Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Battle Brothers

[Darth Roxor]

All I want to know is how you managed to get two guys killed in the tutorial fight against the weasel? (See your obit screenie).

it wasnt the firstest tutorial fight right after game start, it was the second one that is for real

and well idk, rough start i guess? third battle i ever played? etc

 

[Zanzoken]

I think I fall in the middle on this one.

Review opinion < Reality < Fanboy opinion

Battle Bros is a great concept and a good game but ends up being too long, grindy, and content-lite to really shine.

Turn-based Mount & Blade with all the successes and failures that entails.

 

[Ruzen]

Gotto say, It's a very harsh review. Clearly, reviewer didn't like the game one bit. I agree about the level designs though, It gets repetitive after few hours and lacks the quality of life features. But I guess It's up to preference in the end. I don't think he purposely tried to write a negative review but maybe had a bad day and (also It seems he wasn't very enthusiastic to write a review for the game) in the end I don't think this review reflects the scope of the game clearly.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Dumbfuck cocksuxor didn't minmax enough to get 13% more health and do 15% more damage thus somehow making the game fun after the first 20 hours, shit review.

 

[cvv]

This thread reminded me I gotta make a donation again. This site must be preserved.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

All I want to know is how you managed to get two guys killed in the tutorial fight against the weasel? (See your obit screenie).

it wasnt the firstest tutorial fight right after game start, it was the second one that is for real

and well idk, rough start i guess? third battle i ever played? etc

It's probably equally an indication of how badly the RNG can fuck you up in the early game. Nutshell for me is a solid start combat engine with potential, really love the art style and sound/music but wish there was more game wrapped around them. Hats off to sser as well who did a lot of event writing.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's probably equally an indication of how badly the RNG can fuck you up in the early game.

I would also say first playthrough early game struggles against the interface :/

 

[jungl]

Its a good review. Battle bros is addicting but its simplistic in what it offers. Only battles. Base building mechanics are xcom games and jagged alliance taking mining towns and stuff is tons of fun. Battle bros developers need to think in how they can expand their game and introduce more mechanics to grasp a bigger audience then the ones that only care about fighting stuff.

 

[Tigranes]

Many of the individual criticisms are sound, or at least I can see where they're coming from. I also think the review fails to capture just how fun and delightful its flawed formula can be, before it wears out and shows its schizophrenic limits - it sounds more damning by faint praise to say "oh fun for 20 hrs i guess". But clearly, it just wasn't very enjoyable for roxor, so that's how the review must be.

 

[MRY]

I like the idea of Roxor being called in by the president, Armageddon style, to deprogram some cult member that no one else can rescue.

Are you gonna make a game about it?

"Rampant indie RPG related fanboyism these days. White House is not the exception."

Spoiler

"Battle Brothers is one of the best games I've played during the past 20 years. I only have the Witchhunter background in honor of my father's fight against the Greenskin invasion."

Spoiler

"Tides of Numenera is better than PS:T!"

Spoiler

"Underrail is the spiritual successor to Fallout. RPGs shouldn't be a comfortable setting."

Spoiler

"The Age of Decadence lets me plays a woman who is also an ambitious professional!"

Spoiler

"Pillars of Eternity. Great game. Big, beautiful lore."

Spoiler

"Get me Szydło. Tell her we need Roxorowski."

 

[Irenaeus]

I like the idea of Roxor being called in by the president, Armageddon style, to deprogram some cult member that no one else can rescue.

Are you gonna make a game about it?

"Rampant indie RPG related fanboyism these days. White House is not the exception."

Spoiler

"Battle Brothers is one of the best games I've played during the past 20 years. I only have the Witchhunter background in honor of my father's fight against the Greenskin invasion."

Spoiler

"Tides of Numenera is better than PS:T!"

Spoiler

"Underrail is the spiritual successor to Fallout. RPGs shouldn't be a comfortable setting."

Spoiler

"The Age of Decadence lets me plays a woman who is also an ambitious professional!"

Spoiler

"Pillars of Eternity. Great game. Big, beautiful lore."

Spoiler

"Get me Szydło. Tell her we need Roxorowski."

Bannon is not the president, silly jew.

 

[Fargus]

Darth Cocksore

 

[MRY]

You failed your Bad Dudes lore check.

 

[Arulan]

I can't agree with the tone of the review. It does point out some of its shortcomings, but others come across as subjective inconveniences.

