Battle Brothers

> New Bro. Amazing stat, amazing traits. A true god of war

> Get an arrow in the eye during his first fight

> Survive, because he's too angry to die

> After three month, he become a true legend among the company. He manages to protect flanks alone, saves several battles single-handedly. One-Eye is a beast, a monster, equipped with the best weapons and armor. New recruits join the company just for the honor of fighting alongside him. He is a symbol, an inspiration to all those dreaming of another life. He killed everything that lives (or doesn't) and walks. Bandit, noble house, orc warrior, wiederganger, nachzehrer, unhold, alp, hex, barbarian king, lindwurm, necrosavant

> Returning from a difficult contract, the company attacks goblin marauders

> One-Eye charges sword-armored goblin. Miss. Three other goblins jump on him, crits, kebab him against a tree, and kills him


I swear, i love this game. Probably one of the more complex turn based tactical RPG ever.
You don't just need raw power, but also long and short-term strategy. Know your weapons, their particularities, but also your enemies' fighting styles and methods. Some strategies and weapons, effective against one type of enemy, will prove useless against others.

The game offers you an experience that's uncommon these days. Here, forget the idea of "min max" to have the perfect mercenary band. You won't succeed. You must adapt. Every day. With every encounter. With every death. Yeah, your Bro are going to die. But don't reload your game. Each death, each blow is a new lesson. And in the end, it's your enemies who will fear you... Until you get too confident and get crushed. Again. But it's okay. It's just a new lesson. The only failure is giving up. But your company needs you. Don't make this mistake.

this is the best game i have ever played. i have put in 1429 hours into this game at the time of writing and i still turn to it when other games get old. battle brothers is my rock. when everything else goes wrong in life, i know that i can at least rely on battle brothers to distract me from my struggles.

