War of the Human tanks plays like a sort of grid-based strategy game in the vein of battleship, but with significantly more tactical options and threats than the board game classic. Unit abilities can light up fog of war, kill enemies at greater range, self-destruct your unit for a wide swathe of, well, destruction, and so on. Between missions, you spend supplies gained from previous sorties to upgrade and replenish your army, increasing their effectiveness, area of effect of attacks, range, and so on.

Its titular unit, the human tanks, are mass-produced military personnel who for some unknown reason look like cute young women and charge fearlessly to their doom at your command. If that sounds too weird for you, this game may not be for you. But if you can look past that strange outer layer and the (gasp!) DREADED ANIME AESTHETIC (the horror!) this game offers a lot of fun and deep tactical gameplay.

The plot is presented in a visual novel sort of style between missions, so you will have to do a lot of reading. But there is plenty of (dark) humor to be found, and some surprisingly deep themes for such a wacky game.

Also, its soundtrack is seriously catchy and unique.

I personally ADORE this game, and if you have any interest in tactical RPGs like advance wars or any other strategy title really, I think you could do a lot worse than War of the Human Tanks. If nothing else, try the demo - it gives five levels of playtime, plenty to decide on whether this game is for you.

This is a weird game.

You don't really need my review to see this, it is after all a strategy game where all the tanks are at the same time anime girls and the setting completely accepts and incorporates both aspects of this somehow.
I know that these anthropomorphic representations of war vehicles are not unheard of in anime / Japanese media, but for me it took some getting used to.

Don't let the look of the cutscenes fool you though, this isn't really a visual novel, nor will you end up dating your tanks. It's not quite that far out there. This is, first and foremost, a tactical strategy game.

Your troops are deployed (at specific positions of your choice in the landing area) in a hexagonal grid representing the battlefield, and you move them around in a turn based manner. The presentation is very clean and static, with no real detailing on terrain or anything. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but I managed to look past it eventually.

There are various classes of human tank, each fulfilling different roles on the battlefield. From reconnaissance scouts to suicide bombers to artillery installations to the run of the mill tank.
Each of these types can be improved with resources won from battles, allowing you to construct direct upgrades to the original types (usually slightly more expensively than the older one).
There is plenty to unlock, and some of the unlocks even have story tied to them when you manage to get there, but getting everything can be quite the grind.

The story takes place in an alternate-history Japan, where two factions are fighting for control of the land. You are a lieutenant in charge of a recently reinstated branch of the imperial army, and manage your human tanks with the help of your trusted mechanic and a newly assigned advisor / observer sent by high command (both also anime girls, because of course they are). The story takes some twists and turns and was a lot more interesting and entertaining than I expected, basic anime clichés aside, and I was happy with how it was brought to its conclusion.

I got one of, I think, four possible endings and the player is free to start over after they've reached an ending and take their army as-is into a new game. Between missions you are also able to replay any previously cleared mission (and a variety of side missions), which I feel is a nice touch.

I would recommend this game to players looking for a decently long, very Japanese strategy game with a solid focus on story and replayability.
There is a sequel out as well, I have not yet had a chance to try it but this first instalment forms a complete, stand alone story.

A fast, original and very clever turn-based tactical combat game, which is a kind of modern version of Battleships.

Human-like Tanks: what's not to like. Gameplay is easy enough; I found it to be like a watered-down version of Advance Wars, with one of the largest divergences being tile size = hit points (1x1 unit is killed/destroyed by one hit, with a few exceptions).

I liked the storyline between battles too. If you read in other reviews about how the cutscenes were too long; you can speed it up by holding down Spacebar, if I remember correctly. You can also unlock and replay maps, if you're not into the main storyline.

Get the game, or you'll make Heshiko cry a second tear.

Updated for Tanksgiving 2018. Gobble Gobble.

Pros:
Good fun for a cheap price.
Decent customization.
Funny (if maybe a little odd) humor.
Better plot than expected for simplistic graphics.

Cons:
Simple graphics (...who cares)
Can be a bit long winded sometimes with dialogue. (If you really wanted to though you could skip past it but you'd be missing out imo)
It's a bit easy so far (I haven't beaten the game or anything though yet, so this might change)
Edit: an unintentional bug gave me unlimited money, it's already been fixed probably why it was so easy haha (this shows good support for the game too!)

+ Ability to view a complete transcript of the diablogue in-game; useful in case one is trying to follow the story but accidentally clicks through it at times
+ Soundtrack, though limited, is somewhat unique & faily enjoyable
+ There are several available 'tank' types, although these are consistently improved through research and upgrades
+ Modules act to boot battlefield options & offer some means of customizing one's forces; though they get expensive, they offer a lot of options in the late-game
+ complete freedom to manufacture, modify, deploy & alter formations of tanks before battle
+ Multiple endings (I believe there are 4)
+ Losing a battle does not necessarily reset your progress; losses here and there will change the story & may offer a different ending

- Severe lack of system config options
- Cringey & generic anime dialogue; this may not bother some, but I found it to be far too much for me to handle
- Amount of dialogue is excessive and wholly unnecessary; about halfway through the game I just skipped the whole thing, as I considered the plot & dialogue to be lifeless & uninteresting
- The amount of actual strategy required is somewhat shallow, though the challenge does increase in the late-game; gameplay is very similar to games like Battleship or Minesweeper, though the customization helps quite a bit


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I'm a long time fan of the Fire Emblem series, as well as the Final Fantasy Tactics series. I'm one of those people who'll get mad and reset whenever someone dies. In my fantasy wars, my army destroys it's enemies mercilessly without any casualties.

