I really want to like this game, as I LOVED both the original block fortress and block fortress war on mobile. Sadly, this game feels like an unpolished alpha, with many of the worst concepts from some of the developers mobile games implemented while leaving behind good ones.

For starters, the main game mode of survival is utterly imbalanced, specifically in the sense of resource management and income. In the original block fortress, you had to do similar to what is required here: Build mines on top of resource nodes scattered around the map. However, it struggles in a similar manner to the original in that those mines scattered across the map are nearly impossible to defend. And once a mine is destroyed, you cannot simply rebuild it - it's gone for good.

It feels like in an effort to smooth out the very difficult resource acquisition, the devs made it so that every so often, after completing a wave, you get to pick a random allotment of either gold or ore or banners (another unneccesary currency.) Why not just balance the resource gain properly instead of having a random resource dump at random intervals?

Another complaint would be that in that original, almost every piece of equipment, and almost every block, was permanently upgradeable OUTSIDE of an actual game. Furthermore, they were NOT RNG, lootcrate-esque drops. You saved up for them and knew exactly what you were getting. Here, you still farm up resources, but then you throw in the slot machine and get a certain type of upgrade, say for troops, but it will be random what troop it buffs, what kind of buff it is, and the rarity of the buff. Given that the game costs money, there is no freemium mobile in-app purchase here, but this feels like a remnant of their block fortress empires mobile game with lootboxes. The RNG-based progression has no place in pc gaming and the game is worse for its inclusion here. On top of that, these buffs aren't each an incremental gain in power. No, instead you must choose only a handful at the start of any game to be active, and those are all you get. Remember how you could craft a slew of mods in the original for your favorite gun/turret to custom tailor it to your playstyle? Yep, thats prettymuch gone. So overall you do not feel like you're making tangible progress on your account overall, besides tech level unlocking new things. But every game you start you are effectively just as week as when you first started playing, aside from a couple RNG card buffs from lootboxes.

Lastly, I'd comment that certain elements of the more RTS-style block fortress mobile game, block fortress war, are not carried over. Here, you can get troops, but from what I've seen they're incredibly weak. Your troops just automatically walk towards the nearest enemy, wherever they are or whatever enemy type they are. If your troops are ranged with guns, they easily get massacred by any enemy melee troops. And the enemy will VASTLY outnumber your troops. Instead of respawning waves of troops from your base like in BF war, here you get only one initial spawn, and that's it. Additionally, gone is the feature of custom-tailoring the equipment of your troops. Now, you only get to choose between the same generic upgrades for all troops, adding either a sergeant, medic, or scout to the squad. The whole design of how the player's troops have been implemented make them feel more like roadblocks designed to occupy the enemy for a few more seconds before you the player will still have to deal with them, rather than anything fun and powerful and worth building around.

In the end this game just feels frustratingly unpolished. The fun of grinding to power up your favorite weapons and turrets is gone, replaced by RNG lootbox-esque buff drops. And the resource economy income is severely undertuned, making the game infuriatingly difficult. The RTS elements of BF War feel like a cheap gimmick here that isn't worth bothering with. I really hope the devs take time to perfect this game, and treat like a full PC game instead of a mobile game. Strip out the RNG, add actual incremental progression that is permanent, and playtest your game to ensure that it feels balanced and enjoyable. This isn't the mobile freemium market anymore, and a flashy coat of cool graphics won't make up for poor design decisions hidden underneath.

A worthy successor to the original, they took aspects from BFW and BF1 as well as the updated artstyle of BFE (hit or miss). Personally I prefer the BFW style, very clean. The empires artstyle can be quite dirty looking.

Besides that, overall it's a lot more content and on a much better platform. Finally I can actually perform in this game without cramping up my hands.

On launch there is no multi-player, but I fully expect it to come very soon as was mentioned by the devs. I'm hoping that comes quickly enough to take advantage of the launch wave. We will see, that will add a lot of replay value.

Preface:
40 Hrs in and at Tech lv 131. I like the other block fortress games and I do like this game. I just however cannot in good conscience recommend this with the current problems I'm having. Both serious concerns and nit picks. I will keep playing and will change my review when things improve enough for me. I want this game to be as good as possible and continue.

Outside core gameplay:
The settings menu is fairly barebones the mouse sensitivity slider and aim zoom sens would be much better if it had a integer option box. It is simply far too sensitive even with the slider at the lowest point. Even with 100 DPI I can do multiple 360s with one mouse drag across my mat. Fov has a similar problem but worse. FOV is a toggle, there is no in between, you either have it zoomed out or not. The graphics and resolution/display settings could be expanded but is sufficient.

I give props for input rebinds, its pretty good, just maybe needs support for mouse thumb buttons.

