Battle Brothers

Excellent medieval low fantasy turn-based strategy roguelike. Adjustable difficulty, satisfying progression, interesting decisions to make.

the best tactical game for now, glorious mods, full imersion... just glorious!

After nearly 50 days since leaving Niewekai, the home to Balduin our resident fisherman.
The band of men walked upon the streets of Niewekai once again. Balduin reuniting with his wife and son Bertwein, who took over his fathers fishing role for the village. When suddenly the chief of the village approaches our Boss in a plea for help...Brigands.
A large gang of men approaching the village and they need our protection. We look around, several men still sick and hurt from our previous raids. Too many women and children to evacuate in time. Bertwein steps up, "I'll help". You could hear his mothers heart break. The boss looked to Balduin with a nod of approval and with that the crew cheers!
We march to the north, prepared for the Brigands to approach...and we wait...time passes....and soon we find ourselves under the light of the moon.
The men shift in their boots, eager to see battle. When a hooded man stumbles along the road towards us...chanting. Suddenly he's surrounded by 16 Zombies and they're ready for battle.
Not the battle we expected, but a job none the less.

The battle rages on...Sigurd, after 57Days, and 11 battles evens his KD to 1-1 as he perishes on the front lines. Bertwein having to kill him over and over as the necromancer brings him back again and again, but we persevere. The men push on, relishing in victory as they end the necromancer. Saving the village.

The men hear rumors in the north of a mighty weapon and quickly move on after the battle. Traveling for days, wandering the wastelands from thick forests to vast meadows. When they're ambushed. A goblin Captain stands wielding the Legendary Goblin Skewer. Protected by his armed guards and wolf riders there is no doubt they plan to finish us right here.

The men take their positions, Bertwein and Balduin side by side, holding the right flank. When the Goblin Captain steps up himself. The two men exchange blows with the captain who evades with ease. When the captain strikes again! Quickly passing Balduins shield and sinking into his head. Bertwein stands in horror. His father dropped dead before him, the goblin snickering with joy.

Balduin evens his KD at 1-1 after 50days and 4battles. His legacy lives on with his son, who stands strong on the right flank where Balduin once had.....nobody liked SIgurd the Beggar.

A ruthless bastard of a game, but extremely rewarding once you get good at it.

Nice game. Even better with mods

Its a fun game if you're willing to spend hours reading wikis and guides before even getting into the game. Hidden mechanics and horrendous ui/ux choices that grossly misrepresent a monsters true strength plague an otherwise really well crafted game. Its hard in the sense that you'll be happily playing overcoming challenges and then suddenly die because you didnt know something beforehand.

But it does have mods that will probably fix the game and make it enjoyable to play. So I might change my recommendation later.

Phenomenal. 10/10. Would lose again. The sounds are immaculate. The graphics are simple yet elegant. The hats are fancy. The fights are good. I keep coming back to this time and time again, my ONLY nitpick is I think a UI mod for numbers is essentially mandatory.

Don't be deceived by the weird graphics (you'll get used to it in no time). That's just the result of a dev team with limited resources that made all the right decisions in prioritization to dish out a phenomenally addictive title no worse than any AAA title out there. This is what you'd get if Mount & Blade and X-COM made love, but the game has more of a rogue-like feel than either of the two. The gameplay loop consists mostly of going from town to town on the strategy layer, searching for contracts/quests, buying and selling trade goods on the side and maybe hiring an extra mercenary into your band of brothers every once in a while. You have to make sure that you don't run out of money to pay your mercenary group, food to feed them, and various other supplies. Any time you get ambushed by bandits or decide to venture into a dangerous (but possibly treasure-laden) location on the map, the fight will play out in a turn-based tactical layer, which is the heart of the game. While the setting has some monsters and very minimal amounts of magic, the fights feel very down-to-earth and realistic. Relative positioning of units is highly important - units can protect each other in a shield wall, will have a hard time defending themselves if they get surrounded, and can lock down the movement of other units in their "zone of control". Factors like fatigue, armor and weapon type, terrain, elevation and morale play a significant role. Different types of enemies have very different tactics and require different approaches to counter them. As your mercenaries gain experience you'll be able to level them up, improving their capabilities significantly, though they'll always remain quite human and mortal. It can be really painful to lose a guy. Due to the large amount of different stats with significant randomness in both starting values and potential for improvement during level-ups (talent) as well as special traits each mercenary feels unique, like a real person. Just like the mercenaries you can hire, the world map is randomly generated for each campaign. Overall the game has great replayability with a selection of different starting conditions, but at the same time you can play any given campaign for as long as you want, with a lot of freedom to do what you want (fight in arenas, do mostly trading, rob caravans or protect them, pillage monster lairs in the wilderness, etc)

I think it's outrageous that these devs are releasing DLC and calling the base game a finished project when there has been issues of people crashing constantly (No mods, just vanilla)

Seriously, one of them just copies and pastes this response:

rapsdjff (developer) Aug 29, 2022 @ 3:32am wrote:

Random crashes and freezes are usually compatibility issues specific to your PC. Here's a list of things to try that have helped others;

• Update your video drivers.
  
