Wargroove

This was sitting at a "mostly positive" for years if I recall correctly but is now firmly in the "very positive".
It does feel like a solid Famicom/Advance Wars style game to me. I don't really have complaints with it (though character voices are a bit too loud, had to turn that down in the options).
The thing for me is, Symphony of War has really raised the bar for what I want out of the genre now. The re-arrangement of squads and progression of characters throughout the missions, in an easy-to-use interface.. It adds another layer to the genre that makes for a more compelling experience. It's actually hard to go back to just playing something like Wargroove even if it is on a similar level to Advance Wars.
I'm probably going to stop playing this one. I wish I had jumped on it back when it first came out though, Symphony of War has spoiled me.

Wargroove came out back when Nintendo hadn't released a new game in its Famicom Wars / Advance Wars series for nearly a decade, and was a fairly interesting new take on those games. The overall gameplay is very similar to its inspiration, with some twists and streamlining made to the Wars series gameplay. For example, the equivalent to Famicom Wars' tanks are now cavalry units, and bombers are now dragons.
Each unit from the first Advance Wars game seems to have a direct counterpart in Wargroove, along with a few twists added (the anti-air equivalent is a mage that can also heal friendly units; the artillery equivalent is an archer that can move and shoot on the same turn, as well as counterattack from close range) and some extras thrown in (amphibious infantry and water properties!). There were also one or two brand new units added as DLC, though these don't seem to have too much impact on gameplay and aren't used in the main story campaign at all.
The biggest new changes Wargroove made from the Famicom Wars' series gameplay are:
- Each unit now has its own way of dealing critical hits in certain cases.
- Properties have HP like units that heals gradually over time, and they can be attacked by any offensive unit, They also counterattack the unit that attacked them if not fully neutralized.
- Healing units at properties must be done manually and siphons HP from the property. If the property has no HP left to give, you can't heal any more units there until it regains HP. (It still also costs money based on the amount of HP you heal.)
- COs are now commander units that are essentially walking medium-ish tanks. They have special "Grooves" (like CO Powers from the Wars games) that have various effects, and defeating a commander unit instantly defeats that army, just like capturing the army's HQ or routing the army would.
However, outside of the fairly solid core gameplay, Wargroove's campaign story seems ... forced, at best, and if you don't already have a basis for how the Famicom Wars series plays, you will likely struggle to get an understanding for how to play. A more detailed tutorial like Advance Wars' "Field Training" mode would have gone a long way towards helping players new to this style of game understand how things work without throwing them in the middle of a campaign and hoping they learn along the way.
Also, the Starbound cameos were cute, at least. Could we maybe get an improved version of that game someday?
Overall, it's worth trying if you have a need to scratch the Famicom Wars itch, but not really deep enough or different enough to surpass its inspiration.

