War of the Human Tanks

This is the prequel to Girls Last Tour

Yea I like this series

I can't explain why this game is good
Play it by yourself and appreciate the music that will be stuck in your head for months

10 years ago. It was my favorite real-time strategy doujin game.
Now, it is still my favorite.

Still waiting for the new game release of Recycle Princess from Yakiniku Oh! Yeah! who made this great masterpiece. (not much hope though..)

Very fun game!! Gameplay is unique and sufficiently challenging, story is intriguing and characters are entertaining and charming. Amount of gameplay content is great as well, a very satisfying experience throughout.

The level of polish especially is off the charts, Fruitbat Factory truly went all out for their first localization and the game shines even brighter for it.

I was looking through my strategy games when I came across this, and was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia. Hmm, how long has it been, and how do I talk about this series when I have so many conflicting memories?

First, let me say that my overall impression is that I loved it. It was charming, in its own weird way. When I look back on it I don't have any regret for playing it, and in equal parts I desire to play it again and experience it afresh, yet I also would never wish upon myself the slog of playing through it again.

* The tactics are solid, in the way a block of wood is solid - there's nothing too new or too interesting, but it remains serviceable for multiple playthroughs of this game and of its sequel(s). There's something satisfying about it in its simplicity. And as for the multiple playthroughs - well, it helps that you can retain your army at the end of the game, thus steamrolling everything the second time around.

* The maps are straight-up either generic, boring and repetitive, very tactically challenging (enough to remain in memory years later, which is quite a feat when they are this visually uninteresting), or very specific and keyed toward certain strategies, which can feel annoying when the only strategies you were prepared for are entirely different. The majority of the maps, however, felt generic and repetitive.

* The story is nonsense, but it is the best kind of nonsense. The dialogue is almost always cringe-worthy or annoying, but the game is somehow so much better for it. At a surface level of plot, the story is more complex than it seems, but only because it obfuscates itself. And at the level of intent - the tone and theme of the story - it is somehow by the end a beautiful dissonance that can make you emotional in spite of its flaws. And it is perhaps because of this emotional dissonance that I chose to play the games and their extra content multiple times to see different story routes - because I truly enjoyed it, and truly wanted to see what happened in other routes.

* The music is... something else. I can't otherwise describe it. It was not always for me but it was seldom annoying, and there were a few tracks I enjoyed and wanted to carry with me.

* The graphics are also a strange dichotomy. Or... trichotomy? The story segments usually use brushed photos, almost a sense of realism, as a background against the chibified, cartoonish characters in the foreground. The battleground maps are the plainest you can imagine, but for every attack there is a SRW-style animation cut-in that ranges from the most simple animations in the beginning to the most over-the-top anime weirdness by the end.

Overall, I really did enjoy this game. I think that only specific people will enjoy it; namely those with patience and a sense of humor that can grimace while they grin, and visa versa. Others will get bored, confused, or frustrated very quickly. I would still recommend it, if for no other reason than to experience this strange potpourri yourself and see if it clicks for you.

I thought that i would get a low quality anime game like those that are a plague on steam. But i found a pretty funny game.
The graphics are low, but the script and gameplay are the game.
Funny dialogues and a story that is not really deep neither smart, but that does its job.
About the gameplay, really makes you think (not being sarcastic).
The only bad think is that the game is not really replayable, but the first time feels amazing.

Casual & Fun // Recommended for those who enjoy the board game Battleship

+ Ability to view a complete transcript of the diablogue in-game; useful in case one is trying to follow the story but accidentally clicks through it at times
+ Soundtrack, though limited, is somewhat unique & faily enjoyable
+ There are several available 'tank' types, although these are consistently improved through research and upgrades
+ Modules act to boot battlefield options & offer some means of customizing one's forces; though they get expensive, they offer a lot of options in the late-game
+ complete freedom to manufacture, modify, deploy & alter formations of tanks before battle
+ Multiple endings (I believe there are 4)
+ Losing a battle does not necessarily reset your progress; losses here and there will change the story & may offer a different ending

- Severe lack of system config options
- Cringey & generic anime dialogue; this may not bother some, but I found it to be far too much for me to handle
- Amount of dialogue is excessive and wholly unnecessary; about halfway through the game I just skipped the whole thing, as I considered the plot & dialogue to be lifeless & uninteresting
- The amount of actual strategy required is somewhat shallow, though the challenge does increase in the late-game; gameplay is very similar to games like Battleship or Minesweeper, though the customization helps quite a bit

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Well apparently human tanks have no human rights
10/10 for the kamikaze units


This game is basicaly a mix of battleship and chess. Like chess this game has its own king a.k.a. the command unit but unlike chess you can turn them into killing machines (with the right equipment) and send "them" (you can have more than 1) on the front lines. Like battleship the enemy's location is unknown so you're free to blind fire or you could just replay the level and shoot where you know they will spawn as their spawning location doesnt really change (rather game breaking). I was wondering where the VN part of this was since taking detours doesnt affect you're ending until I found out that you actualy have to lose some battles to get different endings.


