Battle for Westnoth

[Andhaira]

http://wesnoth.org/

Any of you fuckers play this? Apparently irt's a turnbased tactical strategy game only for the PC. And it's free.

How izit?

Discuss!!

 

[Gondolin]

Pretty good game. Worth playing, for sure.

 

[MicoSelva]

It's quite good, if You're into that sort of games.
I managed to get through one campaign, and was fairly entertained throughout, but got bored during the second one.

Also 'Wesnoth' not 'Westnoth'.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's very, very awesome in multiplayer.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

So, it's a skirmish game that has people as big as houses? What are the combat mechanics like?

 

[Reject_666_6]

The game is very very random in nature. Because of this, multiplayer is as far from balanced as you can get.

Also, I did a short LP of this game a while back for the Codex. It was pretty well-liked.

 

[DakaSha]

Crap game that i at first thought i liked. Too much stupid bullshit

 

[Zeus]

It's inspired by that old Sega Genesis game, Master of Monasters. Not really my thing, honestly. I prefer smaller scale tactical battles. When I tired Wesnoth several years ago, by the third campaign mission, I had control of about thirty troops. Meh! Meh I say! I prefer tactical battles like Final Fantasy Tactics, where you have around five troops, or even Master of Magic/Age of Wonders, where you're going to start out with a small number of sheep to herd. In AoW, by the time you have to tend to 30 troops, it's a big multi-stack that you've been eased into.

THAT BEING SAID! I think it's really cool that a bunch of folks got together and came up with something so oldschool and nice looking. Large scale tactical combat isn't my cup of tea but I understand it has a following. I'd probably install this on a new PC, just to have a TB strategy game available.

 

[PorkaMorka]

It's challenging, has solid mechanics, a reasonable AI and is extremely polished.

Overall a triumph of indie gaming.

I would imagine most people would get bored after one or two campaigns though, there really isn't anything particularly exciting going on.

I'd rather play Bloodbowl for a highly random free turn based strategy game.

If you didn't have internets though, you could do a lot worse than playing the campaigns for this.

 

[oscar]

Solid, polished and a rather pretty game. Quite a good modding scene as well, with lots of downloadable (and some high quality) campaigns and new races.

Most of the standard campaigns have generic plots and JRPG protagonists but there are some good ones. The one with the man who summons some skeletons to help when his village is raided by orcs and is then outcast was quite cool. The campaigns set in the future (Burning Suns?) were quite a cool post-apoc take on high fantasy as well.

 

[MicoSelva]

Most of the standard campaigns have generic plots and JRPG protagonists but there are some good ones. The one with the man who summons some skeletons to help when his village is raided by orcs and is then outcast was quite cool. The campaigns set in the future (Burning Suns?) were quite a cool post-apoc take on high fantasy as well.

I have to try out these non-standard campaigns. I couldn't stomach the generic ones.

 

[Lunac]

Horrible.


...
..
.

 

[DakaSha]

Horrible.


...
..
.

 

[Gord]

I play it every now and then.

I think I first came to it because it somewhat reminded me of Fantasy General, which was a cool game.

For some reason though it never keeps my interest very long.
Still, it's free and nicely done, so it's not as if you loose something by trying it.

 

[betamin]

Way too random, you can have a good strategy and have all your troops decimated, reload and win the combat by a landslide without changing what you did.

 

[DakaSha]

Way too random, you can have a good strategy and have all your troops decimated, reload and win the combat by a landslide without changing what you did.

This is made a much larger problem by the importance of towns.
A one town difference for more then 2 turns is a huge deal in this game. (Already faggot design) but the fact you can win/lose a town based on some bad/good rolls just completely exaggerates the luck factor.
A good player WILL win more often then a bad player but a good poker player will also win more often then a bad one

Also the way the game is designed just puts such restraints on multiplayer. All maps must not only contain all types of terrain but all types of terrain need to be within close proximity otherwise balance is an issue.
Maps need to be symmetric or they arn't balanced (this is an issue with most games to a point but in wesnoth its an absolute game breaker)

First player has a definite advantage over the others and maps are also designed around that fact.

And what makes this all hilarious is that it was not designed around all of this. It was just thrown together shit. I played wesnoth way back when it came out and the maps were super imbalanced because nobody understood the games engine/mechanics



It isn't as bad as i make it sound though.. It's an 'ok' game for being freeware and it has a large community and can be a lot of fun if it floats your boat.

Also: inb4 fanboys

 

[Goliath]

I played the Burning Suns campaign (you play desert elves in a post-apocalyptic world - yes, really) and I liked it a lot. Above average story and scenario design. However, that was back then this campaign was new. The Wesnoth guys permanently change the game and the campaigns so nowadays this campaign may suck. I don't know. And except for Burning Suns Wesnoth bored me very quickly. I just don't like this particular style of tactics.

 

[Gord]

I guess everyone interested in the game knows by now, Battle for Wesnoth has been updated to 1.10 recently.

http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.10/index.en.html

I'm thinking about starting a campaign again, but usually get bored eventually.
Guess the randomness is too prominent for my liking.

 

[felicity]

Vantage Master is better. Zero randomness and much better AI. The old version is translated and released for free too.

 

[Topher]

I played it the PC version and more or less liked it. You can name your troops and carry them with you thought a campaign which was a nice touch and I liked the troop leveling mechanics, though I'm not sure how standard those are in this style of game. Anyway, they've got a nice iPad version out now which is cool since Wesnoth seems more suitable in a portable gaming role.

 

[DakaSha]

Hmm id actually be interested in the ipad version if i had an ipad. does it do multiplayer?

 

[Topher]

Local hotseat is working and there's an option for mp but when it contacts the server an error pops up stating that mp requires ver 1.10 and that I'm running ver 1.6.3. Ver 1.10 seems to be quite new so it might just be a few days of downtime until the iPad version updates.

*it's listed as having cross platform mp support so it is probably just a little update downtime
**and I should note that the iPad version costs $3.99 usd but it's the full game, all campaigns and features.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

I remember getting my ass kicked in Wesnoth multiplayer, that was a year ago. From what I recall it's quite an addictive TB strategy game with a moderately challenging SP campaign (if you choose one of the high difficulty ones). It had some really horrible art though, and the campaign "stories" read as if written by a 12-year-old.

 

[Ulminati]

Some of the stories were slightly less painful. But yea, wesnoth has a lot of graphics/sound/code people and not very many writers.

I'm not sure what the hell you've been smoking to diss the art though. It's clean, consistent, colourful, functional and easy on the eyes.

 

[Gord]

It has also improved a lot over the different versions.

Although I guess that the slight manga/anime-influences might deter some.
While I normally don't like anime in my games, I found it still bearable in Wesnoth.