This is a bit of a mixed review. If you're looking for a score right off the bat, I'd give it like a 6/10. Buy it in a sale.
Now, let me start off by saying, I am not good at tactics games. I don't pretend to be. I play them for the animations, and it's satisfying to kill enemy units.
Wargroove is a bit like Advance Wars - from what I hear, never played it - in that it's armies fighting each other, rather than individual characters. You still have individual character, but they're not really anything special.
This is a good thing in one way for me, as I'm terrified of perma death.
However, there's also the rather major downside that you're not really attached to any of your units. Swordsman McGee the First is no more of a character than the Knight you recruited five turns into the level.
The commanders are no better, having a minimum of dialogue, and being the most bog standard boring character archetypes. The story is an excuse for the game to take place, nothing more.
The soundtrack is entirely forgettable. Never obnoxious, but I won't find myself humming a single track. The art style is decently charming, and the animations were serviceable. Some of them added in a decent bit of character, but you'll be seeing so much of them that you'll quickly be bored.
So, let's get on to the actual gameplay then, shall we?
There, I have the problem that the design of the game kind of contradicts itself. Because everyone is just a nameless goon, you'd expect the game to encourage you to play aggressive and recklessly, but there are a number of mechanics that go against that.
In most levels, you start with less villages (which provide you with the income you need to recruit troops) than your opponent. Not only that, often there is the baffling design in a lot of maps that none of your starting units will be able to capture a village on turn one, while the opponent can, leading to not just a higher starting income for them, but a snowballing effect as well.
But the real issue comes from the combat.
Some troop types deal more damage to other troop types. That makes sense. A pikemen unit should probably deal more damage to a cavalry unit than a swordsmen unit. However, it's to an almost insane degree. Particularly because of the following.
The damage your units deal is proportional to their remaining HP. Which means that there is an absolutely massive first movers advantage. Your full health pikemen might deal something like 80% of a knight's HP if they attack first, but if the reverse is true, they might lose half their HP already, meaning that they'll only damage 40% of the knight's HP.
On its own, that's not a problem. But since the enemy has a stronger economy than you, they'll send more units than you can counter. Especially because a lot of levels only give you access to one easy barracks, and by the time you've captured a second, the game is functionally over already.
Units also don't heal by themselves, and the options for healing (villages or alchemists) cost money. More money than these units are usually worth. I think I can count the amount of times I used these heals (outside of no-build missions) on one hand. Which means that, once a unit is damaged enough, it becomes basically worthless, outside of blocking movement.
The solution? Chokepoints and ranged units. Because they're the only ones who can reliably provide more value than their cost - at least until you unlock flying units (more on that later).
I like that playstyle, and in some levels, it shines. But most of your units are way too slow to get to the reasonable chokepoints in time, and even if they do get there, they'll just die without doing anything anyway.
Your commander should be the answer to this, being obscenely powerful, capable of soloing low tier units with ease, and being the only units to regenerate HP automatically, if I'm not mistaken. But you lose when they die, and the enemy has a lot more units than you can handle.
How do you actually win then? Roll in the Wagon. A unit meant for transporting other land units with low movement, but it's actually quite broken. It has an insane movement range, being able to reach nearly any chokepoint in one turn, because most are on or next to roads. It's only 50 gold more expensive than a pikemen, and most surprisingly, it's actually tankier too. Especially because the AI loves to attack it with worthless units of their own, clogging up the actual valuable tiles.
Combine the Wagon with the Trebuchet, a very expensive ranged unit, capable of lowering most units to such an HP where they are genuinely a detriment to the AI, just taking up space that could be inhabitated by other units. They have pretty good movement on roads. So not only are they faster than your other units, they also actually kill units, all while staying out of range of enemy counterattacks.
Because they're so expensive, this lead to every game roughly playing out the same. A starting landgrab, into my first trebuchet, then wagons as necessary, until I could get more trebuchets, and slowly inch my way forward.
This all worked rather well, until the introduction of flying units, which should be a counter to the Trebuchet, but you also get access to the Ballista, which is an anti-flying Trebuchet, so it doesn't matter.
That changes when you can recruit flying units however, because they are absolutely broken.
They don't get counterattacked by other units, with some exceptions. These counter units can usually kill your flying unit outright. So your just add in one or two of these units at the start to counter the enemy flying units, and then spam out as many flying units as you can. You just ignore villages, and eventually hunt down their commander - who also can't fight back. The AI is incapable of dealing with flying units effectively, because the counter units they do make can be easily manoeuvred around, since flying units have a lot more mobility than the vast majority of units, so you'll get tons of free kills.
All these issues combined to make a lot of maps just feel incredibly samey, with no changes to my gameplan. Eventually I just turned down the difficulty modifiers to allow me through breeze through the maps. Which, graciously, the game does allow you to tune three things individually, those being income, damage taken, and groove charge (your commanders special ability).
There was one particular map which I would say was the highlight of the game for me. You had a base and some villager units, and you had to defend them from waves of bandits. Not exactly a novel concept, but I think it made the game so much more fun to have a predetermined amount of enemies, with no enemy economy to speak of. It was by far the best experience I had with the game.
My problems are likely based on my skill level and my style of play. I won't dispute that. But I'd probably have put it down two or so missions after I unlocked trebuchets if I was only thinking of how enjoyable the game was in the moment.
That's all the story mode. I've played one game of multiplayer against my girlfriend, which wasn't particularly exciting, and one of the 'puzzle' missions, which was actually quite nice! The game also seems to have a rather robust level editor, if that's your kind of thing. In general, I wouldn't say that the game is lacking in content, rather, it's lacking in enough difference between that content.
It's not a horrible experience by any means, but all the design decisions came together to make the game a slog to get through in a lot of levels. I wouldn't get it full price, but if it was €10 or less, sure, pick it up. Just don't be afraid to put it back down if it stops being fun. This is not a game that you absolutely need to finish to get the most out of it. In fact, I'd say it's best enjoyed by quitting halfway through.
PS: Works well on Steam Deck.

