Review | Wargroove 2 - Missing A Beat
Wargroove 2 sets forth with tutorials introducing the Faahri mouse-men who use crystal weapons and mechs. The army is a chipper bunch of soldiers made up of the peppy rookie, the stoic warrior, and the eccentric scientist looking for artefacts in a mysterious land. It's a very goofy set-up, but the polished tactical gameplay shines through. At its heart Wargroove aims to be a turn-based tactics experience; a fantasy medieval Advance Wars bolstered by its own unique mechanics and modern features. Sadly, while this gameplay core is great, everything else got in the way and soured my experience. I wanted to just play the game and enjoy it, but the damn rats wouldn’t shut up, levels dragged, and the strategic and tactical depth became more apparently shallow. I ended the mouse tutorial campaign and three more opened up. This feeling repeated three more times but in different ways.
Fight on you little cute, terrifying rats!
That’s the frustrating thing about Wargroove 2. Turn-based combat with armies covering land, sea, and air, capturing cities and building resources, and working with terrain and fog of war sounds extremely dynamic but is deceptively simple. The medieval setting with archers, mages, and dragons in a Saturday Morning Cartoon pixel art is great with each team and commander having their distinct look and animation. Commanders have unique specials called Grooves, these abilities range from attacks and stuns, to heals and summons. There’s also a ‘critical hit’ system so each unit can hit harder is placed in specific ways. If spearmen are lined up, or you position your dogs to swarm, or allow archers to stay stationary makes these damage boosts more thematic.
On the surface this gameplay is amazing and there's no single issue but overall problems start to arise due to the lack of player expression. All factions play the same despite each looking very unique. There are a lot of mirror-match battles which usually devolve into battles of attrition. The ‘critical hit’ system demanding the same unit set-ups often ends up limiting aggressive play or encouraging passively holding back and waiting for the enemy to over-extend. Ranged units are best not moving or at a long distance, and melee units are better when spamming the same unit. The absence of varying damage or conventional critical hits contributes to a sense of repetitive optimisation. Losing a commander results in a game over so you’re actually discouraged from using your only truly unique units. In fact, the only times I died in the campaign was when reinforcements sprung from nowhere and swarmed my commander. Enemy reinforcements in nearly every level also make battles you have clearly already won drag on. None of these things were fun.
War... War never changes… From what it was like on the GBA.
Frustratingly, the new features are also mostly middling. Commanders have a stronger Super Groove, but weirdly you can’t choose if you want to use the weaker or stronger version. You can equip items on normal units but they all have generic or quite weak stat buffs like +25% defense. Thankfully these items at least feel useful in the new rogue-like Conquest mode at least. This mode is actually quite fun where you’ll be doing small battles, and choosing routes for gear, items, or small missions. The Conquest mode is very cool and has a light-touch story, but on the flip side, arcade, and puzzle modes were removed from the first Wargroove, so it's a double-edged sword.
Sadly, this leads in to Wargroove's biggest problem, that you cannot avoid no matter how hard you try. I hated the story. It’s hard to ignore due to its length, and its relentless (unskippable) interference in the middle of missions. Each of the four campaigns has its own story with a swarm of shallow characters. Some would just tell one-note terrible jokes and then let out the same war cry about losing family and the horrors of war. At one point, you’ll be trying to free literal slaves only for your commander to jovially flamethrower soldiers. There’s something tasteless about how seriously Wargroove 2 frames the realities of war but then quickly turns around and makes the core gameplay cutesy and fun. This was an issue in the previous game and Advance Wars, but it feels extra bad here when the writing leans into snark and humour.
Please don’t call my ostrich a chocobo. He’s very sensitive about it!
What Wargoove 2 and its predecessor excel at compared to most other tactics games is its multiplayer. It has crossplay on all platforms, a great level and mission maker, and asynchronous gameplay For just playing against friends or trying out fan-made levels Wargroove 2’s suite of multiplayer options are great.
Wargroove 2 is so frustrating because while parts of it are great, it has not built on the first game’s good foundation. Instead, it chooses to double down on some of that game’s most frustrating aspects. Whether it was the grating and disruptive storyline, tedious mission design, or limited player expression, it is a well-designed base that quickly evolves into an irritating experience. Tactical strategy fans might enjoy this sequel more because the multiplayer is far superior to most other tactics games and at its heart, there is something great. For me, I can’t look past Wargroove's flaws just because it could have really been great.