I've just reached 230 hours and I'm on my second campaign, on Expert Ironman. The first ended fairly early, shortly after a bad caravan contract and a Brigand Leader murdered one of my key brothers. One of the things I really enjoyed at first, and still do, is how terrain and enemy diversity forces you to adapt how you play. Nachzehrers require that you take corpses into account, either by advancing your front line forward or denying their movement. You also generally don't want to pick them off at range. Orcs (depending on the type) force you to re-consider the back line, high ground positioning, and how you will engage them. They can charge and stun you, bust right through your front line, or easily knock someone off the high ground, leaving him surrounded and vulnerable. Necrosavants will often become the priority in any given encounter, and finding effective strategies to deal with them reliably is essential. War dogs and nets for instance are fantastic for a lot of given situations, including Necrosavants.

This brings me to character builds. It isn't an everglade of diversity, but it's far from limited. I've created a few special purpose builds that I've found quite useful. A character with mace specialization, adrenaline, and rotation is a fantastic support character to deal with Necrosavants, Geists, Orcs, and swapping out with brothers on the verge of death. I have another character who is dedicated to a Warscythe with overwhelming and adrenaline. I've recently been experimenting with a Wildman background character using the Beserk Chain to great effect. I also recently started using the Goblin Overseer arbalest on my crossbowman. I typically run two Spearmen on my flanks one space separated (S XXXXX S). The Overseer arbalest has a chance to push the enemy back on a hit, further delaying the flanking targets, and in the case one manages to push in, giving me another chance to push them back and Spear wall again.

As for some of its shortcomings, I would have liked to see a further emphasis on the simulation, and increased diversity with the maps and contracts. For instance, when attacking a stronghold or taking part in a siege of some kind, it would be nice to have those as part of the map. These are likely due to the size of the team and development budget. They ultimately decided to focus on making the core combat and surrounding design elements their priority. That said, I think the game in its current state is still fantastic and more than worth checking out. I have high hopes for whatever they decide to do next.

 

[Fenix]

This review looks like "it is a time for playing Eador: Genesis again".

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Furthermore, it’s a confused game that tries to pose itself as “fast and furious”, with lots of difficulty, lethality and roster shuffling, but it forgets to pair the extra high risk with a sufficiently high reward. I have no idea how anyone, barring the greatest of masochists, could play this on iron man mode without going crazy.

Because losing is fun.

Man, if you had played until geists and Fallen Heroes started to show up, this review would've been even more hilarious.

Anything can show up at any time. And BTW, I'm proud to say I defeated 6 Geists early on once. There was no other enemies and I got lucky with a ranged attack and the rest were dealt with by surrounding and meleeing. I only had one guy struck down in that fight, but he survived although he was traumatized permanently by the ordeal. Because this was early on I didn't have a sergeant or anyone to rally or anything like that, so I didn't expect it would work out as well as it did, but I got lucky. And this is Veteran Iron Man, btw.

I've also ran into Necromancers and Necrosavants early on and that was usually game over for me. But the point is there are ridiculously tough and even downright unwinnable fights right from the very start of the game. As soon as you learn what is winnable and what is not and know when to retreat, the better off you'll be.

 

[Waterd]

I agree the game is incomplete, but not because it lacks content, but because it's unpolished. The early game is well designed, but soon the game becoms too much too big. My mayor problem is that it's too sandbox, and not enough fo a strategy game.
Ambitions should have timers
Final crisis should come regardless of your renown.

Basically the game should have a goal, and check if you succed or fail.
Right now is too easy to game the game, and even ironman expert, after you learn to survive the first 20-30 days it just becomes and easy but annoying grind. And it becomes annoying because having fights against two dozens of units, nad micromanage 20 brothers. Is just not fun.

The game should be reworked and remixed to be an elegant and compact strategy game, and not the current directionless sandbox.

I agree right now it's not a polished strategy/tactical game
But agree it's a great skeleton for a strategy game. I wish they would spend the time to actually polish it and properly design it.

 

[Waterd]

I did a recommendation of a more polished strategic mode on their forums
, I appreciate if you comment there about the idea.
http://battlebrothersgame.com/forums/topic/roguelike-mode/

 

[Eyestabber]

All I want to know is how you managed to get two guys killed in the tutorial fight against the weasel? (See your obit screenie).

check your fucking "heavy archer" - the ONLY PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE between him and mine is that he has heavier armour, and this ISN'T ANYTHING governed by the character advancements - the characters in this game are ruled in 80% by their gear, 20% by their perks

I could probably take another archer I have and the only difference would be that my dude has pathfinder + something else while yours has battle-forged + recover

and what do you fucking know, what ACTUALLY MATTERS FOR THEM, they have THE SAME. Everything else is flavour at best.


The same is true for your sergeant vs my sergeant. The same is true for "zomg you coulda taken something else instead of fearsome". The same is true for "WOW WHY NO KILLING FRENZY." It matters little to nothing if I picked those perks over the ones I have. The characters would still be acting the same and doing the same things.

This isn't differentiation. It's just min-maxing using a pool of lacklustre shit. In essence it isn't at all different from MMO-like "do I pick +1% damage or +3% hp?"

