[Video Gaming] REVIEW: BATTLEFLEET GOTHIC ARMADA 2

Yes, once again it's time to talk about my latest article up on Strategy Gamer:

REVIEW: BATTLEFLEET GOTHIC ARMADA 2

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Go ahead and read that before you go any further if you've any curiosity at all. I'm about to talk about some things that went into this particular article turning out as it did.

Done? Excellent. Let's continue.

You'll probably note that this article is not an enthusiastic endorsement. In fact, if you read between the lines, you can probably pick up that I wasn't very thrilled with the game as released – and part of that my editor managed to put his finger on in our after-article debriefing when he noted that I was working off beta-2 and not a full-bore press release of the game, to which I had reply that was what I had, that's what the key he gave me unlocked, and if you look at the other commentary that has been made prerelease on Armada 2, everybody points out that they all got the same build as anyone who preordered the game before release.

That is to say, games journalists received an incomplete build of the game in order to create reviews which were embargoed until just before release. It's not the first time such a thing has happened and it won't be the last time, but it's always a little concerning for someone who wants to make a full report on what is in a game that people are going to drop $60 on before they have to pass the bill to know what's in it.

The last time that I can remember that being the case was the relatively recent reboot of DOOM), where reviewers were deliberately given an incomplete build and it was a bit of a tempest in a teapot. There were real questions about whether the distributor really trusted in the value of the game or if they were trying to hide something. (In the case of DOOM, we seem to have dodged a bullet – it was a very good game that they were playing overly coy with.)

So I had the fine opportunity to start off on the back foot.

Once I got into the meat of the game itself, taking it for what it is and how it plays, my personal feelings didn't improve. Once upon a time, I used to play a fair amount of tabletop Battlefleet Gothic, so I'm no stranger to weapons stats and firing arcs in the whole 9 yards. Armada 2 managed to simultaneously pretend to streamline gameplay while making it really hard to get to information which would allow you to make good decisions in combat. All while wearing the guise of an RTS game. If you're playing along at home, you can already imagine what that turns into: a situation where micromanagement is the only real way to play the game and you have to memorize a whole pile of stats on each ship before you can make good decisions about how to engage with it. The ability to put some ships under the control of the AI and set enemy priority levels should have been a really good way to solve the problem, but in practice because the AI never used their special abilities or put them in really advantageous positions, AI control effectively just let you have them drive around on their own while you try to pop special abilities on every single ship just as their timer runs down.

Honestly? While the visuals are striking and the ability to upgrade ships as you go dynamically is cool, the game falls down on the one thing that again can't fall down on – gameplay. I didn't hate it, but I didn't enjoy it. As much as I really enjoyed the Warhammer 40 K universe, there just wasn't enough meat for me to truly embrace the game and put up with what I perceive to be its flaws.

There are some people out there who are going to love Armada 2, and I wish them the best in the world. But if you are on the fence about the game and haven't really checked it out yet, maybe you want to give it a few months to develop some patches and see if gameplay remains largely the same, and then you can make a carefully honed personal decision.