Battle Worlds: Kronos Reviews

Multiplayer mode has not been working for years it seems (since 2020, see https://steamcommunity.com/app/237470/discussions/0/1850323802579844657/) - only hot seat works. I bought this to play with a friend who lives in another city, turns out, this does not work. The game itself is nice and well made if you liked the Battle Isle series back in the days, but the AI is so abysmal, that single player mission do not pose any challenge, except on your time budget, as in order to win comfortably against the odds, you need to progress slowly, repair, regroup, and so on. Overall disappointing.

It is very difficult, perhaps to the point of being unfair in some missions. This is exactly the way it should be, Battle Worlds delivers exactly what I wanted out of a Battle Isle inspired game. For the new lower price with the extra content? It is a great buy. Just be aware that there is a steep learning curve with this game. And when I say steep, I mean you will fail the first mission over and over until you "get it". A few tips: * save often * You can call for reinforcements, once every 10 turns. Use this until you get the hang of the game. * Capturing buildings will often get you new units. You are probably doing better than you think. * Move your units first, then attack. You get a bonus for having multiple attackers "flanking" an enemy. * In the first mission, move North as quick as you can, taking the left path and ignore the South East base. Once you take the North East base, the rest of the mission is easy. Good luck!

It takes way too many jazz cigarettes to enjoy this game. The experience is uninspired and underwhelming. The story is dull, and does nothing to motivate me to continue. The graphics leave you with the "Did this in 2007" feeling. The gameplay is more puzzle than tactical. You will not be developing strategies to suit your play style. Instead, you'll be reloading saves until you figure out the right sequence of moves required to win. If puzzling is your thing though, so many games over the past two decades have done it better, and you can get almost all of them for five bucks. If you're looking for a turn based breath of fresh air, this game is a stale fart. 5/10

Great remake of Battle Isle. Computer is not so difficult to beat once you master the tactics of using given equipment efficiently to the point you can win without any loses. I am just on mission 4 and game is designed so far that the computer is not on an offensive - I am. I will see if this the case through the whole game but I doubt it. Still it feels epic long term entertainment to me. Grpahics is just right. Very detailed units and really nice map which you can zoom in and out. Sound - is there. Not annoying. Big plus. What it lacks is rally points so you can give the units to go on their own in certain direction. Perhaps developers could fulfill the need for this feature? I wish these people foocused on making remake of History Line 1914-1918. I miss the news taken from newspapers scrolling on the screen which was giving the sense of actually fighting these battles. Nevermind. This game is worth the bucks and as a remake is certainly not dissapointing.

