Battle Fate review - "Drive back the evolving tide of undead terror!"

• The Empire faces a growing threat of gathering undead darkness
• Choose one of three Factions to travel the land and fight back the darkness
• Strategise, protect the land, and recruit new units to get a little more edge for each battle

It's not easy being a master strategist, but as someone who plays video games, I choose to take on that role with grace and determination. Even though strategy is definitely not my strongest genre, I constantly find myself drawn to it and trying to challenge myself tactically, despite all the information being thrown around at any given time.

Luckily, there are folks working on strategy adventures in ways that are both challenging and complex, without feeling like there's too much on your plate. One such creator is the solo developer Anssi Kokkonen, who has worked on their passion project, Battle Fate, to share with the world. As a member of said world, I wanted to give it a chance and see how the strategy measured up.

What is Battle Fate?

If you're going into the strategy genre, there tends to be a huge and epic reason for anyone involved to be heading into war, before it just boils down to "these guys are trying to kill us, so we should kill them first."

The world of Battle Fate is a traditional medieval fantasy realm where the Empire is the strongest organised body striving to maintain order and stability. Unfortunately, there is news that more and more people have been fleeing from other lands due to the increasing number and actions of the Harrowers: vicious, corpse-like monstrosities. 

The danger lies in Harrowers becoming more strategic and aggressive, so the Empire must gather its forces and take the fight to them while they still have a chance.

The strength of Battle Fate

You never know just how many layers of details that you'll have to master in order to succeed in strategy, but Battle Fate makes it far more accessible. The first decision that affects is placing everything in a hex-based grid system.

Similar to a board game layout, both your side and the enemy have icons representing entire units and numbers representing their strength. The board is clean and clear, with diverse features such as varied terrain and points of interest to add detail. It's easy to keep track of everyone's movement and positioning, so already the most frequent action is easy to execute and measure.

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Then there's the pacing of the battles. Even though this is all about armies fighting each other, it's scaled down so it looks and feels more like moving pieces around a manageable playing space. As a result, gameplay moves at a much faster pace, with the enemy taking only seconds to do what they need to do and then giving you plenty of time to plan and respond in kind.

When it comes to battling, unit behavior is straightforward based on strength, typing, and range. Units are easily distinguishable from one another and have a few special attributes that are easy to remember.

Finally, we've got to talk about the factions. When you start, you have the option to choose between one of three factions, each with clearly defined strengths (and implied weaknesses). They share some units between them and are ultimately defined by their special units, starting you off with a few options and then more becoming unlocked as you play.

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Each faction has its own play-style and story to follow, all converging on the goal of learning why the Harrowers are changing and stopping them altogether. It's fun and interesting to see how all the units interact with each other and see their strength come into play against what looks like overwhelming odds. It really tests you to make the most of your army to get the best outcome, more rewards, and, of course, more units for your army.

Battle Fate defeat

One of the things that makes this genre popular is the sheer spectacle of it all; seeing huge armies clash can be truly amazing. Unfortunately, in order for Battle Fate to work, it had to scale back on almost all of this.

For what it is, it plays things out effectively, but leaves so much to be desired. There's already evidence of detailed scenes that showcase narrative events, so it would be nice to see more of this in the actual battles. It wouldn't have to be all the time, but it'd go a long way toward emphasizing certain clashes with more detailed visuals.

Regarding the visuals that do exist, they effectively convey parts of the story and the conflicts to come. They are quite detailed, and one can only hope they are genuine, though there's always the possibility that AI was used. Since this is a solo-dev game, it wouldn't be surprising if some AI was used to help with the heavy-lifting, as long as it didn't do all the artwork. The reason for this is that the artwork is currently the most stimulating visual in the whole thing.

Last but not least, we always want more variety. Three factions are solid, but we hope to see more factions added, more unit types, more gameplay modes, and just more to do. It's nice sizable experience for its price, and coming from a solo developer, we're wishing that resources will be put towards making it bigger and more detailed.

Challenging Battle Fate

Battle Fate is a 2D turn-based strategy featuring army units moving and clashing over a hex-based board-like battlefield. For a strategy affair, it's quick, easy to learn, hard to master, efficient, and interesting, with enough Faction variety to change things up.

It leaves much to be desired in terms of scale, execution, visuals, and gameplay variety, but it's already got so much going on for it already. From there, it has the potential to climb higher to battle for an even better fate on the mobile platform.