Warmachine: Tactics

Console/PC game reviews by 5punkers

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Dog Pants
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Warmachine: Tactics

Post by Dog Pants »

Warmachine: Tactics

Pnut asked for an up to date opinion on this, which I backed on Kickstarter early in its development. It's a turn based tactical game based on a popular Steampunky skirmish tabletop game, the selling point being combat mages who control big stompy robots called Warjacks.

As a turn based tactical game it's mediocre. You get a handful of troops who have a few different abilities, but none of which really seem to be worth the effort. They look nice, individually, but the scenery is basic and the UI is bad. That last bit is probably my biggest hangup; it's unintuitive and unforgiving, doesn't give you enough feedback, and falls foul of the (also bad) camera too often. Add to that frequent panning closeups of mundane actions, slowing things down and breaking your concentration, and it results in simple actions becoming a bit of a chore, which aggregates to a slow and clunky experience.

The meat of the fighting is slow, too. It uses an XCOM-style move/shoot or move/move system, but being more melee orientated means positioning and cover aren't as important to survival as having more troops with more health. That makes things grindy, especially since every individual will take a good few turns to take down. The Warjacks, bigger ones particularly, can soak huge amounts of damage. Some can't be damaged by small-arms fire (short of a critical or ability), so it can turn into a heavyweight slugout between the machines while the rest of your horse sits and watches.

Despite all of my criticisms there's still something there. The armies are different and interesting, and maybe in more freeform missions it will improve, but right now I wouldn't recommend paying more than a tenner for it, much less the £24 it's on sale for on Steam.
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