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Wargroove General Thread


Landjager
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Wargroove has got an official release date for PC, Switch, and Xbox: Feb. 1 2019 (The game will also release on PS4, but no date has been given yet)! That's right, this game which was announced at the Switch Event in Jan. 2017 will finally be releasing next week. You can find a new trailer on the game's official site

For those who don't know, Wargroove is a turn-based SRPG in a similar vein to Advance Wars. Part of what makes Wargroove unique is that players control a small army led by a commander who possesses a unique skill known as a Groove. The game seems really interesting, and I'm very excited to begin playing it next week.

The game will include a full single-player campaign, online mulitplayer, map creation, cutscene creation, and campaign creation which can all be shared with others.The game is available for pre-purchase on the eShop. The game is priced at £15.99 / $19.99 / 16.99€. It will be available in 10 languages. You can find the list of languages on the website.

Edited by Ressueah
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Not fond of the aesthetics, they seem a little low grade and messy. HOWEVER, if this is a solid successor to Advance Wars with plenty of content, it's shaping up that way, for the love of Drake's exposed gut I'M BUYING THIS GAME!

I've still DS and DoR, and they're great fun, but I need to spice things up. Please oh please don't like this be an indie cargo cult! No MN9, nor some atrocity like that still unreleased Paprium.

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Two nitpicky things:

1: That's 1/2/2019 for those of use who don't have their months first (Otherwise it'd be out already. :P)

2: It's also PS4, which is nice as that's more options for console of choice. (What is a shame though is that it won't be out on the 1st.)

Alright, so graphically it's not a world beater. I just hope it's as solid as that 50 hours would claim it to be. I kind of never noticed AW and have only played the GA titles a bit, but this could be a worthwhile choice if it can keep its promises. And if nothing else, I hope there's crossplay so the campaign listing isn't divided by whatever combination of four there could be.

Edit: This is the dev's second game (They've published quite a few others, but their other developed game is Stardock.) and sadly it's windows only for PC. Damm shame.

Edited by Dayni
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I'm interested in Wargroove because I miss the Advance Wars series. I hope there will be a demo so I can actually try the game before just purchasing it.

A highlight for me is how impressive their map editor is. I always loved making mini-campaigns for myself in Advance Wars, so I should be able to do that with Wargroove as well. I just want to know if the aesthetics will be nice (so far the pixel art looks amazing), and the actual gameplay.

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No Switch, so not getting it.  May pick this up at a later date if I'm bored and have enough money.

Someone made a good point about dates in this thread, so I'll amend the topic title to make it a bit clearer.

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  • eclipse changed the title to Wargroove Releases February 1, 2019
1 hour ago, eclipse said:

No Switch, so not getting it.  May pick this up at a later date if I'm bored and have enough money.

It's also available on the PC master race. Judging from the footage, it doesn't look to demanding for hardware

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2 hours ago, Dayni said:

2: It's also PS4, which is nice as that's more options for console of choice. (What is a shame though is that it won't be out on the 1st.)

Thanks for reminding me. I edited the OP to reflect that.

55 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Someone made a good point about dates in this thread, so I'll amend the topic title to make it a bit clearer.

Thanks.

Something to note. A while back, the developers mentioned that they were planning on having full cross-platform play. I don't recall hearing anything since on if it will be implemented or not. If someone could find official confirmation or deconfirmation of cross-platform play, I'd be interested in knowing.

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Well damn. When they said it was releasing Q1 2019, I was expecting March or April, not early Feb! Been dying for this to release for ages now. I'm gonna end up using that map creation tool to death, aren't I...

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, IS Bath Salts HQ said:

I'll probably get this on Switch too, some friends of mine have it, I saw a cool custom map already too. 
 

Oh, someone beat me to the punch. I call dibs on Altea! (And @Slumber don't cha like a little Thracia love?).

