Warbanners

Strategy games are designed to keep you engaged for hours, especially if they feature a sturdy set of gameplay mechanics and enough content to be worth the trouble. On the other hand, it’s not easy to balance the units and make the whole thing feel challenging and rewarding at the same time. There are hundreds of games out there that have already gotten the respect of the gaming community.

Warbanners is a turn-based strategy game that features classic gameplay mechanics and a few new ideas to spice things up. In essence, the game is more about the actual combat than anything else, since there’s no base building to worry about or anything of the sort. On the other hand, this makes the experience feel a bit shallow and repetitive, at least at the moment.

You can at least create your own army by hiring warriors and equipping them with the right items to fare as well as possible in combat. They also come with some attributes that can be improved, and you should consider them in order to decide on their role on the battlefield. It’s also possible to learn new skills and change the outcome of a conflict by using them wisely.

Unfortunately, the game is in a very rough state at the moment, especially in terms of user interface, HUD and level design. Sometimes you are not even able to click on buttons because of it, and that’s not good news in a game that’s mostly played using the mouse. Although the soldiers supposedly take things like morale, fatigue and landscape conditions into consideration, this is not exactly visible in the game.

Lastly, the graphics quality is not bad, but the level design is very repetitive and annoying most of the time. You look at the same building models and simple terrain tiles for most of the time, so it’s no wonder that the experience gets boring in a rush. The extra interface problems do not help either, so we can only hope that these issues are going to be addressed in future versions.

When it’s all said and done, Warbanners certainly has potential, but it’s difficult to enjoy the game at the moment, given all the interface and gameplay flaws. Hence, maybe it’s better if you wait for the developer to improve things before judging it too harshly.