Even though I rarely finish turn-based strategy games because they're so time-consuming (and often insanely difficult) in late missions, I kinda enjoy them and played a few like Battle Isle series, History Line, Nectaris, ... New games in this genre are rare, so I gave Battle Worlds: Kronos a shot. Here's what I think of it: Singleplayer ------------- Don't get fooled by the fact that the campaign only has 13 missions because they're quite long - I took me approximately 40 hours to get through them. That's not even counting the additional official and non-official singleplayer maps. I'd say there's enough value for your money. The first 3 missions aren't that interesting but then they start adding some new twists. In mission 6 for example you only get a few snipers and have to avoid open battles until you "liberated" enough units from depots. There's more than one right way to achieve your goals - In mission 7 I blew my way through a heavily defended base to capture a truck (the target) only to realize that the sea in the middle of the map froze after a few turns, opening up a shortcut... which was then used by the enemy to launch a massive attack while the bulk of my forces were tied up somewhere else. In another mission you have to sit back and try capturing units from two factions fighting each other until you're strong enough to destroy them both. Sounds difficult? Well, situations like that can get tricky but it's not as hard as the game itself claims to be. I'm not really an expert in this genre but had no problems to get all bonus objectives/achievements on the first try with far less turns than the game expects you to. As long as you don't blindly charge into the usually superior enemy forces, you're fine. Mechanics ----------- Unfortunately, there's relatively little unit variety - Pretty much standard with few surprises. I like that units gain ranks and with them bonuses or new abilities though. A veteran Bandit (light artillery) for example, can get surface-air missiles. I was complaining that there aren't many tactical options like bonuses for encircling enemy units - turns out there are, it's just not explained very well. I was already in mission 10 when I paid attention to the loading screen which tells you about this. I suppose the manual does so too but who's looking at that, right? :D Well, since I didn't need such tactics, it kinda shows that the game isn't that difficult. Aircraft need to refuel back at a base after a few turns (which is good), but due to their small fuel tanks I find them to be rather useless. You rarely see them in the campaign anyway (2-3 missions), the main focus is on ground combat. A.I. ---- Bad. Doesn't seem to understand the rules which becomes obvious when it doesn't utilize units captured from depots. Never seen it using its factories either. It prefers to cheat - reinforcements just appear out of nowhere. Doesn't seem to know the words "tactical retreat" and, even worse, is very prone to "idiot-bait" - sacrifice a low value unit and the AI will happily swarm it, getting in range of your clearly visible artillery or giving you time to get into a better position. Graphics --------- Imho not really important in this genre, but I certainly won't complain that BW:K looks quite nice. No need for me to explain - since it's turn-based, there's not much difference between the screenshots and how it looks like "in motion" ;) What you don't see, is that the animations and effects of units firing and exploding are also not bad either. Everything just "fits" and resembles the look and feel of the old Battle Isle titles. Just don't look too closely at the animation quality and models during the cutscenes - they're quite bad. Music/Sound ------------- I play turn-based stuff in windowed mode with sound/music off, so I don't care. Sound assets are ok though, so is the music. The latter gets repetitive quickly however. Multiplayer ----------- Turn-based games take ages in multiplayer - I never played one. Checked the community though and it's pretty much non-existent. If you like playing online, it'll be hard to find a match. Verdict ------- I'm really trying to like BW:K and I do have a decent amount of fun it, but with better AI, more interesting units it could've been so much more. As it is, it's not bad, not great (but could've been, which is kinda sad)

Turn-based strategies. It's hard not to love them. Especially if you're old enough to remember the genre at its best, when every new [b]Battle Isle[/b] game used to make a huge impact. [b]Battle Worlds: Kronos[/b] wants you to remember about those times. Unfortunately, it fails to be entertaining enough. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First of all, the game looks surprisingly cute, while being both nostalgic (even though this game clearly tries to be some sort of [b]Battle Isle[/b] spiritual successor, visually it reminds me a lot of [b]1995[/b] cross-platform game called [b]Return Fire[/b]) and fresh. In other words, visually, it's pretty much exactly what you may want from modern [b]TBS[/b]. Nothing groundbreaking, but just good enough to look fine on modern systems. And gameplay? It's totally old school. Like I've said, this game tries to be some sort of [b]Battle Isle[/b] spiritual successor. Sure, it doesn't have that unique charm of the early [b]Battle Isle[/b] games (the same reason why the very first [b]Sid Meier's Civilization[/b] still makes us all return to it from time to time, even though there are way more advanced games in the series nowadays) and it's not nearly as advanced as [b]The Andosia War[/b] (yep, the good ol' [b]Andosia War[/b] from the year [b]2000[/b] is more advanced than this shiny new game), bu-u-u-t … it tries, OK? There's one huge problem about it, though. The problem that ruins the entire fun. See, every single mission in this game (there are only [b]13[/b] of them, plus four extra [b]DLC[/b] missions, in which you'll need to capture and protect trains) has only one possible tactics. The game actually tells you about that right at the beginning. “If it feels too hard, you're using the wrong tactics” it says. And that's it. The entire thing is like one big guessing game. You either do the right thing, or lose. Fast. And there's no fun in it. At all. I mean, [b]TBS[/b] games are somewhat similar to chess. The ability to use different strategies against your enemy is exactly what makes it all interesting. In [b]Battle Worlds: Kronos[/b] that ability isn't presented. At all. And therefore, it isn't really fun to play. There's also no proper story. Just some poor cutscenes with pretty much nothing interesting in them. As the result, there's literally no motivation to keep trying. I mean, even though this game has some pretty obvious and nasty bugs (for example, some dialogues, which will appear during the missions, will have completely broken lines that will make your game freeze), it's somewhat playable with the guide. I mean, yeah, usually the guides ruin all the fun, but in this case those will make you feel better by saving you time. Unfortunately, with no story, it's like... why bother at all? And that's, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of [b]Battle Worlds: Kronos[/b]. The game sure tried to achieve a very good thing. I mean, new [b]Battle Isle[/b] game? I can totally use one. But without gameplay freedom and proper story, this game just can't provide you enough fun. It isn't fun, it isn't addicting, it doesn't give you enough reason to keep trying, etc, etc, etc. Personally? I'd say go to [b]GOG[/b] and buy yourself the complete [b]Battle Isle[/b] collection. Because re-playing the old titles for a million time is still better than wasting your time on this. Dixi.

