Wargroove

This review is right on the edge between positive and negative. Wargroove does a lot of things very well, but the last two missions in the campaign were very bad, and soured my opinion of the game as a whole.
What is it?
Wargroove is a turn-based, tactical strategy game, heavily inspired by the Advance Wars series on the GBA and Nintendo DS. Battles typically involve one or more armies, each with a headquarters, a powerful commander unit, troops, and buildings like barracks where you can spend gold to produce troops. On a player's turn, each unit can move and take an action (usually attacking an enemy unit or building). On offense, a unit attacks first, then takes counterattack damage from the enemy unit. Damage dealt is proportional to the health of the attacking unit (a unit at 100% health deals much more than a unit at 10% health), which means that a lot of the strategy involves getting the first strike, in order to cripple your enemy's ability to counterattack. A team wins by either defeating their opponent's commander or destroying their headquarters.
The Good:
Wargroove does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of 2000s handheld turn based tactical games like Advance Wars. The spritework and visuals are excellent. While the writing and voice acting doesn't really work for me as an adult, It feels like an intentional attempt to faithfully capture the tone and maturity level of GBA Advance Wars / Fire Emblem / etc. The game also has a considerable amount of content, between a fairly lengthy campaign, a long list of (surprisingly complicated) puzzles, and an arcade mode. Ultimately if you have nostalgia for Advance Wars, you'll probably like this game, which is why I give it a positive review.
The Mediocre:
These type of games can often feel quite slow, which is not a problem for everyone, but can be annoying to some players, and can be really annoying if missions are designed poorly.
Basically because getting the first strike is so valuable (and getting hit by the first strike is so disastrous) it is fairly hard to push forward aggressively. Often the best strategy vs the AI in the campaign is to move your units right up to the edge of the opponent's attack range, so that they can't attack you, but if they try to move forward you can attack them. As a result, lots of missions involve a very slow and methodical push. Most missions are won by slowly developing control over the map and developing total unit superiority (e.g., you have 20 units, your enemy only has 5) before pushing in to win.
The end result is that you can "win" many missions by turn 6 or so (in that, if you continue to play adequately you will almost certainly win), but you can't actually end the mission until turn 16-20, so it often feels like you are just "going through the motions" until the level ends.
Another strange decision was introducing the water units so late into the game. Some of the best missions were the ones where I had access to land, sea, and air units, because that's when the strategy of the game is at its best. It was interesting to, e.g., play a more guerrilla style land game against my opponent's superior land forces while I developed ocean superiority, knowing that I could eventually win the land game with the aid of long range warships. When the game is just ground units (or even ground and air), many of those strategic decisions don't exist. But because they introduce ships so late into the game, there are only like 3 or 4 missions where it really feels I was getting the whole experience.
The Bad:
Far too many of the campaign missions involve no production buildings (barracks, sea ports, air unit producers), and just involve the player pushing a clump of units against an enemy with horrible AI but a much much larger set of units. These missions are extremely tedious, because the gameplay devolves into checking your opponent's movement and attack ranges and slowly pushing right to the edge of those ranges, trying to minimize the damage your army takes because you have no way to reinforce and have limited healing. They generally play out like a much worse version of Fire Emblem.
There is maybe one or two of these that were legitimately interesting, but most of them were just slogs. I think it would be OK if they were side missions, but several of them are mandatory missions. Even worse, for whatever reason, the final mission and the epilogue mission are both the most egregious examples of this type of gameplay. I met the conditions for unlocking the epilogue mission, saw the starting unit positions, then quit the game without even attempting it. It's maybe the least interesting final stretch in any game I've ever played.
If any developer reads this, please don't put these kind of levels in the sequel, or at the very least, keep them as shorter side missions.
TL;DR:
Overall a good, lovingly-crafted AdvanceWars-esque game with some horribly unsatisfying campaign levels, particularly at the end of the game.

"Advance Wars, refined."
313 hours on file, that's probably accurate, there's a lot of afk time (great type of game to play before bed) on this steam version and I've played on the Switch as well.
I just can't find many games with a battle system like this (Fire Emblem comes close but it's not close enough!!!)
Beautiful art and animations, a lovely story too, and the intro cinematic is incredible.
Units are balanced very well, you have so many great choices for unit composition because of how useful they can all be in their own way.
The commander units have really fun skills (it's their "Groove.") They don't grant any passive buffs/debuffs to the army (if you're here because of Advance Wars) but there are a TON of commanders to play with and they will certainly change your playstyle anyhow.
The campaign is huge and filled with side quests... and some time after release they released a co-op campaign (you can play it solo, you basically control two commanders and their armies one after another) so... yeah... there is a ton of content for this game. Oh yeah, and that co-op update added more commanders too, super cool!
There's fun to be had in arcade mode as well, and they make it this little mini-story so it's worth completing with each commander! They get a special ending... a weird reference here but... if you know how the Twisted Metal endings went... it's something like that! Very fun!!!
And as if there wasn't enough fun to have in this truly sprawling game, there are some pretty decent custom maps that the community has made, thanks to all of the dev support it's very easy/comfy to browse and download custom content. I don't think any of it compares to the main campaign but some come very close! And that's not to say the custom content is weak, rather the mainline stuff is just so well done it's hard for anyone to compete.
An old friend who was obsessed with Advance Wars and it's sequel suggested this game to me, I had never played AW before so this was new to me and I absolutely love it. I went and played AW (currently still playing it) not only to experience the "original" but because it's so hard to find a tactics game of this specific format.
Sooooo... having played AW now (I love it as well) I actually think Wargroove is BETTER than it's predecessors on the GBA.
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VERY worth your time, it's an absolute STEAL at the current price point, if this game interests you you should NOT feel bad about picking it up at full price.
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Extra note - the controls are really comfy, controller, kb/m, they're both super duper comfy.