“My god, this game is ugly” was my first thought when I opened this game. This rimworld/newgrounds aesthetic was so unappealing, I did not play this game for years. However, on one of my long trips, I was left alone with a steam deck and a desire to play a deep tactics game. My friend recommended this one. So, I pushed past my hatred and gave it a shot.
The game does not hold back, the battles are immediately challenging and units die often. My first company is poor enough that oftentimes I can only afford the peasants and the untouchables. A ratcatcher, a thief, a beggar, a cripple… whoever I can find to just hold a shield. My company is barely making enough money to feed themselves. But it doesn’t last long. I get ambushed in the woods, and a bunch of direwolves surround my barely forged company. It's over. What? Wasn’t this about medieval combat? Now there are zombies, witches, vampires, huge serpents?
So again, I started a new company. And again, and again, and again. Many barely get off the ground. The start is tough and uncompromising. I took a simple escort mission (so it said), and I got attacked by orcs. Fearsome warriors, nary an armor in sight, but they leap into my shield wall and shatter my formation. Another one where a bunch of necrosavants (vampires) fly into my back lines and rip through my forces. Goblins, weak things, but able to pick people apart in range and poison my units. Many more fall simply to the thieves, raiders, barbarians that run rampant in the wilderness. And slowly, through all of this, I start learning.
The thieves are just like my peasants. Barely armored, with some farm tools to rob passerbys. They provide a learning ground for all the different types of weapons that are possible in the game. A flail, a pike, axe, a mace, etc. All with their advantages and disadvantages, surprisingly varied for how limited it seems. But quite soon, they will be led by a raider. And a raider has a proper weapon and some armor. If only I could steal it… but in this game you can! Armor can be reused if it’s only lightly damaged. The way to do this is to surround him and shank him! But this is inherently dangerous, as you are keeping the most powerful unit with the best weapon alive… but I brought some nets. So you put him in a net, pray to the gods that he doesn’t chop off an arm and a leg as you shank him to death. Now you have proper armor and maybe his weapon as well! Well, usually at the cost of one or two people. Hopefully with only permanent injuries instead of lives if they are lucky. It is brutal after all.
That’s the essence of the game. The raider eventually becomes the new normal, and then you have to start facing bandit leaders. Perhaps you will raid the caravans of a noble house to get the valuable armor or supplies you desire. Or maybe you will help the villages and townsmen with the trouble in their area, helping their settlement grow by dealing with bandits or supernatural issues (if you can). Or maybe you will take simple courier missions because you value your life as you explore the unique map generated each run. Or maybe you will rob villagers yourselves. As your renown increases, you can take missions for the aristocrats, and hope to get a plated mail from an enemy knight you killed. The variety of enemies and the difference in each weapon manages to keep the game interesting. The southerners have guns, the northerners are barbarians with powerful javelins, the middle area has powerful armor and good melee weapons. And of course, the monsters, the zombies, etc. The terrains are also very different. Forests, snow, sand, swamps, hills, etc. Each has huge consequences on the tactics you can employ.
And through it all is this tension that makes all of this memorable. Variance is high, the consequences lethal. Adapting to the changing circumstances is paramount. Each hit usually causes injuries, morale breaks, or death. Everything requires you to adapt. I still remember my one cripple that held off a raider early on in my campaign. The only thing he could do was hold a shield, and I needed him to protect my right flank until my attackers could break through their line. The raiders swung and missed, and my entire left flank missed as well! So again he swings, and again my cripple blocks the blow, and again my entire left flank misses! Somehow he is able to hold for a third time, and my left flank is able to wipe out theirs, and I am able to save my company. Or my brave flank, much later in a different campaign, who had a rare panic attack after 8 ghosts ganged up on him, almost died as he ran away from the frontlines. But he was able to calm himself and came back to kill the last enemy. The fate of a company hung in the balance each moment, each moment seared into my brain.
The levelling system and hiring units take a similar design. The stat and stat gains are randomized, so a promising unit with good potential could end up disappointing you. A mediocre unit could roll a bunch of great rolls and become valuable for little cost. An oathkeeper is an expensive hire compared to a peasant, but there is no guarantee he is going to live up to his full potential. But he is of much better stock, so he will have higher stats, and won’t come with the same ailments the poor would (ie asthma, clubfooted, etc.) and has a higher chance of having good traits (ie brute). This adds much needed variance to replaying of the game while still giving you many reasons to keep trying new people once you have your core. And that’s not even getting to how much I agonized on what to level up when I was first learning the game. Weapons are similar. An interesting unique weapon can drastically change how you deploy a formation or build your units still hundreds of hours into the game.
The game also does a “good enough” take on trying to bring this world alive. The writing is handled from the perspective of a merc, so it’s a lot of base humor. But it’s fitting. The supernatural stuff is properly eerie. Many classes will have unique interactions with the world. A witchhunter will be able to figure out who the hag is. A brute will bully the elderly and kids in the villages. A thief might have a bounty on his head. It all makes sense, in its own way. Of course, this is not simulated that deeply, but it does bring this aspect of the game alive.
And even the visuals, while not exactly good, portray the necessities of the game. Each face is pretty unique, and you can even give them new haircuts to differentiate them better. New armor and helmets are portrayed on the character. As are each of the weapons. An eye gouged out is reflected on the portrait, a missed arrow will show up on the ground, a hit will show up on an enemy. It portrays the violence in a good enough way that it’s satisfying, even if I would have preferred something more beautiful or intricate. But such is the life of the indie dev. The music is appropriately tense when fighting powerful foes, appropriately melancholic when butchering peasants (as aristocrats will ask you to), appropriately unique for the different environments.
This is one of the best tactics games that came out in the last decade, just try to make it past the visuals.

Really fun game, but...
The only problem is there are so many anti-tactical things that stop you from being able to plan. "If bad luck makes your plan fail it wasn't a good plan" How am I meant to make a plan when I have no idea on the terrain, very limited troop placement, inconsistent enemies and task difficulties and vague mechanics. It's a shame because it's a really fun game and I would recommend it but the steep learning curve also comes with a frustrating realisation that the game is more shallow that you think it will be.