• Open up the Nvidia control panel. Go to "Power Management", change it to "Highest Performance" instead of "Adaptive" (this can also be set specifically for Battle Brothers instead of using the global setting).
  
• Disconnect any devices you don't immediately need for playing the game such as joysticks, controllers, headphones and additional monitors. If you usually play without headphones, try playing with headphones plugged in instead.
  
• Disable any streaming software and close all browser windows playing videos.
  
[*] Reboot before starting the game.

Hope it helps!

A game that sounds great on paper, but ends up being very slow paced, repetitive, grindy and generally unsatisfying to play. It gets some points for good music and neat visuals, but that's not enough for me.

It also does a very bad job at teaching the player its mechanics and likes to actively hide useful information from the player, like enemy stats, which does not go well with the challenging nature of the game.

Even though there are similar games with better graphics, I love this game and keep coming back to it year after year. The music is great, and it's really fun to scrounge up armor and weapons for your group to use. Since the map is generated new each time, it as great replay value. I recommend all the DLCs, they definitely add more to the game.

listen this game has consumed countless hours of my life and is hands down has the best tactical rpg mechanics out there. Get it already.

And for those curious, its completely playable with a cheap logitech keyboard and trackpad while you listen to podcasts stoned out of your mind on gummies. I've checked personally.

Amazing game that is a blend of mount and blade and darkest dungeon. Building up your team through many difficult fights, losing some of your best men and getting new ones only to be wiped out because you saw a new enemy and thought you could take them will always be amazing

mix of heroes of m&m 3, darkest dungeon and mount and blade. 10/10, very deep, very replayable

I really enjoy playing this game. I like turn-based tactical games, and Battle Brothers masters the tactical part of it: get the tactics wrong and you lose. So part of the enjoyment is trying to optimize your tactics.

There's also a great sense of discovery, although there is too much re-use of names, locations, and contracts in the base game. Expansion packs help with this, and I imagine mods do as well, although I haven't explored those yet.

The overall tone is a little grim, and I hope their next game has a bit more lightheartedness to balance the angst of existing in the world that they created.

If you're ok embracing a "losing is fun" attitude, and you like to experiment with tactical refinements, this game is for you.

This game starts out simple and continues to grow. I love it. I love it more than any AAA game that has been out for the past ten years.

Battle Brothers is extremely punishing and filled with deadly RNG, but offers an interesting grid-based strategy experience. It can be held back by the lack of viable builds and has pacing issues at several points in any run (at least without all the DLCs). But if you forget about all that min-maxing, you can just enjoy the story that this game can create. Chop heads, get paid, and drink to your fallen battle brothers who passed away!

This is one of my most favorite games of all time and I have been playing video games for a loooong time. There is just no game quite like it. I love the art style in this game and the difficulty of the game is just a beautiful thing. It is a very balanced game in my opinion. Since there is no real ending to the game eventually you will reach a point where you are unstopable and playing that campaign just kind of feels like you are running your victory lap and it never ends. When you accomplish this on ironman mode it feels so sweet and glorious. I feel like I truly accomplished something great. All in all this is an amazing game that is worth every penny and all the dlcs.

Great! I wish for more rpg elements and plot, but it will probably make a very different game.

Listen, it's an excellent game, a specially if you like challenge and going blind into your games. There is a lot of difficulty available, the IA is SMART designed and I really mean it ; certains types of IA are dumb because well, it's logic they are, and others are as smart as you, because it's logic they should be. I recommend to get it with the DLC on sales for 40€~ it's really really REALLY worth it price, and it will run on anything for a ton of content and fun. There is still a lot to discover for me and check my hours. That's amazing gem here that could have needed a bit more updates to extend it even more, because I like it that much. AND THE MUSICS. THEY ARE FANTASTIC.

look i dont mind rng in games that much, but holy shit dude.

why do i suddenly start succeeding when i stack shield walls and short spears? that can't be coincidental

the egregiousness aside, this game is painful in the unfun way. the inherently extremely bloody nature of combat, where you're to expect heavier losses than you can probably stomach at any given point in time, incentivizes you to turn the game into caravan escort simulator.

it's almost always more profitable and safer to only take on troop sizes you're absolutely *certain* you can trash, and hard focus on abusing the economy right up until the endgame. anti-risk taking, slow gameplay is inherently unfun, unfortunately, and you're playing this game to say you're masochistic on the internet for clout once again.