As a single player game it felt very lacking, especially compared to "Advance Wars", but as a co-op game it is tons of fun. Be sure to also get the mod that allows you to play the campaign mode in co-op, as the official co-op campaign is quite short. What I prefer in "Wargroove" over "Advance Wars" is how you can check the exact stats of each unit.

There's no doubt to be had that Wargroove is a game that is wholly inspired by the GBA strategy classic that is the Advance Wars series from way back in 2001, given that it goes out of it's way to scratch a good 'itch' of sorts that hasn't been met in such a joyful and satisfying way from way back when, and I say that as somebody who played the first Advance Wars game as a young kid for about a week or two but promptly dropped it due to what was essentially a mixture of stupidity on my part as a relatively new gamer but also a lack of experience in actual strategy games.
Although I can't say for certain if I'm all that much better in the latter, I have grown to appreciate all sorts of genuinely great games that I either couldn't get into as a kid or simply did not appreciate them at the time, which is why Wargroove struck a particular chord with me, in part due to not having revisited the Advance Wars series in so long but also wanting to see how an indie that is passionate about such tactical gameplay helps to improve the formula after over a decade since it's last entry, Days of Ruin, from as far back as 2008. (Christ, over 15 years since an actual entry into the AW games, not including the less-than-stellar remake for the Nintendo Switch!)
So without further ado, Wargroove can be essentially described as having the setting of a Fire Emblem game (focused primarily in the medieval era but with various high fantasy elements coupled with charming aesthetics and memorable characters) but with the gameplay elements of an Advance Wars game, by which I mean the former is more 'character-focused' in that each character is powerful in their own right but can potentially be killed and lost for the remainder of the game (unless you save scum and reload that is!) whilst the latter puts the bigger focus on your general units, each one having it's unique strengths and weaknesses much like the characters of FE but are expected to be lost and generally aren't as powerful on their own.
Whilst the two series share a similar tapestry of sorts where this particular strategic gameplay is concerned, it does help that Wargroove helps to further differentiate itself from the two and become it's own thing as it introduces the element of 'Commanders', basically your team's leader that is a powerful unit of their own but losing them WILL cost you the battle, that help to keep the tide of each match engaging as generally most battles in Wargroove are won by either defeating the enemy's commander or destroying their stronghold, whichever is easier for you to accomplish.
Though any experienced player with the AW series will be quick to call out what I just said here as Days of Ruin did introduce the very same idea, seeing as Wargroove shares the same gameplay idea of having a commander on the field that each have their own ability to affect the battle (whether direct/indirect, aggressive/defensive, supportive/sole-focused etc) as well as the removal of global abilities in exchange for centering it around the Commander directly benefits all nearby units within a specified radius, albeit this takes a different format as commanders in that game instead took over a unit of their choice whilst Wargroove has the commanders themselves appear in person and doing away with passive abilities in favour of 'Grooves', power ups that commanders can use once they deal or take enough damage to afflict upon enemies, buff their own units or even forming defences to counter any attacks as it were, hence the namesake of this charming indie game.
Alongside other things that aren't included in this game, such as individual units (from the classic Famicom Wars way back in 1988!) and commanders (only just introduced in Days of Ruin!) being able to level up after killing a certain number of units for increasingly higher power levels and defence alongside the aforementioned loss of global abilities leaving only the commander's power up and no 'super' version to boot, one might think that Wargroove is in some ways a downgrade as far as the potential complexity of such a strategic game inspired by the Advance Wars series itself.
Truth be told, I won't deny that this does dumb down the formula a little, something that'll be a dissapointment to veterans of the series, however one could describe this as a 'double-edged sword' as it also helps to make what is a fairly demanding game become more accessible to newer fans of the genre as well as those who loved such charming tactical games as these but simply couldn't master it for themselves.
I'll admit to having had my fair share of struggles once getting past the initial tutorial levels, playing three levels in particular upwards of a dozen times trying to conquer the stronghold, defeat the commander or simply meeting the mission's objective, never mind going for the full three stars (a sort of 'currency' I'll touch upon shortly) or even the prestigious S-Rank that is truly for the achievement hunters and completionists, so I have no shame in admitting that I eventually had to turn the challenge down halfway in as, for anyone who's played this already and found it quite hard for something that is more 'simplified', the reason that may be is that the game starts you off on hard mode by default, with easier difficulties giving you more income to work with and taking less damage from enemies alongside boosting your groove faster.
It's an odd choice for sure, although one can easily breeze through the entire game by reducing it to easy mode (note that lower difficulties prevent getting S-ranks and lowering the amount of stars one can attain) or even make it a cakewalk by going through story mode that eliminates all challenge and really dumbs down the tactical gameplay, albeit a word of warning for those tempted that the final true mission WILL require a minimum of 100 stars to access, meaning players will need to at least learn the game somewhat to get enough stars for the true ending!
On that note, stars mainly act as an indication for how much of the game you have completed, but they also act as a means of unlocking additional codex entries (a nice read for those interested in the lore) alongside neat artwork and concept art for the memorable cast of this lovely indie game, seeing as it can not be stated enough just how much charm oozes out of the excellent pixel animations and the colourful aesthetics that matches, if not rivals, the older Advance Wars games that it's based on!
One last point I'll make here is that the game also has free DLC on offer, Wargroove: Double Trouble, that not only offers an extra 3 whole commanders to the roster but also expands upon the story of the original game coupled with it's own host of difficult missions to test those who have already beaten the game and are eager for some new and refreshing challenges to test their strategy knowledge, worst-case scenario is that it's not the kind of content that's up your alley but, seeing as it's essentially free, I can commend Chucklefish for giving fans something of substance without putting a price on it!
Though it is a shame that the online scene for this game is pretty much dead, seeing as I struggled to find any matches against human players for multiplayer, however with the new sequel that's been released earlier last year, most likely that's where the bulk of player activity is at these days.
In short, Wargroove meets and also, to some degree, exceeds it's inspiration as the sorely-missed games of Advance Wars from the GBA and Nintendo DS days makes an unofficial return here with this lovingly-made indie and I can wholeheartedly recommend anyone with either a burning passion for the AW series or casual strategy fans that wish to be eased into the complexity of such a game to give this a shot, as I can thankfully say that I'm now no longer terrible at the Advance Wars style of gameplay, merely adequate at it, which is a stepping stone in the right direction at least!

