Recent reviews by Belcunt the Nigerian

Now this is how you make an Early Access game look promising.

I never buy EA games, ever. That's just a rule I have to prevent lazy developers from dropping their project all together and leaving me with an unfinished piece of trash. But with Battle Brothers it was different from the get-go. Something screamed "genious" at me. Basically, it was all the fact that the game reminded me of several successful and interesting games of similar genres: Warband, FF:Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Shadow of the Horned Rat and many dungeon crawlers.

The game has an open world with non lineal quests that you complete only to improve your starting party and get more items to fit the style of fighting you want. This already allows for many types of party building, trying out new weapons, armor and whatever tools you can get your grabby hands on. The weapons have different abilities to reflect this variety in playstyle. Their use is very satisfying. Decapitating, impaling, stunning... All of these have their uses and add diversity to the combat. You can equip each character with whatever you think suits your warband best.
Of course, your characters can also learn new abilities to improve their combat capabilities, like any good RPG. However, these skills do REALLY have a significant but not game-breaking impact. It reminds me of the table top verson of Mordheim, to be honest. Most importantly tho, the xp system rewards your guys for fighting, so of course you want to do that as much as possible. However that puts your mercenaries in a risk of dying, so you have to choose your engagements carefully. Luckly, the level ups feel rewarding after managing to survive with your fresh recruits for a while, so that's a huge plus. Increasing stats like melee skill or fatigue can really change the course of a battle later in the game.


The world map and quests are fairly simple and akin to those of Warband. You kill baddies, protect a caravan, deliver something and get gold in return. Pretty straightforward. You do get a bit of "lore" and backstory on certain events or characters, which adds to the fluff of the game. The most fun in the world map are the random events: certain characters may ask for more money, tell you something about their past, etc. You also have to make decisions, mostly revolved around morality, similar to how games like FTL do it. Something that is also really fun is the recruitment system. Every mercenary gets his piece of backstory and sometimes an alias to go with it. But most importantly, they have a defining trait, which is their profession. For example, a Raider may be more brave and skillful, but a farmer may be stronger and more durable. Hiring the right people is crucial if you want to survive late game... unless you enjoy cannon fodder being seint to the slaughter.

The combat tho, is where this game does it really well. However, it's also where the biggest flaws reside. Essentially, your band starts lined up if possible, facing the incoming force. You know the number of enemies you're facing when you enter combat but you may not have line of sight on them. Then the enemy either rushes or sits back depending on their race or party composition. The combat is responsive. Every hit feels right, breaking armor or making an enemy bleed. Also, you have to position yourself in a diferent way depending on who you're facing: too many throwing weapons? Advance your sword and board guys. Too many spears? Lob ♥♥♥♥ at them and shoot them. Depending on the map you may also have to reposition the soldiers that are left stranded so that they don't get overwhelmed early on. It rewards you for micromanaging your fatigue and armor too, so spamming attacks isn't necessarily a good idea all the time.

However, here's where the most glaring issues come into play, IMO. My biggest gripe is that a lot of the fights just end with your party clumped up fighting off the incoming horde of AI. There's not much tactical positioning when fighting in plains, as opossed to fighting in swamps or the forest. So, sometimes the difficulty comes from simply bad luck instead of strategic thinking. As stupid as this may sound, this could easily be fixed with something other games have, which is AOE attacks. If most battles reward you for sticking close together, then force even the most trivial of fights to become a hassle for the player. I think more diversity in terms of AI playmaking would be nice as well.

With all that said, the game also has other pluses to add, mainly great and detailed art and a fenomenal soundtrack. My gratitude goes towards the composers, for creating such pleasant background music to listen to.

So, all in all, I'd say this game is totally worth the current 20$ or € it costs. Do yourself a favour and buy it so it may grow further. Hoping to see more products from these guys in the future.

TL;DR Version:

Pluses:

+Fun combat
+Good weapon variation
+Good character variaton
+Rewarding skill system
+Pretty art
+Great score

Cons:

-Overly simple quests
-Simplistic combat in certain scenarios
-Orcs (♥♥♥♥ these guys :( )

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, whoa, I think my dinghy hanging out.

Hey Steam: you won't mind if I write how much of a sappy, amateur, boring and forgettable ♥♥♥♥ this game is, right? But since it's free you guys don't give a damn and give it a pass. Good job letting garbage like this that is bound to get negative feedback make it to your store.

What's the point of this adventure game, seriously? It's supossed to raise awareness? Why don't you let experts take care of that, at least they know what they are talking about. If people actually wanted to read about depression they would just READ about depression, but from reliable sources. Games are supossed to be fun and this is not, and it would be okay if it hadn't been for the unnatural praise this game has gotten.

More "Papers Please" and less trash like this, thanks.

Possibly the best free to play game you can play. Check it out.