My main gripe with that commanders is that on the field they’re mostly the same character. Of course, they have their Grooves which is a great mechanic but besides that eh… I think that fact makes having a favorite to use less fun. Although I understand why the devs may have shied away from that for balance purposes. There is a great variety of units types in the game, I wish the commanders worked the same way.

Visuals:

Absolutely stunning. Being a big fan of indie games, I’ve noticed “Pixel Art” can feel like an excuse to be lazy hidden under a retro throwback veneer. But this is Pixel ART emphasis on the art, everything is wonderfully detailed, the colors are bright/appealing and the animations are fun, expressive and smooth. All the different elements blend together so well and I don’t think I can state how much I love it. It all reminds me of the Fire Emblem animations of old, it’s a forgotten art.

Even the generic units look cool and as expected the commander’s animations are great. The environment and atmospheric detailing are really high-quality breathing life into this world. Even things like the GUI are pretty.

Sound Design:

There are lots of nice sound effects which makes things like just clicking and moving a unit feel satisfying. And Wargroove has a great soundtrack that you unlock as you play by the composer Phonetic Hero. On a personal note, I thought I heard his name before and when looking him up I saw he did the main theme to project M so, huh that was cool.

*Here’s a tip, when you get this game go into the cutscene editor, pick a character and check out their voice vines. There are some really fun ones and some neat references.*

Gameplay:

Now onto the meat and potatoes, the gameplay. I mean if it’s disappointing, it sort of invalidates everything I said before so let’s get into it.

First, I want to say Wargroove has a very classic difficulty. It doesn’t hold your hand much, in the campaign they tell you something once and you either get it or you don’t. Luckily the game goes into great detail about its mechanics in the Codex and there’s no shame in reading up to get the best understanding of the rules. Much of this game feels very old Nintendo in only the best way possible. Throwbacks games tend to take the good with the bad of its genre but I think this game really takes the best from the old and injects the new.

The campaign hosts many different types of levels with different objectives but most boil down to Kill the Commander or their Base. The environment, weather and types of tiles that make up a single map can make big shifts in your strategy and gameplay.

However, if hard games scare you, don’t worry because they actually have 3 different difficulty sliders to customize the game exactly how you want. You can choose if you want to take less damage, earn more money and even charge your special attacks “Groove” faster! For you sadists out there, this works in the opposite directions as well.

I find that most of the complexity comes from the level design as opposed to the game itself. Which I think is a true testament to the extremely fine balancing by the team at Chucklefish. The mechanics of Wargroove are fairly simple which gives a lot of room for creativity. This balance also makes map creation better and PvP more enjoyable.

I’ve played around in the level editor myself and I can’t wait to see what others do with it once the game is out for the world. In the video version of this review, I’d love to show one of my creations but don’t expect anything too fancy. One criticism I have for the level editor is the lack of descriptive names when you hover over objects you want to place down, which can make differentiating between some of the more abstract or similar looking objects difficult.

Verdict

So overall, is the Wargroove worth it? With its wealth of content, complex cutscene/level editor, and fine balancing for super fun single and multiplayer experiences; Wargroove solidifies itself as an incredible revitalization of the classic style of the TBS genre! Maybe IntSys will stop making Waifu JPEGs for Heroes and put some development effort towards a new Advance Wars?? Who knows, but to be honest this even more than I ever could have hoped for regarding an Advance Wars revival.