roshan
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2004
- Messages
- 2,529
Battle Brothers is a great game, I keep trying to play it, but the thing is, the concept is incredible, but the execution I feel leaves a lot to be desired. Some of my thoughts on the game:
- The game keeps throwing "tactical challenges" at you that have no tactical solution. Take an encounter with a necromancer and some weidengangers. The necromancer keeps raising multiple weidengangers every turn, and your party can keep chopping them up but eventually it will be overwhelmed and killed off. I try moving archers around the horde to snipe the necromancer, doesn't work because it takes so many turns just to maneuver them around, and usually someone will go after them and lock them down. So basically it's just a long slow TPK no matter what you do. Geists once they inflict fear on your characters, that's another TPK and I can't figure out how you could possibly even kill them with 7% chance to hit. It's just frustrating and absurd because a tactical challenge should have a tactical solution, but in Battle Brothers these are faux tactical challenges because the only solutions are brute force or strategic in nature, if you have a strong enough party or built a group specially to handle such a situation.
- Movement is too constrained. There are many times where you see interesting terrain features you might take advantage of, but then realize it will take too many turns moving four tiles or even less than that per turn to set it up. Chasing down fleeing enemies, closing the gap with enemies or waiting for them to close in, is really boring. Navigating around obstructions, repositioning your party in formation anywhere - not really possible/viable.
- The AOO system really sucks. Once your characters are pinned down there is nothing else they can do except attack an enemy beside them. And with movement being so limited you really can't in most situations escape being pinned.
- Lots of weapon attacks and abilities are mostly useless. The feature of the axe for example to attack all the enemies around you, I've never even made use of it yet because letting yourself get surrounded by enemies is not really a very viable tactic.
- Too few action points. To wait so long for a turn and then all you can do is fire a bolt or move 2 hexes in a marsh.
- The fatigue system kinda sucks, or at least how it's currently balanced. You have guys that have 75ish fatigue in combat, but a whole bunch of skills take 25 or more fatigue to use.
- Forest combat is spectacularly shitty and tedious. There's no way to sugar coat it. The game just doesn't have a robust enough movement system to support that kind of tricky terrain.
- Useless animations are a plague to this game much like they were in the Shadowrun games and most other modern turn based games. Just passing a turn takes excruciatingly long because of all the retarded animations such as sliding bars and stuff that shows. If someone hits space bar to pass the turn, just. pass. the. damn. turn. right. away. Don't make it take 1.5 seconds.
- Some stuff doesn't even make sense. You struggle to maintain small amounts of funds from contracts, then you check the shops and find that the cost of even lower medium tier gear is astronomical, beyond amounts that are even fathomable to raise. So, why in the world even have shops selling stuff? There's just no point to it at all. Also, what exactly is wrong with cities having multiple contracts that you can choose from? You go to one city, no contract. Another city, no contract. Go to another and find a locked contract. Then in another find one that's beyond what you can handle. Now this isn't always the case, sometimes you have contracts aplenty, but some more thought needs to be put into the system, I mean a game is supposed to give players stuff to do, over here instead sometimes you have to struggle to find content.
Game is theoretically amazing, but IMO it could really use a major mechanics overhaul.
- The game keeps throwing "tactical challenges" at you that have no tactical solution. Take an encounter with a necromancer and some weidengangers. The necromancer keeps raising multiple weidengangers every turn, and your party can keep chopping them up but eventually it will be overwhelmed and killed off. I try moving archers around the horde to snipe the necromancer, doesn't work because it takes so many turns just to maneuver them around, and usually someone will go after them and lock them down. So basically it's just a long slow TPK no matter what you do. Geists once they inflict fear on your characters, that's another TPK and I can't figure out how you could possibly even kill them with 7% chance to hit. It's just frustrating and absurd because a tactical challenge should have a tactical solution, but in Battle Brothers these are faux tactical challenges because the only solutions are brute force or strategic in nature, if you have a strong enough party or built a group specially to handle such a situation.
- Movement is too constrained. There are many times where you see interesting terrain features you might take advantage of, but then realize it will take too many turns moving four tiles or even less than that per turn to set it up. Chasing down fleeing enemies, closing the gap with enemies or waiting for them to close in, is really boring. Navigating around obstructions, repositioning your party in formation anywhere - not really possible/viable.
- The AOO system really sucks. Once your characters are pinned down there is nothing else they can do except attack an enemy beside them. And with movement being so limited you really can't in most situations escape being pinned.
- Lots of weapon attacks and abilities are mostly useless. The feature of the axe for example to attack all the enemies around you, I've never even made use of it yet because letting yourself get surrounded by enemies is not really a very viable tactic.
- Too few action points. To wait so long for a turn and then all you can do is fire a bolt or move 2 hexes in a marsh.
- The fatigue system kinda sucks, or at least how it's currently balanced. You have guys that have 75ish fatigue in combat, but a whole bunch of skills take 25 or more fatigue to use.
- Forest combat is spectacularly shitty and tedious. There's no way to sugar coat it. The game just doesn't have a robust enough movement system to support that kind of tricky terrain.
- Useless animations are a plague to this game much like they were in the Shadowrun games and most other modern turn based games. Just passing a turn takes excruciatingly long because of all the retarded animations such as sliding bars and stuff that shows. If someone hits space bar to pass the turn, just. pass. the. damn. turn. right. away. Don't make it take 1.5 seconds.
- Some stuff doesn't even make sense. You struggle to maintain small amounts of funds from contracts, then you check the shops and find that the cost of even lower medium tier gear is astronomical, beyond amounts that are even fathomable to raise. So, why in the world even have shops selling stuff? There's just no point to it at all. Also, what exactly is wrong with cities having multiple contracts that you can choose from? You go to one city, no contract. Another city, no contract. Go to another and find a locked contract. Then in another find one that's beyond what you can handle. Now this isn't always the case, sometimes you have contracts aplenty, but some more thought needs to be put into the system, I mean a game is supposed to give players stuff to do, over here instead sometimes you have to struggle to find content.
Game is theoretically amazing, but IMO it could really use a major mechanics overhaul.
and 8-10 marksmen.