Also notice how many of these perks we have shared among different dudes to boot too - brawny, battle rage, rotation, berserk, colossus, battle-forged. You also seem to pack recover on everyone and gifted on most. And you are trying to tell me something is NOT up here?

He already answered: couldn't be arsed to use his brain while playing, picked perks at random, got his ass handed to him, decided to trash a good game out of spite. That sums it all up.

"HUR DURR, MY BUILD IS JUST AS GOOD AS EVERY OTHER BUILD. EXCEPT MINE DOESN'T WORK, BUT IT'S THE GAME'S FAULT, NOT MINE!!!!!!!!!!!11111" - Steam idiots on AoD Roxor on Battle Brothers

To anyone still on the fence about buying Battle Brothers: the game is great and you should search around for other sources of info and read the BB thread (http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rs-release-thread.114394/page-73#post-5106009). Don't miss out on the best game we got so far this year just because people who didn't play it decided to stroke the ego of a really bad (and butt blasted) player.

 

[Lurker King]

The cult around "Betrayal at Krondor" in this site is intolerable. Obviously, we need a review to set this straight.

 

[Eyestabber]

There are MANY ways the game can be improved on, which is why I hope it survives the barrage of butt blasted baddies and gets an expansion. For instance:

Sometimes the contracts, or just walking around the map, will also involve going through short text interactions, but these are much too basic to be called any sort of “CYOA” sections or the like. With no skillchecks involved, they are mostly as simple as “Stuff happens. Do you do X or Y?” and then they end.

For anyone who didn't buy the game yet, this is not 100% accurate. There IS some barebones "C&C" in the game. It's not based on a skill check, but on whether or not you have a brother of a certain background/level. Some examples:

Spoiler

• Once you meet the map dealer you can buy the map or refuse to buy it. HOWEVER, you can haggle down the price if you have a "Peddler" brother and you can simply STEAL the map with a "Thief" brother. You may need a "Historian" brother to decipher the map.
• If you have a criminal brother (Thief, Raider, Killer on the Run etc) you may get an event where guards from House X come to take him away. You can fight/bribe/give up. HOWEVER, there is a fourth option: telling them "I'm friends with House X, so fuck off". That's only available IF you have high relations with a particular noble family
• There is a HUGE quest arc regarding the Cultists and Davkul that results in the best armor and helmet in the game after you sacrifice a brother to the dark god. This questline has several specific triggers tied to the "Cultist" background

So, yeah. There is a good foundation here and I wish we get to see more interactions like these. Which is something that a DLC/Expac (or even a patch) can provide. Different contracts and more contract branching is also something that I wish we could get in the future.

 

[sser]

All I want to know is how you managed to get two guys killed in the tutorial fight against the weasel? (See your obit screenie).

it wasnt the firstest tutorial fight right after game start, it was the second one that is for real

and well idk, rough start i guess? third battle i ever played? etc

It's probably equally an indication of how badly the RNG can fuck you up in the early game. Nutshell for me is a solid start combat engine with potential, really love the art style and sound/music but wish there was more game wrapped around them. Hats off to sser as well who did a lot of event writing.

Much appreciated. I did all the BG's/events/contracts and some other stuff; a Scott Hamm did the Ambition pop ups (I never met him, but he also did work on AoD IIRC). Overhype was kind enough to give me free reign over the event system so that helped production speeds. I think there's something close to 200 in the game now, the vast majority having multiple endings and pathways; couple of easter eggs, including one I don't think anyone has found and another I badly wrote so people didn't even 'get it' to begin with. Honestly, the system didn't quite reach the level I wanted, but it got close. I underestimated the workload on tying BG's together, and I didn't realize the flipside of that design which is having BG's as pro-active choices in the events until much later. Being on the inside, I as much as anybody was asking for certain features and approaches, but there's a quick realization that resource scarcity has dominion over any design decisions.

Also, 90% of the content is first-draft material which is terrifying if you understand the normal writing process. Like I'd sometimes give it a cursory glance-over, sure, but I made a conscious decision early on to go for more content over everything. So I could either spend time editing something, or I could move on and create a new event. I almost always chose the latter. Virtually everything I did was done at a Starbucks table after work in 1-2hr sittings. Go from climbing rooftops and getting yelled at by Mexicans who think I'm a government spook to sitting in a loud room cafe full of intolerable hippies. That there aren't more fuckups is heavily owed to a bunch of beta testers on a special Steam forum. They helped square away a lot of the spelling errors.

 

[Eyestabber]

Yo sser

https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/135513549101473300/?ctp=7

Are you having fun reading this or do you intend to spill the beans on Davkul in the future? :D

 

[EnthalpyFlow]

 

[Blaine]

Roxor doesn't like it?

Must be p. gud.