Developer: Yakiniku Banzai!
Publisher: Fruitbat Factory
Platform: PC
War of the Human Tanks – Review
What looked like just a simple little hex based strategy game turned out to have a lot more to it than you’d expect at first sight, and also about as Japanese as they get. What did developer Yakiniku Banzai! do give their own personal twist to the genre? Read on to find out.
Story
War of the Human Tanks takes place in a fictive country called Japon. There has been an ongoing war between The Empire of Japon and The Kingdom of Japon and the situation is going heavily in favor of the Kingdom. You take on the role of Shoutaro Daihon’ei, a fallen out of favor, lazy lieutenant of the 4th armored corps who’s been off duty, along with the rest of the squad. Fortunately for you the situation is so bad that the army brass has no choice but to call you back to the front lines and get the empire out of this mess. Small detail, your corps is made up out of human tanks. These tanks are semi-intelligent humanoids being used as disposable battle units. This is where the story starts.
It sounds like your “basic hero” swoops in last minute and saves the day, but it’s so well written that it makes it feel innovatory. What more the game is genuinely funny and at more than one point will make you stop and laugh. Despite that funny input though this is a game about war. War of the Human Tanks does not shy away from the harsh battles on the battlefield. It really manages to address these in well integrated ways and makes you ponder. The story also has multiple endings so it’s worth playing through it again. The game is really made to feel like an anime, with each mission being called an episode. Each mission has the same intro movie and shows credits after each episode.
Slight warning though, the story is also a large part of what makes the game feel very Japanese, with the typical anime style, humor and jokes. So if you really don’t like that kind of genre, you probably won’t be the biggest fan.
Graphics
War on the Human Tanks is a nice looking game. It’s drawn in typical manga style and it’s very nice. The game has some negative points. The background pictures for the cut scenes made the game feel somewhat cheap. It’s not that they were bad, it just felt awkward compared to the nice drawings the rest of the game uses. The second point is that I wouldn’t recommend running the game in fullscreen. Running it fullscreen didn’t make the game look bad, but you can see it wasn’t designed to run at that size. There aren’t any graphic options available, although it would have been nice to have the opportunity to change your resolution.
Sound
This game blasts you to pieces with the sound volume, but it has some great soundtracks. The music is a pleasant mix of pop and rock tracks that go well with the conversation. The characters in War of the Human Tanks don’t have any type of sound or voice and every conversation is written. Don’t expect any voice acting apart from the odd Japanese word and the countdown at the start of every battle. The battle sound effect are ok, they’re basically your standard sound effects you hear in a bunch of games.
Gameplay
As mentioned earlier, the game is a hex based strategy game, more specifically a realtime one. This means that the gamefield is divided into a bunch of hexagons. Your units have movement and action turns. Each unit can move a limited number of hexes at a time and they have a limited range in which they can attack. The standard sight range in this game is one hex.
Since War of the Human Tanks is a realtime game and not the usual turn-based type, each unit has a stat called speed. This determines how long it takes for your unit to connect to you, which basically means it’s ready to move or attack. The turn usually starts with moving the unit and then you get the opportunity to use one of three commands: attack, recon or standby. Attack is what it says, it lets your unit attack a hex or an area of hexes depending on the type of unit. Recon reveals a certain hex or multiple hexes within a certain range of the unit. Standby then just makes the unit do nothing and wait for the next time it can connect.
All of this happens in the combat phase but there are two more phases you’ll probably spend almost as much time in. First of all there’s the battle preparation stage. In this phase you build your tanks and modules. (Modules are forms of enhancements.) The modules can be equipped on units. You will also have to choose which units you’re going to deploy for the battle and where you want them to start off. All of these building options takes resources that you gather from fighting battles and victory bonuses for those battles. The second phase is the intermission part. This is the part in between story missions where you can also build tanks and modules, but also develop new ones using the resources you’ve just won. On this screen you can also start free battles, which are non-story missions you can do for extra resources.
When it comes to unit variety, the game only offers seven types of units. This is, however, resolved somewhat by the ability to upgrade your units by giving them new stats and abilities and also the addition of modules. The downside is that it takes a ton of resources to do this, so you’ll have to do a lot of free battles to be able to upgrade everything.
Looking at the game modes, War of the Human Tanks is a little disappointing. The only mode available is the single player campaign and although it has the free battles, those hardly vary from the story missions. The game would have really benefited from having a multiplayer mode. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great campaign that’ll take you at least five to six hours and has some decent replay value thanks to the multiple endings to the story. It just feels like the game would have been perfect for multiplayer purposes.
Conclusion
War of the Humans tanks is a really nice hex based strategy game with a great story and a lot of character. You do have be prepared for how ‘Japanese’ the game and sense of humor are, but it’s great to see a game like this make its way over here. The lack of multiplayer is a bit dissapointing, but all in all it’s a really good game, well worth buying if you’re a fan of the genre
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