Battle Worlds Kronos Review - Turn Based Tedium

Published: March 22, 2015 9:00 AM /

Reviewed By:


Kronos Header

Battle Worlds Kronos isn't as fun as it could be. It ticks all of the requisite boxes for things that turn based tactics games should have and while it's stable and playable, there just isn't anything about it that is especially interesting or fun.

Battle Worlds Kronos has no qualms about being a difficult game, and high difficulty can actually be in a game's favor when the difficulty and game play work in tandem. The problem with Battle World Kronos's difficulty is that, instead of being implemented via interesting challenges or cunning AI, the game essentially expects the player to make specific moves and decisions in order to be successful.

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While honest about its own difficulty the method of achieving said difficulty leaves the game wanting.

This essentially removes the strategy element of the game and replaces it with something akin to a puzzle for the player to solve where the right moves need to be made at the right times and in the right order. The reason that this approach fails is that the game uses a fog of war system which hides information that the player needs in order to properly suss out the solution. The only options left are to either save scum your way to victory or inch, excruciatingly slowly, across the battlefield a few hexes at a time hoping to notice enemy units before getting close enough to them to trigger their activation.

This also means that mistakes can't be easily recovered from and leaves very little, if any, room for improvisation and tactical experimentation. The only real strategy is to inch forward until you have as many units as possible just outside of the enemy's activation radius and then swarm and surround the enemy units while trying to minimize the damage sustained by your own units.

The only real layer of strategy is deciding which unit to attack with first. As units take damage they also deal less damage when attacking and the unit being attacked almost always gets a chance to counter attack the first time it is fired upon each turn. Spreading damage around evenly will keep units alive longer but will also hamper their ability to do damage. On the other hand allowing one unit to take too much damage or be destroyed can be devastating.

Units gain experience and level up as they fight and there are simple skill trees for each type of unit but the different upgrades on offer don't generally seem to be worth investing in over the 'Heal 40%' that every unit has. Since units deal significantly less damage as their hit points are reduced it's often more beneficial to save the points earned from leveling and heal damaged units back up to full health/damage capacity than it is to give them a small movement increase or damage boost.

Units that survive to the end of a mission can sometimes be used again in future missions although there really isn't an easy way to tell at a glance which unit has already leveled up. The option to bring in experienced units is also limited to the point where it doesn't seem to make any real appreciable difference in the overall mission difficulty.

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Unless you hold down the space bar constantly there isn't a quick way to see which units are more experienced. Even then it isn't always easily seen.

While there are a decent variety of units on offer each faction has access to a nearly identical selection of units. This means that you are almost always fighting against mirror images of your own units and the set of tactics useful against the enemy are the exact same tactics that your units will be vulnerable to. In practice this means that you can plan against putting your units at risk but also removes the option of any really interesting tactical match-ups.

The visuals in Battle Worlds Kronos are good and the sound is serviceable. Nothing stands out as especially noteworthy from either although some of the idle animations for certain units are odd and a bit distracting. The story for the campaign on the other hand is just bad. The dialog is bad, the storyline is bad and the game breaks the fourth wall in awful attempts at humor.

All in all Battle Worlds Kronos is bland and boring. Unless you are chasing the nostalgia of the Battle Isle games you should probably explore other turn based strategy options.

 

Battle Worlds Kronos can be purchased from Steam or DRM free from GOG.

The PC copy of Battle Worlds Kronos used for this review was provided to TechRaptor by the publisher.

Review Summary

5.0

Battle Worlds Kronos is okay. While perfectly functional there just isn't much fun to be had with it.

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twilliams
| Senior Writer

Maestro of cardboard and plastic, former Tabletop Editor. Now I mostly live in the walls and pop in unexpectedly from time to time. If you ever want to talk… More about Travis