Well overall the game was pretty fun and I must say I find it hilarious when the kamikaze units say they dont wanna die as soon as i have them explode.

Let me tell you about War of the Human Tanks.

It is a war involving human tanks.

In short, I was intrigued by the demo of the game, tried the demo, treated the game as a joke at first until I realized I was nearly 2 hours into it and enjoying every bit of it.

The protagonist is a weeb who just so happens to also be a prodigy first lieutenant. The story likes to switch between serious mode and whimsical simple comedy mode at the drop of a hat. Having said that, the plot development is definitely there alongside the silly nonsensical and relatively cliche slice-of-life antics of the characters, so there is an advancing story going on. On a side note, the game kinda resembles an anime in that an opening movie (that slightly changes as the story progresses) plays when you start a chapter, and the credits scroll when the chapter ends. It is very worth noting that these are 100% skippable if you don't want to watch them every time.

Gameplay is like Fire Emblem in that 70% of the game is dialogue and the other 30% is permadeath grid-based combat. Fortunately, (most) units are expendable and can be replaced. Combat takes place on a top-down fog-of-war grid with your units placed in a certain section on the board. You have to wait real-time to give each unit an order, in which you can move the unit a few spaces and perform an action. As such, I'd classify it as a turn-based-RTS hybrid. The fog-of-war is for vision only; you can attack spaces you can't see if you want. If you do and there's an enemy tank there, then congratulations on your free kill.

In conclusion, War of the Human Tanks is a rather unique game that I can understand why it's a hit-or-miss for many. I've read through several negative reviews of this game (I usually read those first), and all their claims are accurate; some people may not like the combat system, or the fact that most of the game is spent reading dialogue. I personally enjoyed these aspects (which are also reflected in the demo) which is why I recommend this game.

TL;DR: A battleship with movable pieces that doesn't take the story very seriously at first, but progresses well and contains multiple endings.

Review

I don't know why I got this game, it was on sale, and when I played it for the first time I found it really weird.

War of the Human Tanks is a visual novel with some Battleship mixed in, the battles are fine, but you need to keep in mind that this game has a lot of story and you'll have to eat around 10 minutes of dialogue until your very first battle (which is a very short tutorial battle that will probably end in two moves), the "tanks" are some kind of tiny anime girls that will scream funny things when performing actions.

The story doesn't take itself too seriously at first, however, making your own little army and seeing what units works can be an entertaining experience. There is a "meta", but there's no need to really play by it.

The story is quite interesting once it starts going, the first chapters might not be very interesting but the story develops as you progress, not to mention you have two different main routes and two different endings on each, making a total of 4 different endings in the game. Multiple endings are kind of common in visual novels, but I like the way it is implemented in this game, rather than having branching paths based on dialogue, the route you'll follow will depend on whether you win or lose certain battles, some battles will trigger game overs, while others will proceed to different paths.

You can clear the game by doing every battle just once, but if you want to farm for resources, repeating battles is also an option.

There are 6 different classes: Command, Assault, Barrage/Battery, Shock, Scout and Interceptor with some extra surprises here and there. You always need 1 Command tank in battle, acting as the "king" from chess, there's also a limit of tanks per mission.

There's also modules to customize your tanks, but units will be gone for good if they die in battle.

There are bonus levels once the story is done.

I still don't know why I bought this game, but I really enjoyed it despite its flaws and how silly it is.

At first sight, you can think this is strange game, since the tanks are humans. But if u are fan of Kantai Colection or Upotte, this isnt a problem; well if in Kancolle have Shipfu and Upotte have Gunfu, maybe u can find your Tankfu here. Its a vn game mixed with strategy game, so the battle system is strategy based in turns, where every turn u control your human tanks and need reach certain objectives to win the battle. In your standby phase, u can dev new tools to upgrade your tankfu since they can be destroyed or you can dev new tankfu models. For story, is very funny and hilarious.

