Developer: Mythical City Games Inc
Publisher: Mythical City Games Inc
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Battle Fleet: Ground Assault – Review
Battle Fleet has traditionally been a naval strategy game. It’s a franchise in which you have one fleet of ships battling it out with another, turn by turn. Ground Assault is the newest installment and puts a spin on it by taking the combat to the ground. With that comes a whole slew of new mechanics such as terrain and line of sight. On the high seas, everything is level and the extent of your vision is the horizon. Not so much the case for the rolling hillsides of Normandy or the rocky cliffs of Italy. Take control of one of three armies in either quick battles, multiplayer or historically inspired campaigns, and find out exactly how well your tanks will stack up against the enemy’s.
Story
The game takes place towards the tail end of World War II. The allies have already taken back north Africa and have landed on Sicily and southern Italy, but not yet on Normandy. That’s if you play the campaign. There is a very short cutscene leading everything in, but clearly the intent was just to give an excuse to go out there and blow up tanks. The story is not important at all. As for the historical accuracy, it leaves a lot to be desired. The tanks look authentic, but the weapons don’t behave realistically at all, not to mention that there is no infantry etcetera. Ground Assault is not a game to be played for a great plot – it’s simply not there.
Graphics
The game looks very rough around the edges. Even zoomed in, the details don’t look great. The map looks very bland, and it’s divided up with a bunch of crude, straight lines. The buttons and menus look and behave as if they came straight out of a Flash game. When you manage to hit something, the explosions are very simplistic and anticlimactic. A nice touch though is that the maps seem to cycle between seasons as well. It’s a welcome breath of fresh air to see some snow every now and then rather than just grass and road.
Sound
The gameplay sounds of Battle Fleet: Ground Assault are quite underwhelming. The sound of the tanks’ tracks, the shots being fired, explosions, etcetera are all extremely underwhelming. However the music department is where it pulls through. The entirely orchestral score is incredibly bombastic, and reminiscent of a war-like atmosphere.
Gameplay
Without a doubt, the meat and potatoes of Battle Fleet: Ground Assault is its simple turn-based strategy combat. Launching the game, the loading screen, getting into a match, all of it is very snappy and very fast. Desktop to gameplay happens within the span of half a minute. That’s all the time it takes to be at the helm of a bunch of tanks. Now, how do these tank-on-tank battles develop?
The game begins with either a randomized fleet make-up, or with what you built up during the campaign (depending on the mode). The maps are quite small, but you start out without vision of the enemy at opposite sides of the map, facing each other. Maps can either be a preset or randomly generated, but will always be preset in the campaign. Taking turns, you and the enemy will then move your tanks, angle them, and fire at each other once you’ve pinpointed or guessed an enemy’s location. Scattered across the map you’ll also find pick-ups. These can be all sorts of things ranging from minefields to airstrikes to repairing a tank, and so on and so forth. Activating these does not cost an action and some are quite powerful, leading to some very frustrating situations such as where an enemy light tank rolls around a corner to find your heavy tank, and immediately has it carpet bombed by air strikes. This is just one of many issues we have with the fog of war, the other being that it can take quite a while to even get (in) sight of an enemy tank and for the action to get started. And ironically, we faced this problem more often when we played on preset maps than when we played on randomly generated ones.
Considering the multiplayer is honestly quite dead, you’ll more than likely be facing off against AIs who are extremely proficient at aiming. There are three difficulty levels to start off and more to unlock, but honestly even the lowest difficulty setting will prove quite the challenge. All in all, the gameplay is Battle Fleet: Ground Assault’s trump card… But it’s far from an ace.
Conclusion
Battle Fleet Ground Assault has some decent gameplay, packaged with “bad” (but functional!) graphics and an interface that looks very dated. The bombastic music and tank gameplay leave you with a decent end product. Sadly, it’s riddled with a bunch of design flaws that make it hard to take seriously as a strategy game. RNG is too big a factor and at the end of the day, it’s also mechanically shallow. Fun for a bit, but hardly worth really biting into. A casual strategy game for those looking to take their mind off something else.
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