A wonderfully unique game that really sets itself apart from other squad management games. It could do with a larger Map and more diversity in the quests as they become repetitive the longer the game goes. The combat is uniquely challenging and the animations are actually quite fun. A wonderful game to play.

Одна з найкращих однокористувацьких стратегій-пісочниць, в яку, за моїми враженнями, можна грати безкінечно майже без втрати інтересу. З досить мінімалістичними ресурсами та примітивною графікою тут отримано ефект глибини, продуманості та реалістичності в деталях.

Гра у дарк-фентезі сеттінгу з тактичними покроковими боями, які займають більшість часу. Все відбувається довкола невеличкої купки найманців (до 12 можуть брати участь у бою), що вештаються від одного поселення до іншого у пошуках роботи, чи то охорона караванів, вистежування банд розбійників і монстрів, пошук скарбів, чи диверсії та вбивства (від яких можна відмовитися). Власне це і весь сюжет гри, кампанії немає, тільки безліч рандомних івентів і боїв, менеджмент команди, спорядження та ресурсів.

Навіть на легких рівнях складності це суцільне місиво, найманці безповоротно гинутимуть і отримуватимуть каліцтва (перманентні дебафи), або йтимуть з команди якщо їм щось не сподобається. Але якісь викачаються сильними бійцями, деякі з яких теж з часом загинуть чи скалічаться і потребуватимуть заміни новобранцями. І так безкінечно.

Мені зокрема подобається що в цю гру можна спокійно чілити у вікні, граючи лише мишкою без повної концентрації, і одночасно повноцінно дивитися серіали чи щось ще робити, але при цьому вона не казуальна і не дурна, особливо якщо грати iron mode (без сейвів).

10/10.

Good turn based tactical gameplay with plenty of varied enemies.

Things can definitely get a bit routine once you succeed - which the game acknowledges, telling you at the win screen after 1/4 endtimes events that there will be less to do.

That said, the dicey starts can be a heck of a lot of fun.

I do wish the endings were a little more fleshed out - you get told a couple of fates of a small number of your party, but I think after making it through the meat grinder they all deserve their sentence or two.

There's a lot of origins with different goals and reasonings, but the same shared endings pool. So I'd have liked that variety.

Which is a small thing. This is very replayable, and worth your money and time

Don't even bother buying from here, buy it from GoG or straight from their website. They haven't patched the game for AMD drivers and it is impossible to play ironman mode for any decent amount of time before the save file corrupts mid game and you have to start over again. Even saving can cause the autosave file for normalman to break, so you will at some point have to redo a fight and waste 40 mins trying to clutch on a 30 orc fight. They also haven't updated the game for 64 bit systems, and the game runs out of graphical memory and causes graphical glitches. Any time a graphical glitch appears you need to alt-f4 and relaunch the game, going back to main menu doesn't fix it. Their are mods for non-steam versions of the game that patch these issues.

The amount of times I have had to redo fights because of this bs is insane and I'm pissed off the devs abandoned the game after having worked on it for so long and put out so many DLCs just to leave basic things like driver and bit system issues left in the game. I love this game to bits, but the fact the devs don't even talk to the community anymore and have since moved on from this game means these issues aren't going to be fixed and you should avoid buying this game from steam.

You ever hate a game so much that it circles back around to loving it?

Yeah, this is one of those.

Think X-Com, but open world low-fantasy.

The actual gameplay is easy to figure out, but to get gud the learning curve is steep. Have fun!

game is good challenge can be also unforgiving depending on the difficulty you play on either or its unforgiving even at base game leveling it's fun tho from my personal experince

One of my favorite games in terms of gameplay that I've ever played. The reason I won't recommend this shit game is because the hardest enemy is not found in the game. It's in the code. I've lost half a dozen 100+ day campaigns despite following online recommendations to insulate the save files and folders from firewalls, uninstall/reinstalling the game, etc. Nothing works. Eventually you'll run into a fight with lots of pretty colors (clearly something looks wrong) and after that, your file will never load again. Sometimes you'll get lucky and if you finish the fight, log out and come back your file will be there. But inevitably, there will be a time where it won't. Shame on the devs for letting this known issue still be in the game after being released 7 years ago. I've lost a few hundred hours of gameplay from this and I'm done crossing my fingers and hoping it won't happen again. Go fuck yourself Overhype

Very fun many hours spent and will spend more. Worth every penny

highly recommended, large amounts of build/gameplay variety and extremely replayable while accommodating a wide range of desired difficulty levels

This game is fun but even on beginner settings it will beat you absolutely senseless. And you will keep coming back for more. Bc for some reason you keep telling yourself you're different, special, and super smart. But it's all luck anyways. All you can do is try to mitigate risk. Good luck fucker. Hope you learn to enjoy the suffering. Art and writing are S-tier however.