Pros:
- Well, in otaku world have every type of waifu, so why not Tankfu?
- The story is very funny

Cons:
- If u are a neko lover, dont play this one in mission bonus; because they are a hell cat, with few turn they can destroy your army. But if u win, can have neko as ally.

This is basically Battleships with cute Japanese icons. There is nothing even vaguely resembling strategy, you just randomly fire at hexes and hope that something's there. If you have more than 1 unit you can recon as well, which is also just randomly clicking on hexes and hoping something's there.

The "tutorials" consist of a single page of instructions which you have to memorize before playing each scenario.

Then there are the cut scenes. Honestly, I think I might have gotten something out of this game if it weren't for these. They appear to be unskippable and are insanely annoying. They're done as JRPG style dialogues, where you have to click everytime someone talks. Even clicking through as fast as I could without reading anything I still spent more time clicking through cut scenes that I did playing the "game."

There maybe a good game under all the god awful dialogue, but since that takes up 90% of the time spent it's impossible to tell.

Summary:
War of the Human Tanks is a unique turn-based strategy with a very malleable turn-order, a grid-based combat system, and has a surprisingly deep story that is both humerous and light-hearted, but able to take a more serious tone where needed. I whole-heartedly recommend buying this game, even if you dislike the art style.

The Pros:
- Lots of tanks and modules to toy with, making for lots of customizability. You can tailor your troop to your specific play style
- Replayability. Two different routes and four endings.
- Story. Very light-hearted but also very serious at times. Fleshed out characters and antagonists.
- The story missions are very nicely scaled in difficulty.
- A modifiable transmission stat that lets the player know how soon a tank's turn is, resulting in a very malleable turn-order.
- Simple, easy-to-learn grid-based battle system.
- Multiple tank types that each do specific things and have specific jobs, giving the feeling of a chess board when it comes to strategy.
- Battleship-esque combat. One-hit destructions. Larger tanks require more shots due to taking up more space on the board.
- Every stat and module, (for both your tanks and enemy tanks), is viewable on the battlefield, allowing for on-the-fly changes to strategy.
- Many bonus battles and the ability to reply previous missions at virtually anytime.
- Decent AI


The Cons:
- Art style. "Chibi" characters that may not be your thing.
- Decent AI. The AI has trouble guessing where the player is and using Line of Sight.
- Evasion. Some modules allow a tank to dodge attacks. This is chance-based and there is no counter.
- Grind. If you want to get all four endings, you have to play the game four times and lose specific battles. If you want to beat all the free battles, you will also need to grind a bit in order to be competitive with the heightened difficulty.
- Supply system. It is never really explained how much enemy tanks are worth to kill and certain battles seem to give disappointing rewards while others give oddly high rewards.

A grid-based tactical game with major fog of war mechanics. Comparisons to battleship are apt. One hit is one kill in general, so things can get tense and turn around real fast. Downside is that the unit management mechanics encourage grinding to the extreme. In a game like this, an extra point of range or movement is invaluable.

If you're old enough to remember the days of Advance Wars on the GBA then this game is worth your time. While not exactly turn based it's also not as hectic as RTS can be. Each unit is on a transmission speed, the higher the transmission speed, the faster you can make each move with it,

Now I love humor just as much as the next guy and this game has that quirky humor in every cutscene and theres no voice overs so you don't have to worry about bad voice acting. The only sounds you will hear is in the tranisitions and when you use units to fire or when they're destroyed.

I got the hang of this game fully but the 4th level simply because it doesn't overwelm you with infomation. In the first tutorial level it tells you the basics and thats it, after that it explains each unit including new ones that you use and the ones you face. Just be careful not to shoot your own units. (Although it's hilarious when the Enemy AI does it)

Each unit is unique and well balanced. You've got Assault, Shock (Self destructing or Melee), Artillery, Scouts and Interceptors. My personal favourite is the interceptor when it's fully researched and with +3's on both range and area coverage, never worry about artillery with one of those babies. It's really rewarding to research and if you're in need of some extra supplies, simply grind out some free battles and you're set.

Another feature is the line of sights, very similar to the Fog of War from Advance Wars. If you scout an area, that area will be seen until your scout that you used can be used again so you can watch for incoming enemy tanks. Giving your scout that extra range and area coverage though modules can really help. Hell, if you have good enough units you'll never need to hit the max capacity for tanks on any given level.