Ok, so....I'm leaving a positive review because this game is good. it's damn good. But I'm also requesting a refund from Steam because it's not what I thought it was. But that's on me, and doesn't stop the game from being good at what it does.
This game is not an RPG. There are no levels. No stats. No gear. No items. No anything like that. Each map is a completely static and self contained adventure where every single player entering the map will have the exact same setup as every other player. You can't really customize anything, other than the troops you spawn each turn. But my swordsmen will be exactly the same as every other players' swordsmen due to lack of stats or gear or customization at all. For me, this is a pretty big deal breaker, as without customization options or skill expression through team min/maxing, I don't stay engaged.
HOWEVER...
If the lack of RPG mechanics don't bother you, this game is brilliant. It has the most gorgeous sprite animations in the business. The sound effects are crunchy and I can feel the impacts in the battles due to that. The story is good, the characters are awesome (Ragna could maybe get toned down a little bit), and the music is stellar. Honestly, it's an S tier game. It doesn't set out to do anything that it doesn't absolutely slap at.
So just walk into this purchase with your eyes wide open. I would love to see this game sell really well, to people that will enjoy it's style of gameplay.

The auto-save on every move is the real enemy.

Very underrated game! I don't think people give it a fair shake. The whole game feels like playing a bit of chess with some puzzle-solving (i.e., what order to use units in, where to position who first, how to set up critical hits on enemies and whatnot) which I personally find to be challenging enough that my brain is engaged but not overwhelmed. I am not into turn-based strategy games at ALL, mostly because I don't have the patience for them or the attention span to manage a ton of things, so I was surprised to find I enjoyed Wargroove. Never played Advance Wars/Fire Emblem/etc, so I have no point of comparison and can only judge the game as is. I am also reviewing as someone who has only played all the vanilla non-multiplayer modes besides the co-op campaign.
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If this game needs a disclaimer, it's that it's slow-going. Make that VERY slow-going. I can see how the pace would drive lots of people crazy, especially if they are more used to or prefer faster paced RTS games.
I notice a lot of negative reviews seem written by people who likely have not played past the tutorial missions (which admittedly cover roughly Act 1, 2, and maybe a mission's worth into Act 3), given the time at review. There does feel like a little too much hand-holding in the early acts, which definitely can be frustrating given how long missions/dialogue can go and probably contributes to some people being discouraged early. I know I personally wanted to hurl my Deck AND burn my computer when I could not quickly get Emeric and Mercia to stfu about stuff like LOOKING AT THE CODEX/DAMAGE MATRIX FOR EVERY UNIT, EXAMINING THE MOVEMENT RANGE FOR UNITS, RECRUITING FROM AND CAPTURING BUILDINGS, and BLAH BLAH BLAH. I totally get it, but I hung in there to see what else the game could offer and I am glad I did.
The singleplayer campaign has a very straightforward plot that kept me entertained enough--I did not expect some grand story and you shouldn't either--and it also comes with a sprinkle of brief diversions for laughs like the dog commander Caesar vs. outlaws side quests and barely-qualifies-as-side-plot missions that cover secondary character interactions/dynamics like Tenri vs. Emeric, Greenfinger vs. Sedge, etc. I agree with assessments that the campaign missions can feel they're plodding along, and god forbid you need to replay a mission and just want to get a move on... by far the most annoying thing for me was the fact that you apparently cannot fully skip sections of the in-map dialogue (NOT the animated cutscenes, which can mercifully be skipped by holding down a button) short of mashing a button to speed up the text which is still very annoying. Don't get me started on BACKTRACKING on the SP map either: if you want to backtrack more than a handful of missions, you will be subjected to watching your little group go through EVERY PREVIOUS MAIN MISSION ON THE MAP. This can be sped up by holding a button but is a really bizarre inconvenience if you've completed the campaign and maybe want to try going back and 3-starring or S-ranking missions from the beginning or something.
The co-op campaign is non-linear compared to the SP campaign and honestly a lot more fun despite having like a third of SP's total missions. I've played it both by myself and with a friend and still found it more interesting than SP, probably by virtue of the fact that the two commanders are typically split into two different tasks on each half of the map, like one running a distracting army while the other runs in a room to steal something before getting both commanders out. Some memorable missions include splitting the entire pool of commanders in Wargroove between both yourself and a friend for an all-out attack on THE BIG BAD(tm), freeing prisoners in a castle to unlock troops to help your buddy on the other side of the map, and combining you and your friend's naval and aerial forces to defeat the enemy.
Some comments on other topics:
art style is fantastic and the animations are so SMOOTH! I cannot say enough good things about Adam Riches' pixel art
commanders have a neat variety of groove abilities, and I actually liked figuring out how each one could be used through arcade mode runs, which probably puts me in the minority of people who like arcade
AI is serviceable enough but very simplistic and I am often confused by its priority rules when deciding how to move and attack; I have survived what I thought was guaranteed death on several occasions because the AI prioritized damaging a building or getting a first-hit advantage on some other unit over outright finishing me off
map designs are alright, nothing really stands out to me as especially crappy; SP maps are designed specific scenarios, like asking you to get from point A to point B, or surviving waves of enemies until a certain number of turns, while arcade/MP maps are pretty standard mirrored/symmetrical designs
great free DLC campaign with interesting commanders and two new units

Love this game! It is charming and challenging :) I really like the co-op campaign's asynchronous mode, wish more games had this feature!

I like the part where she says "It's time to groove," and then she goes to war with an entire continent.