I’m not new to RPGs, tactics games, strategy, or any other genre Battle Brothers is adjacent to, and this game required a lot of early-stages guesswork from me as to how it works. So many of the game’s critical underlying systems are so obtuse and not immediately apparent that I didn’t even notice that there was cheap equipment for low-level characters until someone in my first-play stream explained it to me… I’d been struggling to buy the premium stuff that I just didn’t need at that stage of the game from the weaponsmiths. The easiest of the “proper” quests will often throw near-impossible battles at new players that won’t understand why they’ve ended up in the mess.

And the “tutorial” quest is more than happy to destroy the player’s armies. What is being called a “tutorial” in the game just… isn’t, really. Battle Brothers is going to lose a lot of potential fans because it point-blank refuses to teach them how to play. But, if you are going to go down the route of unforgiving complexity, the least you can do is make sure there is an adequate tutorial and learning curve to give players a chance.

Just this week I reviewed a simulation title, in A-Train, that comes dangerously close to being a genuine degree in urban planning and an MBA, rolled into one. Once you engage a hostile party the game will switch to a tactical map where the actual fighting takes place as detailed turn based combat.I’m all for games being complex, challenging, and unforgiving.

This is also where you manage, level up and equip your Battle Brothers. On the worldmap you can freely travel in order to take contracts that earn you good coin, find places worth looting, enemies worth pursuing or towns to resupply and hire men at. The game consists of a strategic worldmap and a tactical combat layer. Do you have what it takes to lead them through bloody battles and to victory?

You decide where to go, whom to hire or to fight, what contracts to take and how to train and equip your men in a procedurally generated open world campaign. Battle Brothers is a turn based tactical RPG which has you leading a mercenary company in a gritty, low-power, medieval fantasy world.

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