My only downside that I've found is the campain. It's only 13 missions long (Excluding the few side ones and the free battles) but still tells a moving story within that time. It doesn't feel too rushed considering you're gonna be doing some grinding before some of them. You get the chance to go back and redo the campain which is not that bad when your units carry on as does your research. So it gives you plenty of time to obtain everything, plus it becomes easier with each pass of the campain rather then the opposite. (Be warned, the 13th mission is nightmare fuel, it gave me a jump when I first saw this thing)

Final score leaves me with a 9.5/10

Also, fuck Mr. Cat. Just fuck that thing. You're gonna need some serious grinding if you want to 100% that shit.

I'm a long time fan of the Fire Emblem series, as well as the Final Fantasy Tactics series. I'm one of those people who'll get mad and reset whenever someone dies. In my fantasy wars, my army destroys it's enemies mercilessly without any casualties.

This game did some bad things to me.

One of the first units they gave me blew herself up all in the hopes of taking a few enemies with her. I reached out, a soft no escaping my lips before her final warcry, a deafening explosion, and a heavy silence.

War of the Human Tanks is a comedy game of give and take, managing your expendable human pawns in an effort to make sure the enemy loses more expendable human pawns. It's brilliant. I expected this game to start preaching at me about war and death and the value of life and it never did, because the game recognized that those things are probably common sense, and instead we could have light-hearted, yet dark humor develop interesting characters. I got the game to slake my thirst for grid based tactical combat, and also received a surprisingly deep narrative along with it.

The most notable feature of the combat is that it takes place in real time, with your light, kamikaze units often being the quickest, and your heavy, blow them up from a distance units being a bit more sluggish. The game uses fog of war to keep you on your feet and a wrong step into enemy territory is certain death. Not for you, but sometimes you feel pretty bad when your terrible decision making gets your innocently little scout shot to pieces.

Most units die with only one hit, but units that are larger-and thus also easier targets- must be hit in each of their segments before they die.

If I had to complain about anything, it's that once you get certain units you're basically an untouchable god of death. When you can literally bombard an entire half of the map with just one unit, you're probably not going to lose any fights. But then getting to that point is rewarding the first time you actually get to do it, but that said, the challenge maps usually laugh at simplistic strategies like that and send you straight to hell. Well, not you, so much as your pawn tanks, but still.

Pros- Hillarious, surprisingly interesting narrative, combat is simple enough to pick up quickly and deep enough to stay interesting for the long haul.

Cons- Some of the sound effects (mostly death cries) get annoying pretty quickly, not too hard to get over-powered, and I wish there was a competitive multiplayer mode, even if it was just local.

5/5

As a final note, this game has a demo, so there's no reason not to at least give it a try.

An odd but great doujin game by Yakiniku Banzai! or Yakiniku Oh! Yeah!

Basically, a full scale war breaks out in Japon between the Imperial Army of the Empire and the Royal Army of the Kingdom. The primary weapons of war are artificially created beings called Human Tanks who are designed for the sole purpose of dying and combat. They are treated as weapons and have no humane rights whatsoever. You play as the laid back general of the Empire, Shoutaro Daihon'ei, as you push the overwhelming Royal Army away and strike back.

The game flows and plays very similar to the Super Robot Taisen series and most of the Strategic RPGs (SRPG) out there including Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and FFTactics. That is, you start with the story full of dialogues then you get into gameplay then the aftermath with more dialogues then finally an intermission; rinse and repeat. Unlike such Strategic RPGs however, its gameplay is in Real-Time. You can only move your tanks if you have established a connection with them or when "Connect" shows up. This means that you'll need to be on high alert AT ALL TIMES, making the game feel intense than other SRPGs. The game does tell you what you can do in the game and what to do, but certain crucial tips such as modules don't happen until slightly later so I highly recommend doing trial and error as you play. Futher, almost every tank dies in one hit; The only tanks that take a few hits are the "big ones" that take up more than one square; much like battleship. The object of the game is to either take out the enemy's command tanks, much like the king in chess, or achieve dominace on the battlefield, forcing them to retreat.

During Intermission, you may develop stronger tanks, purchase new ones, or enter a free battle on maps you've fought on. Playing through free battles for funding or crates is somewhat a grindfest and the enemy does little to change its tatics. However, I encourage you to play the free battles a lot it allows you to try many combinations of tanks that you should've used, experiment with new tanks, and find the most effective tactics that nets you a strong victory without casualties. It feels very rewarding when farming enough crates to start building tanks that are equipped with ridiculously powerful weapons enough to annihilate half of the playfield or tanks with a beacon that allows satellite cannons to fire and wipe out everything in its sight. Try not to point these to your allies though!