Wargroove is an engaging, polished strategy game full of likable characters and pleasant visuals with two major problems consistently dragging the campaign down. The first is that every stage has unskippable dialogue you need to mash through no matter how many times you've retried a stage up to that point. Even with the battle animations turned off and the opponent's turn being sped up, I found myself impatiently rapping the mouse buttons in a vain attempt to get on with it already. The second is the "Attack" and "Wait" commands are immediately stacked on top of each other, and this caused me to waste a unit's turn several times, even when I had clicked on an enemy I clearly intended to attack to bring up the menu to do so. As someone that is utterly incapable of thinking turns ahead and relies predominantly on trial and error, this is a needless hurdle when you could (and in my opinion should) just have the option to wait on a separate popup on the other side of whatever space you're clicking.

I do recommend Wargroove, there's a lot to chew on in any given map and it's truly a shame the achievements tell that so few people have finished a puzzle or arcade run because the modes are genuinely interesting and engaging (though the first puzzle also has unskippable dialogue.) But those two issues really bog things down after a while.

Wargroove is a really solid 8/10 strategy RPG. Great sprite work and a solid amount of content, especially for the price. I would say this game would be well-priced even at $35 or $40, so $20 is a bit of a steal. The units are generally well-balanced and five years of patches and free(!) DLC content has only made the game tighter.
My one warning regarding this game is, speaking from experience, even if you're a completionist do NOT attempt to 100% this game. It kind of ruins it. Doing all the Arcade runs takes three times the length of the main campaign and is much less fun. Plus, there's this preposterous late-game fishing mechanic you can unlock that's based on RNG where you can cast a fishing line once every time your groove (your ultimate ability) is charged. This usually takes 3-8 turns depending on the character. I used a custom achievement-hunting map someone made to speed up this process where the map had been edited so the groove was fully charged every turn and it still took *around 300 casts* to catch all the fish. Literally no idea what the devs were thinking with this. I know this is a small part of the game, but it's clear nobody looked at the numbers on this one. Or if they did, they're an asshole.