A solid game, but multiplayer is an absolute ghost town. If you're mainly considering the game for online multiplayer - stay away. I've been trying every day since I got the game last week and I'm yet to complete a game online.Very disappointing.

A turn based strategy game focusing on combat rather base building or politics, in this game you will be constantly outnumbered, outgunned, and out of resourses.You'll have to use range differences between different units and units that counter different armour to full effect to win. The game has a heavy focus on keeping your troops alive, and going up against the enemy head on will usually end poorly for you. Units gain veterancy which can be spent on new abilities, or to heal the unit for a good amount, and as you can only level up each unit twice you have to decide which is more useful in the long run. All resourses in game are area specific, so you'll need to transport ammo to artillery, fuel to airports, mines to the front lines and supplies to unit production buildings and repair units meaning that you need to keep supply lines open and hold on to buildings that produce these resourses (as they are quite rare). With a nice long campaign, and a good difficulty level this is a true "just one more turn" game for those who enjoy turn based strategy in a semi-futuristic setting.

The game indeed looks nice. But once the first impression fades away, you realize that it plays worse than Battle Isle 1 or Battalion: Nemesis or even Advanced Strategic Command (these games are either significantly less expensive or even free), The biggest downside of this game for me is that the UI is sluggish and not as assistive as it could be. As you play the game, you realize that it takes quite long, because you wait for something all the time (UI to respond, animation to finish, CPU to make a move). Note that I have a 2.9GHz Haswell i5, so the sluggishness is not about weak HW. The story is not great, in-game popup story dialogs are not something you look forward to. The AI is OK, sometimes stupid, ignoring you while you move around and take an advantageous position, but you are going to be grateful for that. I don't recommend buying the game for more than $10 unless there is a significant patch fixing the issues above. The authors had such great examples to learn from, but they probably didn't play the game much. Otherwise they would have concentrated more on gameplay than on visuals. Patch 1.1 update: The developers have addressed some of the most painful issues, and the gameplay experience has improved considerably, but there is still room for improvements. What now stands out is the passivity of the AI The enemy has much more units at its disposal, but they basically just react to you when you start your offensive. Very sad when you compare it to Battle Isle 1. The game is IMO worth $15 after the patch and the Battle Isle series is well recommended prior to Battle worlds: Kronos

Battle Worlds: Kronos has been abandoned with no patching or updates done in nearly 2 years. There are outstanding issues left such as achievements not working and numerous clunky UI issues. Multi-player died a long time ago, all that is left are the single player campaigns. The first campaign has a decent storyline and I have to say units and tactical strategies diversity makes this title not an entirely brain dead experience. However, the game relies on cheating far too much. The game play quickly becomes a question of knowing where it cheats, how to position units to avoid it and just grind each mission. Overall, the game is just too crippled to be recommendable. Maybe with some last ditch effort it would be worth the asking price.