 

I've only started the game, through the first Fog of War mission. The game isn't exactly handholding with the early stages, they're tutorials, but not cakewalks- I almost lost the first retreat battle actually (although to be fair, I kinda didn't notice the barracks for a few turns, and I should've built a second Wagon). I'm cautious with my Commanders, and they've stuck to a single Barrack per map so far, so spamming units to win isn't a thing yet.

I'm appreciating the deviations from Advance Wars, no fuel, no ammo, Rangers can move and attack instead of being unable to the one of the two like Artilleries. And the visuals do look better in motion than in a screenshot, they're quite nice actually. It's a bit confusing what is what for each faction so far, but I'm liking the devotion put into making each look different. And Warpups are an adorable idea.

I'll post my multiplayer info later, and just a reminder, this game has crossplay with PC/Switch/XBOne (Sony is a stoic edgelord).

 

The developers aren't sure about a ranking system for online yet, but they do plan quality of life updates and some promising yet unexplained DLC.

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I followed this game's development for years and bought it day one, but now I don't think I'll play more than the handful of hours I've put into it. 

It mostly nails the visuals and framework of a classic Intelligent Systems game, but with none of the gameplay speed and polish. It might sound weird to complain about the speed of a turn-based tactics game, but it's a huge thing. Players will be inputting moves and seeing them play out a hundred times every hour, so if the UI isn't snappy you really feel it. If you have battle scenes on (and why wouldn't you, it's like half the visual charm), but want to skip some as a chapter winds down, it requires 2 full seconds of holding the B button every. single. time. As if each attack is a AAA game's story cutscene that they're worried you'll miss. There's also smaller issues like moving the cursor past a unit's movement range and pressing A will cancel the move... basically the sum of it is, every move feels like it takes more precision, one more button press, and a couple seconds longer than it should.

I watched the start of an Advance Wars 2 speedrun and you can get from game launch through the first story mission in 60 seconds. That's all just UI speed. I played a bit of AW Days of Ruin while I was waiting for this game to come out, and it's like night and day how much better it feels to play. The original GBA game is 18 years old. These are solved design problems. Apparently nobody at Chucklefish bothered to actually dissect the games they were inspired by.

To their credit, they've heard community complaints and have promised to patch the speed of things like scene skipping. But another problem I'm seeing in the game, which I doubt they would patch, is the campaign maps are too damn big. You'll see some reviews criticize the length of campaign chapters, but I can't overstate how long it takes just to get from one end of a map to the other. I'm 6 chapters in, the game is basically still in tutorials with barely any units available, and the chapters are already taking 40+ minutes at a reasonable pace of play. That's ridiculous. My working theory is they based it on Advance Wars movement ranges without remembering that AW was played on a GBA or DS screen. This game was designed for 16:9 so it's like they felt the need to make every map 50 tiles wide. And the map designs themselves need more density and less blank canvas.

The parts of the game that have reviewed better are the Arcade and Puzzle modes, but all their content is locked behind the truly terrible campaign. And while I often think people on this forum expect too much from video game writing, it's unusually bad here, like it got shuffled off to an intern or someone with no writing experience. Mercia is supposed to be princess of Cherrystone, but hasn't heard of the country that periodically invades her kingdom. The voice acting feels weirdly mismatched, like Valder looks like a boy under his Cubone skull but talks like a mature man? Did the same director not sign off on character designs and voice direction?

Into the Breach is another tactics game I played while waiting for this to come out, and I easily recommend it more. I also just picked up Save Me Mr Tako! because it was 70% off, and that's already pulling me away from Wargroove. It's inspired by a broader range of titles, but has all the charm, ambition, internal logic, tight controls, and world building you would expect from a love letter to a certain era of games. Probably because it was made by a single dev who actually loved those games.

Anyway woah! Why did I write so much! 

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34 minutes ago, Lynsanity said:

Anyway woah! Why did I write so much! 

