn't until my 20s that I even started wanting to know exact things like CO day to day bonuses. I wanted to open up Lash's dossier and have a little giggle at her Likes and Dislikes (Getting her way, not getting it if you were curious). There's nothing to tell me anything about any of the characters I am playing as, nothing to tell me about any of the factions, nothing to tell me about why they're at war, nothing to tell what matters to them. Even the villains had something! Felheim comes in with some very swift and very real explanations to be your enemy. Olaf in Blue moon for AW1 was clear about wanting to do 'something', AW2 had Black Hole being Black Hole from mission 1. I just, I don't feel like I can connect to any of the factions. Then yes, putting emotion aside, not reading my CO ability, or being able to see if it charges at different rates, or even checking if there are many passive bonuses being applied. It all feels very lite, like a mobile game

No information about your opponent - You can't see their money, their power progress, what their power does, radius. If the power applies a debuff, there's no information on debuff/buff nor it's duration, just a little icon that indicates the debuff is there.


It's not offensive, but it's not blowing me away either. COs have unique themes, CO powers make a sound effect, Units shoot on each other with a variety of sounds. So why do the units glide effortlessly over the map without a sound, just a soulless, emotionless click to every move I make? It sounds like I'm being pedantic, maybe I am, but it really is the little touches that infuse soul into your game, so don't overlook their importance.

There is a small mistake in that the first CO you meet being Jackson, and Jackson having one of, if not the worst themes. There is no power, no funk, no groove. It's all well-composed, but it's also not... special. The first theme you hear can make a big difference. Nell, Andy, Jake and Will all had stand out themes, even if not the best songs in the respective game, it set a tone.

Would it have been so hard to get a bunch of people to even grunt to add minimal voice acting?

I've also been made aware the game uses licensed music, there is a streamer mode in the settings to turn it off, but this hasn't been communicated clearly and content creators have already been struck by the game's use of music, this does happen but is even more embarrassing when, sorry, the music actually isn't that good to begin with.


No Skirmish, incomplete features, the game feels unfinished, it feels like it wasn't properly play-tested, which isn't true because it was play tested, but that's how it feels. It feels rushed out before it was ready, it's not irredeemable, a big patch to expand on writing and UI, perhaps a post to explain some of the damage maths to build confidence again. I think it fell into the Kickstarter trap of promising GREAT and delivering "Okay", there is definitely a framework here that could make an amazing title and its own series, I just don't think this is it right now. As it is, I cannot recommend this game. As it is new, I will revisit it later (and continue playing it to its end now, of course).

Kickstarter supporter here <---
And sadly I cannot recommend this game until it's out of early access.
wait...
it's fully released?
so then why did we have so many beta and alpha tests? and there's still many bugs and issues and lack of content in the game?
great question...

This aspiration of an advance-wars game has been hyped and also been in development for longer than expected.
Truly disappointing to see it have such a crappy release with:
-AI cheating and not using FOW when your own units are bound to FOW
-economy/building funds completely broke and didnt work (fixed as of writing this)
-lack of menu information, ui and QoL features you'd expect from any game this side of the millenium
-multiplayer is only random matchmaking, no lobbies, only 1v1 atm, no mmr, no leaderboards (though supposedly promised eventually)
-copyright music for streamers (they added a toggle option... but just a sad state of affairs)
(just to name a few....)

TLDR, dont buy until you get the 'all clear' that things are working close to a 'full release game' as its barely a 'early access' title atm..... sad

A huge disappointment.

I was so excited to dive into the game and relive the good ol' Advance Wars days, but this total mess of a launch quickly curbs all enthusiasm.

The game is chock-full of bugs, ranging from absolutely game breaking (No income from buildings = impossible to complete missions), to minor inconveniences (units make no sound when moving on the map).
Also one of the earlier missions has a hilariously broken win goal; You need to save a bunch of scientist by walking them to the exit zone, and doing this will spawn the next wave of scientist and a bunch of enemy units. This is a fun mission design, as you keep fighting an escalating enemy force. You can, however, simply not rescue the scientist and just kill all enemy units, resulting in a win state, absolutely nullifying the whole mission. Baffling lack of playtesting.

But the bugs aren't even the worst of it, those can be patched relatively quickly.

The main issue here is the absolute lie of trying to sell an early access game as a full release.
A number of KEY FEATURES are missing from the game, such as skirmish games and local play.
The commanders are missing their passive abilities, and you have absolutely no information on what their active abilities do.
Enemy AI is a joke, opting to capture buildings over fighting for objectives or protecting their artillery.

I really could go on, but I'm just so frustrated that it's hard to highlight all the games shortcomings.
I intend to check back in a year or so and see if the devs have fixed this mess and addressed their blatant deceit regarding the state of the game.