The graphics in this game are between decent to quite good, depending on people's tastes. Nevertheless, its charm is undeniable. However, there is a heavy lack of diversity between tank models. Asahi and Tsubasa for example have identical appearance but one hits a single square while the other does a twin rifle salvo hitting 1 square further around. Tanks that have large equipments on their backs are an exception. It would be slightly better if they were given different hair color or accessories.

The music in this game are mostly techno, funk, rock, and hip-hop. However, they are very catchy and fit incredibly well in every situation in the game; The custom theme heard while deploying your tanks sums up the overall themes and oddities of the Human Tanks in general. Unique to this game from other SRPGs and even most visual novels is the anime openings and endings between each chapter in the story or episode. Not many may like these videos however due to its seemingly bland vocals and animation. I feel that its presentation is intentional however and the vocals reminds me of the vocals of most anime openings and jpop of the mid 80's to the early 90's which I am quite fond of.

War on the Human Tanks is a simple yet addictive game but first impressions on the game and its overall presentation depends on people's niche and taste. That aside, I dare you to beat the first map in free battle with just Heshiko or only shock tanks!

What else? Oh yeah! When playing this game, beware the Cat!

Really fun game.
In this game, you command these moe tank girls try to defeat other moe tanks girls. It's a difficult game that will make you think. Lots of story/cutscenes and there are 4 different endings you can get. Anyone with $10 that likes stratagy games should get this.

I can't really recommend this game. I know there are plenty of people of love it, but it's not my cup of tea. Aside from the long cut-scenes, the combat is really minimal and lacks depth. It's basically first-hit, first-killed. This places a huge advantage to the recon class who can reveal enemy troops on the board. Once revealed, you can easily shoot and kill them using your assault tanks or the barrage tanks. Near the end of a match it can turn into a hunt and peck game as you try to locate the one remaining enemy tank. You can level up your tanks using surplus rewarded at the end of a match. Again, you are better off leveling up your recon and then barrage tanks since they have a large advantage.

War of the Human Tanks is probably the cutest homicidal suicide bombing tank strategy game I have ever played.

this is... actually pretty great, it's like much simpler x-com with a bit of chess with a bit of cute girls doing cute war things and dying horribly for the glory of their empire.

the only problem is that the campaign is really short (even counting the 4 endings) and once you've completed it there's no challenge mode unlock (the fucking cat doesnt count) so there's nothing that keeps you playing which makes the game really short (about 10h to complete)

then again, quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, and i certainly dont regret spending those 10 hours sending cute tank girls to their fiery deaths.

Pros:
Good fun for a cheap price.
Decent customization.
Funny (if maybe a little odd) humor.
Better plot than expected for simplistic graphics.

Cons:
Simple graphics (...who cares)
Can be a bit long winded sometimes with dialogue. (If you really wanted to though you could skip past it but you'd be missing out imo)
It's a bit easy so far (I haven't beaten the game or anything though yet, so this might change)
Edit: an unintentional bug gave me unlimited money, it's already been fixed probably why it was so easy haha (this shows good support for the game too!)

War of the Human tanks plays like a sort of grid-based strategy game in the vein of battleship, but with significantly more tactical options and threats than the board game classic. Unit abilities can light up fog of war, kill enemies at greater range, self-destruct your unit for a wide swathe of, well, destruction, and so on. Between missions, you spend supplies gained from previous sorties to upgrade and replenish your army, increasing their effectiveness, area of effect of attacks, range, and so on.

Its titular unit, the human tanks, are mass-produced military personnel who for some unknown reason look like cute young women and charge fearlessly to their doom at your command. If that sounds too weird for you, this game may not be for you. But if you can look past that strange outer layer and the (gasp!) DREADED ANIME AESTHETIC (the horror!) this game offers a lot of fun and deep tactical gameplay.

The plot is presented in a visual novel sort of style between missions, so you will have to do a lot of reading. But there is plenty of (dark) humor to be found, and some surprisingly deep themes for such a wacky game.

Also, its soundtrack is seriously catchy and unique.

I personally ADORE this game, and if you have any interest in tactical RPGs like advance wars or any other strategy title really, I think you could do a lot worse than War of the Human Tanks. If nothing else, try the demo - it gives five levels of playtime, plenty to decide on whether this game is for you.