Perhaps because you've followed something for a while, and finding it to be not what you wished it was, now seek to tear it down? Hype turns to rage and rant?

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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I got wargroove to take a break from the grind of speedrunning, but I kind of had the same problem with the gamespeed and UI feeling slower (relative to advance wars) and the campaign being a snoozefest.  Advance Wars balance is questionable on the CO level, but generally in terms of units, it's balanced enough for the pseudo-puzzle of the Hard mode campaign to work. I don't really feel that in Wargroove, because I can early game rush or force them to suicide into my defensive line pretty much equally easily, mostly due to quirks of the critical hit system and ranged units being more flexible than in AW. 

THis is kind of a game where I can throw together reliable plans, but it still takes forever in real time for them to play out, which adds to the tedium, which I feel shouldn't be so when they're still fast enough in "turns" to get the highest rating.  I think that maybe playing a game with a too-transparent simple AI "always attack most vulnerable target in range regardless of counterattack value, or if the only available target at all is my counter unit " is difficult since I have since seen a couple things... Into the Breach comes to mind as an example of literally showing the opponents move ahead of time, which might sound like an absurd player tool, but kind of points out how the a lot of games in the genre (and Wargroove is very guilty) even without that direct preview of enemy moves, you might as well have a "virtual" preview of their turn, since you can manipulate their Ai - with absolute consistency - based on positioning or forced "must attack if possible" decision tags. Into the Breach is generally clever about it  and in my experience, attempts to AI turns based on the limit of what you can do with your current resources.. but in Wargroove, I might as well be playing both my faction and the AI faction at the same time for all the variability they have. 

I might stick with it a while to see how I like the multiplayer, and look for a really good player-made level set, but I'm, really seeing it as an average, but not bad game that really would have appealed to me pretty well 6~ years ago, but just can't work out now.

 

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Forgive me for being a stinkin' casual in the strategy department. You elitists who dissect everything to the last atom and demand only the greatest of challenges can stick to your foie gras delicacies, while we masses deserve our Five Guys'.

Although I do acknowledge some of your criticisms. And I wish the Advance Wars AI had actually learned how to fight naval battles.

 

I made my Altea based on the Mystery version, all the rough edges to the water made it a headache to get right/guestimate what should be sea/land on, and not all my islands were properly aligned. Arena Island and Castle Island got out of whack somehow and I had to really try to fix it. It isn't perfect- the water area southeast of Arena Island is still too small for instance, but it'll have to do. I added roads and additional villages for convenience. The AI spent zilch on defending their HQ, so it was an unexpected easy victory.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to upload the map.

I plan to copy or adapt more FE maps. But that'll take some time.

(I've also noticed two maps by someone going by the name Armagon, but I doubt it's SF's.)

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How's the campaign for anyone who bought this? I'm curious about it but I'd like to know if it's fun all the way through. I watched the first few chapters and it seems cute, and with a decent enough cast and world.

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  • Landjager changed the title to Wargroove General Thread
On 2/5/2019 at 5:46 PM, Book Bro said:

How's the campaign for anyone who bought this? I'm curious about it but I'd like to know if it's fun all the way through. I watched the first few chapters and it seems cute, and with a decent enough cast and world.

I'll start by saying I've only played over half the campaign, but I beat all the puzzle maps. I also did arcade mode once. There's barely any narrative in any of the default single player content. I found the gameplay to be very enjoyable, though. The campaign is pretty lengthy and has surprisingly varied missions, yet I enjoyed the puzzle mode more. Both are still fun. On the other hand, I found the arcade mode to be boring. I have't tried any custom content or online yet. If the story is a major deal-breaker for you, I wouldn't recommend the game. At least not until custom campaigns are released with better writing. Otherwise, I'd say it is a safe buy. It is a fun game and is worth the price, and the devs have plans to update the game going forward with regards to fan feedback as well as possible DLC and other content updates. If you're on the fence though, consider following it for a bit longer, and then make your decision.

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