This is easily one of my favourite games. Don't let it's simplicity fool you, this game hates you and wants you to die ! Not a game for people who like " safe places" or can't tolerate losing. You will lose, and often. Like real life not every campaign you play will be fair but nonetheless this is a brilliant game. It's well thought out and full of flavour. Just don't expect to win.

the game itself is not bad, the ridiculous ass rng is bullshit. 60 percent hit chance is actually 10 percent. The amount of times youll lose guys due to missing 8 70% hit chance attacks in a row is astronomical. Display the real hit chance and not some fake "60-70 percent"bullshit because thats not true. editing to add on, I have a decently beefy PC and multiple times when I win a battle, the game freezes up completely before any autosaves forcing me to waste time redoing the whole ass fight again. Piss poor optimization.

6/10

The game is alright. It's worth its price. It's fun managing your squad, and that's definitely the high point of the gameplay.

There's a lack of polish to every other aspect of the game that hurts the experience.
- The writing isn't bad, not at all, but a lot of it will be repeated word for word many times throughout a single playthrough.
- The outcome of any fight is more dependent on RnG than any tactical decisions you make, which is intensely unsatisfying even when it plays in your favor. It's a frustrating mechanic in any game, and it is pushed to an extreme in this one. (XCOM2 uses it well, as an example.) This is not a complaint about difficulty, but the way in which it's implemented.
- The missions become tedious and repetitive quickly, with little variety.
- The locations have little variety, and none of them are interesting or memorable. The map is just not pleasant to look at, and you spend a significant amount of your time looking at it, it's forgivable but unfortunate.

Even at its best, it's just okay, but if you love the genre you probably won't regret picking it up.

It has it's faults, like having to fall into the same weapon strategies to defeat certain foes, but it's a cracking turn based battle system.

*THIS IS A REVIEW FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALL MODS INSTALLED*.
What you will get out of this game is hours and hours of playing time but you will need to start on beginner difficulty.
The graphics are hard to get used to at first and before you get a rhythm going you may have to look at some guides and play the game again and again before you get the hand of it. HOWEVER the grind is worth it once you have a roster of 12 brothers and have defeated your first endgame crisis.

This game seems to get better as you go along but also much harder, the quests get more difficult and locations spawn on the map which seem near impossible. What you need to do is get a lot of money, get a few legendary weapons which can be found from difficult locations and champions (which spawn randomly on the world map) and level up your brothers, (also be sure to have substitutes). Also SAVE YOUR GAME AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, use multiple save files everywhere you go so that you do not regret it.

This is my first play-through of the game and I am still on my first world I have chosen beginner difficulty (which is actually more like normal difficulty) and I have been having a great time. In fact I have played this game so much recently that I have not played another game in the past month. Thank you devs for this masterpiece.

Brutal, challenging, and addictive. Don't play your first campaign on ironman, the game autosaves to the beginning of your last battle - The better for learning to fight whatever just kicked the shit out of your guys.

Can be quite challenging and difficult to learn, but for tactics fans, this game produces a lot of very satisfying moments. The game strikes a great balance with progression, giving the player a great power trip as you advance your team from a bunch of weak nobodies to a team of experienced veterans with excellent gear, but keeps the challenge level high enough to remain engaging. Especially with expansions, the game offers a pretty high degree of replayability. Would recommend to all strategy/tactics fans.

Very top tier game, it's managed to capture a very unique niche corner. Gonna be honest the only con I really have for this game is that the devs decided to abandon it to move onto other projects. What we have is what we have forever apparently. Which is a decent amount, and the modding community for this game is extensive so there's that for those interested.

It's a very good game. I've only put about 7 hours into it, so I can't speak to it's depth. But I'm already thinking about getting some of the DLC. I bought the game on sale, I don't know if I could recommend it for full price yet, though. But I do recommend the game!