It's... so good... SO, SO GOOD. You can really appreciate how well tought everything the more you play it. How you discover little strategies, and how to beat whatever random smuck wiped you out last run. Distinct enemies actually matter and play differently. Just in the same faction (Undead) you have. Skeletons, who always move last but won't tire out: They are all with shileds and will play the long game to eventually tire your brothers. Zombies: Easy to kill, but they are a lot, and I mean A LOT. They respawn if you don't decapitate them. Ghosts: Stand in the back and spam fear so your brothers flee. Without being able to control them, they're as good as dead. Die in one hit. The catch? You have to take the horde of zombies separating you WHILE they spam fear. Not only that, you have a fixed 5% chance to hit them with ranged, forcing you to go close.
You see them, you die slowly and horribly... and then you learn. Skellys have shields? No matter, axes break them and flails ignore their defense bonuses. Zombies respawn? Not if you use cleavers, that always decapitate enemies. The ghosts make you unable to control troops? Go from 2 sides, since their attack is a kind of cone that can't hit everything at once. Also use the skill RALLY to give morale to your fleeing brothers. THE WHOLE GAME IS LIKE THIS.
The bad: This game is NOT for everyone. Losing company after company hurts, specially when you started to like your bros. They can get permanent injuries, wich almost always means you have to dispose of them anyways. I wish we could treat them, even if costly. It's sad to have to push them away and you'll slowly de-humanize them, like disposable tools. I don't want to play like that man.
The other problem is skills. While Bros are clearly NOT made equal, everyone has access to the same skill tree. Sadly, some skills are REAL bad in comparison with others. Some examples are Brawny, that should really give you more that what it gives, and that the best skill that you could pair it with, the light armor expert one, specifically states that doesn't apply. I think buffing these "low tier skills" would do marvels for the build creativity.
The other is the weapon expert skills. You basically specialize your bro in one type specifically. The problem is that some weapons, like bows and crossbows, are usable in only certain scenarios (skellys are almost inmune to long range for example) and a lot of times it's best to just use the type of weapon the enemy is specifically weak to. This is kinda aliviated by the fact that you don't always know what's jumping at you in the middle of the forest at 3 am, but still.
So yeah, absolute marvel of a game, losing is fun, buff ranged and low tier skills please. Fuck you Hoggart.

Summary
Battle Brothers is a fun and rewarding experience IF you are willing to invest time and effort.
By time, I mean you'll probably spend the first 4 hours figuring out all the different scenarios that you'll encounter.
By effort, I mean you need to learn from different guides explaining the game's systems.
This is more of a planning and resource management game rather than a combat focused game.
If what you’re looking for is casual fun, play on the easiest difficulty, because even normal difficulty will cause you problems if you don’t understand the systems properly.
Check out CarveaHole, FeedingFriendly, and FilthyRobot on YouTube for guides.
What to expect in terms of gameplay
You would think that combat is the focus of the game, but its more like the "proof" if your plan works.
Planning is a significant part of the game that reviews don’t talk about.
Determining the direction to go when exploring the overworld.
Checking each mercenary’s stats and spending skill points.
Equipping appropriate gear on your mercenaries.
Evaluating the risk/reward ratio of contracts.
Post-Battle analysis
These are activities you will do A LOT, especially in the early-mid game.
Skipping over these will hurt you in the long run.
Resource Management is another significant part of the game that reviews don’t talk about.
Money
Gear durability
Food
Medical Supplies
Mercenaries
These are resources that you have to properly manage, especially in the early-mid game.
Resources are more important than combat. Certain enemies become irrelevant when your mercenaries are decked out with strong gear.
If it sounds like a lot of information, that’s because it is, and we haven’t even talked about combat yet.
The combat mechanics are based on dice rolls.
You can really get screwed over by the dice rolls in the game. Risk mitigation is the best way to approach combat. Rolling for a 50% chance is exciting, but not a reliable way to play the game. This will lead to you not playing the game how you want.
Want a mercenary to become a 2-handed axe wielder? Too bad, he will probably miss more than half his swings, and since he doesn’t have a shield, he’ll die after missing his attacks.
Objectively speaking, spears and shields are the most reliable way for you to get out of the early game.
Cool-sounding builds will only come online somewhere during the mid-late game.
Reward
The systems I’ve mentioned above do interlock in a satisfying way once you’ve gotten the hang of them. Struggling through the early game with your mercenary band and slowly building them up to defeat the late game crisis is an experience that this game uniquely offers. Cliche as it may sound, this game is about the journey, not the destination.
The price for this reward?
Learning the game’s systems through guides, and applying what you’ve learned through trial and error.
Play on the easiest difficulty if you want to roleplay and live out the mercenary fantasy :)

This is one of the best underrated gems that you will ever find, provided you have the time and patience to learn its ins and outs. It has great story telling, many events that are character specific, many great battles, skirmishes, unlikely allies and monsters! Overall a really great experience that can be frustrating at times, especially if you're newer, so I recommend playing on beginner difficulty the first few tens of hours, especially if you're not used to these types of rather unforgiving but highly rewarding games. I would honestly hope for either a sequel or more content for this game because the developers have struck gold.