This game did some bad things to me.

One of the first units they gave me blew herself up all in the hopes of taking a few enemies with her. I reached out, a soft no escaping my lips before her final warcry, a deafening explosion, and a heavy silence.

War of the Human Tanks is a comedy game of give and take, managing your expendable human pawns in an effort to make sure the enemy loses more expendable human pawns. It's brilliant. I expected this game to start preaching at me about war and death and the value of life and it never did, because the game recognized that those things are probably common sense, and instead we could have light-hearted, yet dark humor develop interesting characters. I got the game to slake my thirst for grid based tactical combat, and also received a surprisingly deep narrative along with it.

The most notable feature of the combat is that it takes place in real time, with your light, kamikaze units often being the quickest, and your heavy, blow them up from a distance units being a bit more sluggish. The game uses fog of war to keep you on your feet and a wrong step into enemy territory is certain death. Not for you, but sometimes you feel pretty bad when your terrible decision making gets your innocently little scout shot to pieces.

Most units die with only one hit, but units that are larger-and thus also easier targets- must be hit in each of their segments before they die.

If I had to complain about anything, it's that once you get certain units you're basically an untouchable god of death. When you can literally bombard an entire half of the map with just one unit, you're probably not going to lose any fights. But then getting to that point is rewarding the first time you actually get to do it, but that said, the challenge maps usually laugh at simplistic strategies like that and send you straight to hell. Well, not you, so much as your pawn tanks, but still.

Pros- Hillarious, surprisingly interesting narrative, combat is simple enough to pick up quickly and deep enough to stay interesting for the long haul.

Cons- Some of the sound effects (mostly death cries) get annoying pretty quickly, not too hard to get over-powered, and I wish there was a competitive multiplayer mode, even if it was just local.

5/5

As a final note, this game has a demo, so there's no reason not to at least give it a try.

One ending down and 3 more ending to go.

This is a game about war and it's weapons. Usually when we battle in war we ignore the life of our weapons. Yet the weapon serves us faithly and to their very end. It's common for soilders in war to gain an attachment to it's weapon and because best friend.

In this game the weapons are alive and they are called human tanks. Mostly devoid of emotions they fight in battle and sacrificse themself without a second thought. So on the first glance surface this is just a cool anime game that use hex-grib battle system. Yet the story and background give deeper meaning to the deeper thinkers.

For most of us it's a very light hearted game that's basic anime drawing character with real-life photo style background most of the time. The Graphics is likable and sound is well done. Gameplay is actually quite hard unless you spend time grinding for crates and keep your tech generation ahead of enemy forces. Scouting is very important and a priority.

8.5/10 for a really fun and enjoyable hex-grid war game.

Fantastic fun, interesting story with many twists and several endings, engaging gameplay that demands strategic thinking and an incredible soundtrack throughout.

The game's story is told through visual novel format, which sets the state of affairs and the stage for the battle to follow. Battles are fought in real-time, but with a sort of turn-based system that runs on ticks, for example after giving a unit orders to move you must then wait for it to radio in asking for new orders before it can be moved again. Battlefields are presented as a grid of octagons, and before the round commences you must first place your units as in Battleships. Each unit has it's own special properties and characteristics similar to chess, for example some may move 2 spaces at a time whereas others may only move 1, or one unit might only be able to attack horizontally whereas others must attack at least 2 spaces ahead of itself. The aim of each battle is to eliminate the opponent's 'Command Tank' before they destroy yours which, regardless of how many units they have remaining, wins you the battle. The battlefield is covered by a shroud as seen in most real-time strategies with sight range varying between your different units, so early game tactics may usually consist of Battleships-esque artillery strikes into the dark hoping you'll hit something, as your units gradually advance closer to the enemy, thinning out their ranks until their command tank is within firing range.

Very nice little strategy game, with several challenging achievements to really push your tactical prowess. (You don't know pain until you've watched your entire platoon get demolished by a cat)

I also throughly recommend purchasing the unbelievably extensive soundtrack, 91 tracks with a runtime of exactly 3:32:23. Three and a half hours of various funk, electronica, pop, rock and other genre-bending music that's really worth a listen if you're a true connoisseur of music.

Great game, I personally managed to lose 73 hours to it and I've already pre-purchased the upcoming sequel, ALTeR.

Definitely recommended if you like strategy games and/or visual novels and/or lolis.

War of the Human Tanks is a charming grid-based tactical game. It features a set of colorful character archetypes (the strict Satou, the easygoing Choko, a shut-in genius, and a bunch of awesome 'Human Tanks'. After playing for over 30 hours, here's what I think..

Pros:

- upbeat soundtrack
- large unit strategic variation
- challenging bonus maps
- multiple routes
- easy to learn
- great character design

Cons (sort of):

- the campaign was too easy (common in a lot of games that emphasize difficulty in bonus content)
- the tutorial was a bit lacking
- there's a fair bit of farming involved (as with most Japanese games)
- there is no way to significantly speed up large actions (you can cut out animation but it still takes a while to do hit confirmation for a large target area radius attack)

**The game has a lot of dialogue in it. If you are solely interested in the tactical combat, there are several skip features implemented to aid in this.

Overall, the game was really enjoyable. It would have done just fine with a little less farming but that's not much of an issue. The campaign does not take long to complete in case you are interested in the story behind it all. I am definitely interested in playing the other titles in this series once they get on Steam!

Oh and for those of you who like achievements..

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=217602410