So I wasn't sure what to expect. The game play was difficult at first to learn. There wasn't much in the way of information on strategy, especially for resource management, combat, band composition, etc. But....., as I played I figured a lot of it out as I went. Definitely need to play on beginner mode to start off. the only down side I've seen so far is the repetitive nature of the play and missions. I wish the map was much larger and provided much more in depth game play. It's a little limited in that regard.

A bit rough around the edges. Doesn't present itself well at first. But this warrior has a keen eye and all the potential in the world. This is a tactics game with hidden elegance and subtle strategies.

It won't wow you right away like X-com. Don't go in thinking you can compete on Veteran Ironman right off the bat, even if you've mastered other tough tactics games (I did, to my peril.)

Take it slow. Save often and reload if you need to. The variety of battles and strategies are as strong as I've seen in a game of this type. The thrill of surviving a tough battle with all your brother-in-arms intact will be your reward if you've got the patience.

Very nice addictive game,.. if you like turn based tactical strategy buy it

It's... so good... SO, SO GOOD. You can really appreciate how well tought everything the more you play it. How you discover little strategies, and how to beat whatever random smuck wiped you out last run. Distinct enemies actually matter and play differently. Just in the same faction (Undead) you have. Skeletons, who always move last but won't tire out: They are all with shileds and will play the long game to eventually tire your brothers. Zombies: Easy to kill, but they are a lot, and I mean A LOT. They respawn if you don't decapitate them. Ghosts: Stand in the back and spam fear so your brothers flee. Without being able to control them, they're as good as dead. Die in one hit. The catch? You have to take the horde of zombies separating you WHILE they spam fear. Not only that, you have a fixed 5% chance to hit them with ranged, forcing you to go close.

You see them, you die slowly and horribly... and then you learn. Skellys have shields? No matter, axes break them and flails ignore their defense bonuses. Zombies respawn? Not if you use cleavers, that always decapitate enemies. The ghosts make you unable to control troops? Go from 2 sides, since their attack is a kind of cone that can't hit everything at once. Also use the skill RALLY to give morale to your fleeing brothers. THE WHOLE GAME IS LIKE THIS.

The bad: This game is NOT for everyone. Losing company after company hurts, specially when you started to like your bros. They can get permanent injuries, wich almost always means you have to dispose of them anyways. I wish we could treat them, even if costly. It's sad to have to push them away and you'll slowly de-humanize them, like disposable tools. I don't want to play like that man.
The other problem is skills. While Bros are clearly NOT made equal, everyone has access to the same skill tree. Sadly, some skills are REAL bad in comparison with others. Some examples are Brawny, that should really give you more that what it gives, and that the best skill that you could pair it with, the light armor expert one, specifically states that doesn't apply. I think buffing these "low tier skills" would do marvels for the build creativity.
The other is the weapon expert skills. You basically specialize your bro in one type specifically. The problem is that some weapons, like bows and crossbows, are usable in only certain scenarios (skellys are almost inmune to long range for example) and a lot of times it's best to just use the type of weapon the enemy is specifically weak to. This is kinda aliviated by the fact that you don't always know what's jumping at you in the middle of the forest at 3 am, but still.

So yeah, absolute marvel of a game, losing is fun, buff ranged and low tier skills please. Fuck you Hoggart.

This game is the most challenging tactical RPG in steam. There are many DLCs, and even though they add a bunch of content and mechanics to play with that feel like should be in the base game. buying them doesnt change much of the experience. The reason I am giving it a negative review is because the game cannot handle itself. This game is 32 bit .exe (only 2 giga rams), which after you spend sometime in your save you add more stuff for the game to carry until it reaches it is limit(this does not happen to everyone, it happened to me and many others, and no I was not playing with mods). When it reaches it`s limit it starts leaking memory causing glitched textures in the battle field and occasional lag drops until it finally corrupts the save making you lose all your progress instantly. Thankfully the community made fixes for this issue that makes the game perform way better than it could originally, but the fact that you need to download mods to play a game is unacceptable. Still a great 95 out of 100 experience.

i am still bad but this is one of my favorites

Difficult for sure. Once you get a handle just superb combat system and so fun to replay over and over.

Save scum and play beginner for awhile. Big learning curve. The game is hard, but learning what the challenging parts are compared to the easier parts will make the game possible to play.

This game is fun but my sole complaint is the high number of 'critical exception' crashes I've randomly had which always seem to happen during long battles (e.g. noble war fights) and because there's no saving during battles, I have to restart the game and fight the battle again from scratch which is enormously frustrating and really ruins my player experience. This appears to be down to my choice of antivirus software so I can't really blame the devs for that though.

Hard to describe. But don't let the initial simplicity of the game fool you. It's deep fun and just very unique.