Throughout all the games I’ve played, I’ve never really been one for real-time strategy. That being said, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 pleasantly surprised me. Going into the game, I thought the “real-time strategy” was a misnomer due to the metagame evolving on a turn-based game board. I was glad that I was wrong. The real treat of this game happens during the attack phase of each turn, in which you actually control your ships in real time to accomplish some objective. Despite the surface layout, there was clearly a lot of effort put into keeping the game fresh as the game progresses.
The basic layout of the game is a board not unlike a board game like Risk or Sid Meier’s Civilization. However, unlike those games, this board is not where most gameplay takes place. The board is just a means by which you build, repair, and strengthen ships to attack other occupied lands. The real fun happens when you launch one of these attacks. Each ship you send into battle along with your opponent’s ships on the same site is placed in two dimensional space with a variety of objectives strewn about. Some locations may require you to capture control points on the map by having ships within their boundary, whereas others may only require you to completely destroy the enemy ships. One special event even included a surprisingly engaging escort mission. Whatever the task at hand, the main method of attack depends on the ship. Each ship has its own abilities, each with a different range of effect. Usually I find myself overwhelmed by massive amounts of controls, but one feature that really helped me was allowing me to control the speed of battle. In most real-time strategy games, you can only speed up gameplay if you’re ahead of the game, but there’s no option for beginners who are falling behind. This game allows both; there are a total of 5 gameplay speed options, ranging from very sped up all the way to completely stopped with no penalty. This allowed me time to research each of my abilities before deploying them, and as I got better, I found myself not reaching for the pause button as much. It was a good crutch towards the beginning of the game so that new players aren’t demoralized.
I think this game accomplishes its goal extremely well. Using the board game style as a sort of hub world for the real battles rather than focusing on board gameplay makes the game much more fun than it could have been. I’ve found that turn-based games sometimes fall into the trap of having an epic-sounding storyline muddied by a lack of player interaction. In this game, though, controlling all of my ship’s weapons in real-time (or even stopped time, if I so chose) made each victory feel empowering. For players who are not as fond of the battle system, you can choose to automate most battles. However, not only was this less fun for me personally, but I also found that I always performed better on my own than my automated team, so it was really in my best interest to control my ships myself. Beyond the gameplay itself, the storyline of this game sets itself up well in that not having played any Warhammer games (or even Armada I) was not a hindrance in understanding what was going on. I still engaged with the characters and enjoyed their interactions between battles.
All in all, despite going in with uncertainty, I enjoyed Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 way more than I thought I would. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys these types of strategy games, and perhaps even the board game enthusiasts who could use a bit more action in their games. The game is very welcoming to newcomers both to the franchise and to the daunting control scheme of the genre. If you were ever unsure about whether to try out a game like this, I’d say this is a good starting point.
Score: 8/10
Check Out the Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 Accolade Trailer:
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 can be purchased for $39.99 for PC via Steam.
Steam Review
I am an aspiring game designer looking to explore the philosophy behind game creation. Some of my favorite games include Overwatch, Super Smash Bros, Portal, and Beat Saber.
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