I wanted to like this game so much, as I'm a big fan of other turn based strategy games like advance wars, fire emblem and disgaea, and while this game has a lot going for it in terms of beautiful pixel art, likable characters, and great mechanics, the most glaring thing in this game's main story mode is it's stupidly unpredictable AI difficulty.

Never before have I seen a game go from having an insanely hard level, to having a laughably easier one later on in the story, and then have another insanely hard level and then another that's a total cakewalk. Unfortunately this makes the game frustrating, and while you are just simply able to restart the level, a single level can be incredibly long, sometimes taking over an hour for a single level

I played countless hours of advance wars, but i somehow couldn't get into this. While the advance wars games (except days of ruin) didn't take themselves very seriously, the dialogue there was legit funny. A lot of this dialogue made me cringe. Quite a few indie titles have great designs and art but dialogues that rub me the wrong way. This was one of them.
Furthermore it feels a bit confusing. I keep forgetting what makes a lot of units do extra damage, some are a bit specific. In Advance Wars it was simpler but maybe that's why i liked it more. Also the maps felt better there.

Maybe it's just me but i can't get into it at all. I can't exactly lay my finger on it, could be the characters, story, and atmosphere/passion that advance wars had over this title, or better map and objective design (or both).

Wargroove is a solid, if unspectacular, turn-based arcade tactics game. Those are rare enough, and this one does a good job moving the genre ahead in some spots. There’s some map variety, having land, air, and sea units are interesting, and the heroes have some fun abilities that can change things up. But those things don’t translate into much gameplay variety. I would have liked more variation between armies than a single character’s special ability. All the same, it’s fun to play and the story is decent, cartoony fun. The ending isn’t bad, either, with four battles wrapping the story up neatly and providing some of that variety that I was looking for. Too bad the epilogue is locked behind earning 100 stars in the campaign.

Frustrating map design means there's only a handful of ways to win each level - instead of being able to build the right unit to counter what your opponent is doing like in Advance Wars, instead it's the same every time - hide your unit in a forest, wait for the enemy to walk up to you, beat them with the surprise attack, continue on. As another reviewer said, the maps feel more like puzzles to solve rather than a tactics battle, but that just means the 'tactics' systems of the game make the actual execution of your 'solution' to the puzzle slow and frustrating to execute.

A very pretty but ultimately terrible version of advance wars. It takes everything I liked about advance wars and makes it slightly worse.

The levels are way too long and just certain changes like how capturing cities works is worse. I like the idea of co op like always but it doesn't work great

Dropped after 2 hours roughly
3/10

Me diverti bem com este jogo, joguei a historia principal numa boa, 1, 2 ou 3 mapas por dia sem pressa.
Alguns mapas eu passei tranquilo, e alguns poucos eu tive que tentar algumas vezes e utilizando moderadamente o "save state", sem frustação por perder.
Os mapas são em sua maioria grandes, então é possível que muita gente fique nervosa casso perca, mas no caso é só usar o save state e claro não salve por cima de sua morte kkkk, mas eles podem ser finalizados rapidamente se você for muito pro.
O sistema de habilidades intitulado "Groove" junto com seu comandante no campo de batalha, me agradou muito, talvez por eu ser um grande entusiasta de fantasia medieval e batalhas épicas, mesmo o comandante sendo terrivelmente forte, com regeneração de vida, custo de reparo baixo e grande força, e alguns grooves meio quebrados, mas ainda a uma desvantagem de perda total se ele for derrotado, oque pode acontecer do nada se baixar a guarda e enviar o comandante no território inimigo.
E que me venhão os "extras"

More like……. Warsnooze, amirite

I really wanted to vibe with this one, but it’s just too darned dull. It’s extremely fair… except for a whole string of story missions where the other side gets to warp in infinite units. The hero units are all fun to use… except that you lose instantly if they go down, so better not have too much fun. Smh.

Ultimately a two-star tactics game, but +1 full star for the good music and outstanding pixel art.

Gameplay: Great
Story: Great
Controls: Great
Graphics: Great
Length: Great

Unfiltered unapologetic anger of a strategy game fan ahead:
Man this game was just disappointing. The difficulty and strategic depth are all artificial and the people who have been gassing this game up for ages with no complaints definitely haven't made it past act 2. I'm convinced that the majority of positive reviews I've seen for this game are people deluded into thinking it's good because the visuals are well-done and they're desperate to have a proper spiritual successor to the mostly abandoned Advanced Wars franchise.

And no, don't try and insist otherwise. According to the Steam achievements only 2.4% of people have cleared the final act. Only 2.4% of people bothered to get enough stars to unlock and finish the game. Even if we assume that it was too much to grind out, let's take a loot at act 6, eh? Only 4.8% of people have cleared act 6. Oh.

This game is a mockery of the games it copies. It guts out some of the mechanics that made those games so engaging (all commanders play the same, for instance, is the biggest one for me) in order to try and be unique. It loses all of its steam after the initial act 1 when you hit the vertical difficulty spike of act 2 and have to play precisely how the game wants you to in order to achieve S ranks - which boils down to spamming units before the enemy overwhelms you with its inflated gold income and runs you over. You could say, oh but S rank isn't required to clear - and this is true. Yet the game also requires you to at least get enough stars to even UNLOCK the final act. Not a true ending, just to flat out finish the game. There's very little strategy to these S-ranks apart from throwing your units at the opponent until you win in a speedrun # of turns required (with no save states in case you misplay slightly and ruin your whole strategy), rather than wanting you to play strategical, encouraging throwing lives of your apparently incredibly disposable units away. Because the only thing that matters in war is speed.

This continues all the way until act 7 where the game designers seemingly then decide "I'm tired of making Advanced Wars maps, this is Fire Emblem now" and forces you to play NOT around strategically capturing points and building up a nest egg but rather just being a rushdown map where you have to minimize losses versus an army quintuple your size. These maps would be excusable if the VERY FINAL MAP OF THE GAME WASN'T ONE OF THESE, effectively tossing in the dumpster any strategical skills you had nurtured leading up to the climax. Again, picture any castle siege map of Fire Emblem. It's exactly the same. No gold income or unit spawners for you to play with.

Don't even get me started on how horribly imbalanced the Arcade Mode's higher difficulty tiers are, which only make the game harder by doubling the AI's gold income per building. Because that's a fun challenge. Good thing the game requires you to clear Arcade mode on every single difficulty, on every single character, to achieve 100%. I climbed that mountain and I saw its peak. It sucked.

I stuck through the whole game hoping something would click and I would get it, but no, it just gradually got worse. I'm an angrier person for having stuck with this dumpster fire of a game. It was built on the remains of a genuinely good franchise, captivating those of us who wanted a love letter to the same games it copied the formula from, and all it had to do was replicate and improve the blueprint. Instead they just lit the blueprint on fire and made a pale imitation wearing the skin of a better game. Don't get suckered by the pretty pixel art, it genuinely isn't worth your time.

I can only recommend this to people who want to play it strictly for the multiplayer, which the community is active to this day to my knowledge with quite a generous amount of community events and custom maps to play with.