SOVL: Fantasy Warfare

I’m not one to typically leave reviews, but Tabletop War-games are among my absolute favorite hobbies to engage with. Between college and work my time for social wargaming has been lacking. Despite that, this has been a wonderful way to scratch that itch with minimal commitment. I greatly enjoy the way the game plays, especially since the simplified rule-set makes the game run more expeditiously. It also has a built-in Crusade mode, which I love. I hope to see it expanded upon, hopefully with more objective based game modes. As is though I already expect to get many, many hours out of this game.

Well this is awkward… Now I use my free-time after work playing this game instead of building and painting my own physical wargaming miniatures!? This definitely scratches that wargaming itch if you’re between hobby meet-ups! The rogue-lite aspect is also welcoming if you’ve familiar with Slay the Spire and such, it creates quite the campaign across vast lands vibes also! Obviously, this game has its limits in that it’s mobile. For example it is easy to swipe out of the game while maneuvering troops and if you close out of the app, the current battle is wiped and you’ll have to start again. This game is fun, but I have a limited time for hobbying, so it’s a double-edged sword!

This game has potential. It looks like exactly what I want from an easy to pick up mobile tabletop wargame. But it needs a lot of work before I can give it a good score and consider spending money on it. For mobile there’s no real way to easily read 90% of the text unless you’ve got better than 20/20 sight. It also has no learning curve. No teaching, no tutorial, not even a way in game to see what different things mean, you have to look up their online rules to figure out how anything by works, which is really unintuitive. The power balance is also completely non-existent. Things are so random that epic battles will sometimes be a complete cakewalk, but then the next normal battle will be completely stacked against you and harder than an end level boss. That’s fine for a randomized rogue like, but it doesn’t fit the tactical playstyle of a tabletop wargame. There is no balance, only complete rng. And that rng will screw you over all the time. I’ve started recording dice roll results for both enemy and player and the numbers aren’t even close to randomized. The fact there’s a tooltip telling you that the ‘dice are fair’ tells you that they’ve been called out on having a really bad rng engine multiple times. That being said… if they can fix the bulk of these issues, this could be a five star game.