Gameplay loop:
Balance. This is a big one, it always devolves into the same strategy. Sniper spam. Why? 50 range enemies and fire bearers. Sniper turrets are the only turret that has the consistency to deal with these enemies outside of dealing with them yourself, which usually means sitting on top of a vantage point and using your own sniper. The solution to enemy hordes? More snipers. Snipers are the one size solution to everything.

The other turrets are to be put bluntly not worth the trouble. I will get into global mods later because they are completely overpowered and can even make bad turrets good or snipers into better snipers.

Motor:
Outside of littering the map with them or zomblock drones its underwhelming at best. In the early game 50/30 is simply too much for less dps than 2 machine guns and 20 range, especially when you're still setting up your economy. Not to mention anything that can overwhelm a small mg nest will just make quick work of the mgs and an extra motor or two will make no difference. In essence its a side-grade to mgs at almost quadruple its price. The opportunity cost just isn't there.

Motors are just one example I will tldr the rest:
---Every turret should get a bit of range when upgraded so that you won't have to either reset for range mods or use the op global ones.
---Plasma competes for gold which you need for setting up early, and when you can comfortably afford it you already have snipers and 50cals.
---Zapper needs a bit of aoe, I'd take a bit better crowd control and more expensive, over needing to head ache over spamming them with overlapping ranges.
---Hologuns are too weak and have zero use cases overall.
---Rotary Cannons are 2 50cals for less range, similar cost, needs to reload and no armour piercing.
---Whilst I haven't used Hellfires yet I can already see their problem, just use nerve gas if you want support(More range and indirect fire) or plasma(Better minor aoe and better single target damage).

Ps: please buff spotlight aoe, its nowhere near as good as target lights due to coverage and micro. It doesn't help they are so similar. Spotlights needs to act like floodlights imho, maybe make them an permanent alternative to flare spam in the mid to late game?

Equipment(Tldr too):
---Minigun feels bad to use, even with target scanner and range mods.
---Autocannon could use a capacity increase in some way.
---Adaptor is too much trouble for it's worth.
---Debilitator is a cheese/mandatory against blockoids and does little else.
---Engineer's medal is too potent with too little range, it encourages sniper spam essentially.
---Proxy drone does nothing past wave 10 and you can't afford it early. (Its 2.7 snipers or 4.5 50cals)

Troops:
God where do I start. All of them are too weak without sgts and medics. Combine them with their high base cost, it heavily discourages you to get them early. However the 3 squad upgrades are so cheap you end up skipping needing to think about whats needed for the context of the game state and just get all 3 with the squad in a bulk buy. Base troops only is so weak anyways they're just a waste of resources. You never get multiple squads without fully kitting out your previous one simply becasue they end up as expensive fodder.
Then the moment you get 3 squads that are fully kitted, outside of blockoids they, they can deal with everything that isn't a boss.

Ps: I miss the RTS control you can have over troops, I seen in another review that devs are having it as a secondary element, which is understandable. I just hope after its all done we can have a expansion on this asspect.

Bots:
The only good ones are collector, blade and shield bots. Collector is the best quality of life there is. Blade bot is a better tank than the armourd bot. Shield bot is really good for map hazards.

---Utility bot is a worse collector.
---Armour bot is a semi-expensive hold over till you get blade bot. Maybe allow the armour bot to be able to collect gold so that the blade bot isn't just a strait upgrade.
---Attack bot is too fragile.
---Bomb bot is too inconsistent.
---I don't see use cases for the teleport and supply bot at all(Teleport pads are cheap and with a solid defence/ammo management you don't need the faster reload).

Global mods:
TLDR too strong and its feels bad using them.
Generally the 'good' mods are all obscenely strong and makes you want to build around them, because of this utility, such as amphibious, power packs, block health, player equipment and especially barracks/bot mods are relegated to the bench.

Range mods punch above their weight by 1 rarity and sniper/lasers need range mods. Its weird that you can get turrets with more range than snipers/lasers with mods (power generators too). Damage mods are almost as good. Because these two mod types exist and with how potent they are(double damage or sniper level rage coverage is insane), it trivialises the game so much that the other mods can't compete. Example of this is why would you want the(still very nice) power packs for your flamethrowers when you can have machineguns with sniper range and almost 50cal damage.

Overall this global mod system could use a rework. Maybe have it be point buy instead? Commons cost 1 point and legendary mods cost 5 or more so it incentivizes more depth in mod selection. Or maybe reducing their potency and just giving more global mod slots. I also feel like the mods you can get though banners can have a option for you to expend more resources for higher chance of getting higher tiered mods. Having your 20th mod that do things like adding a medic to all Soldiers when you have a full hotbar of troop is needless to say not not very fun.

A nice quality of life would be a filter for global mods, having near 60 block mods alone makes looking for what you need or dupes to sell very tedious.

Thanks for bringing back this series and to PC none the less, I hope this helps.