What Happened To Wargroove?

[@Mangs1337]

Wargroove had the potential to cement itself as a great classic, but it didn't. In this video I take a look at the reasons why I think Wargroove failed, and why it's important for the upcoming remake of Advance Wars.

[@YourFunkiness]

Yeah. It did so many things better than Advance Wars. Naval combat, especially, was huge. I love the worldbuilding, I love so much about it. But they messed up a few things and made it more boring and I just don't enjoy it.

[@YourFunkiness]

Also, the custom map creation potential is insane. The core game only features about 1% of what it's capable of. If this game had taken off, there would be so many crazy mods. I made a dungeon crawl map where you play a team of adventurers and go around kicking down doors and finding loot. I'm not 100% sure, but I think you could do a sprawling RPG where your characters level up across missions and you get bonus troops and more money on deployments and you can increase the effectiveness of various units. Again, all with no mods beyond the tools they give you to create custom missions.

[@shigerufan1]

@@YourFunkiness Even more than that they have tools to create your own campaign and cutscenes too.

[@YourFunkiness]

@@shigerufan1 Of course, you can simply make your own campaign that basically works like the main campaign, but with a different story and maps. But the conditional logic tools they gave you allow for so much more. I saw someone make Triple Triad (a card game) as a custom map. You could make it a dating sim that acts more like a visual novel than a wargame. And anyone who has the base game could play your weird variant.

[@bakerfresh]

I started playing several days ago from one of your old videos. Thanks. Had no idea of AWBW as well.

[@kyburn6195]

Been playing this on the Switch. I noticed that whenever it’s your turn, the controller will rumble, which I think gets your attention pretty well. Sadly, multiplayer is tied to NSO and that really hurts the online experience.

[@iguy6571]

Yeah, but you can't alt+tab on the switch

[@creauspssrb627]

Actually it's helpful especially when I play late at night haha

[@kyburn6195]

@@iguy6571 or you just set it up on your desk.

[@kyburn6195]

@@creauspssrb627 lol controller jumpscare

[@SheezyBites]

The fact that it's barely tied to NSO is a big problem too. If the NSO app would push notifications when it's your turn (more so for asynchronous) then it'd be fine, but you're paying for a service that Chucklefish are obviously just not allowed to actually use.

[@arcturus64]

An intresting fact about Wargroove is that Chucklefish, the company that was working on it also had another game called Starbound which was a pretty good game yet they stopped giving it updates despite the game being pretty well recieved. Most of Starbound's extra content now is only updated through passionate modders who create extra game mechanics, customisations,stories etc. The game itself is more or less an abandonware (a succesful one mind you) and it looks like wargroove is gonna be in the same state except it didn't have time to get the passionate community that keeps Starbound alive.

[@ShawFujikawa]

Damn, I remember playing Starbound years ago with my brother and friends, thought it was really good. Sad to see that's how the development ended up.

[@NieOrginalny]

Abandonware doesn't refer to games or software that isn't officially supported anymore, but rather those that aren't officially sold anymore, typically because the company behind it is defunct. As far as I can tell, the developer still exists, and the games can still be purchased from the online stores.

[@MrVisde]

By that definition Fire Emblem: Three Houses is abandonware. But I dunno, after a certain point games stop receiving updates and developers just maintain things.

[@Davtwan]

Hell, I heard some of the higher ups at Chucklefish basically told people to mod the game if there’s problems with it or something to that effect. Like damn, dude. It’s like they want to develop games but don’t want to do the upkeep that goes with it. That’s just sad. It’s a shame about Wargroove too, because getting more lore about my favorite Starbound species, the Florans, was really cool.

[@Klokinator]

Chucklefish is a terrible company. They started off by poaching a few artists and developers of Terraria, only to make an inferior badly paced version of Terraria, and then they became a game publishing company which merely 'oversees' other games. They've had numerous failures under their belt and now make pretty-looking, shallow games that flop quickly and never end up satisfying. Chucklefish is full of chucklefucks.

[@mockingmadness101]

Let this be a reminder: If Chucklefish has their hands in its development, don't hold your breath. Starbound taught me that hard lesson, but gods bless the modders that keep it on life support.

[@soulhoney1227]

Wargroove has so much potential to be good Edit: competive pontential

[@lifeloverNorris]

Bullshit. The game is good. Just because it didn't have lasting competitive and big online multiplayer scene doesn't mean the game itself isn't good and fun to play with its campaign.

[@soulhoney1227]

@@lifeloverNorris yeah i mean you can have fun with the campaing or messing arround with the campa8ng editor

[@Artorigold]

These issues weren't even what I found to be the major issues with Wargroove. The Heroes just weren't that cool, had some pretty lame powers, no D2D's or passives and really needed a big rework. Just compare it to Advance Wars where each CO is so memorable along with their powers/playstyle. I didn't feel that way about Wargroove. However the game itself has so much potential and I overall really liked it, especially the artstyle! It just needed continued support and updates with some changes to keep people interested. I can only hope for a sequel in the future.

[@thewovenmantis6813]

This. Most of the heroes need a rework, and most of them aren’t even that interesting anyway. Changing “heroes” never actually ever changed how I played, and the powers were MEH at best.

[@Kageryushin]

And they're so ugly too... I fucking hate these cal-art's anime-esque designs that intentionally blunt the potential attractiveness or coolness of the characters because a certain subsection of western devs have weird hang-ups about going full anime. Not only are the mechanics of these characters underwhelming, I don't even feel like giving any of them the benefit of the doubt because they don't have the intrinsic style or charm to make me give a damn.

[@Lapantouflemagic0]

well actually i'm not super fond of the heroes in advance wars. in terms of gameplay they are sure efficient and strongly alter your playstyle, but it's a bit too... "magic" to me. having the leader be an actual unit on the battlefield makes a lot more sense to me, but having an army-wide bonus/malus would indeed make the hero choice more important.

[@PAS2010D]

@@Lapantouflemagic0 in my opinion a battlefield wide day to day is more realistic. You'd never see the CO on the field but CO'S do have different beliefs about tactics and game mechanic wise, would either provide funding or additional training for units they believe to be the most effective or like. This actually played out in WW2 when Hitler wouldn't provide more funding for his submarine Wolfpacks which were devastating the allies. Instead he focused on Uber machines that, along with multiple other factors, cost him the war. It's been said if Hitlers Navy had more attention he could have won the war. Does that make sense? So in advanced wars, Hitlers navy would be weak and his mega tanks stronger or something.

[@Lapantouflemagic0]

​@@PAS2010D i think both make sense but it's also a matter of time period. In ancient times kings used to lead troops in battle, if they were talented generals that would give greater efficacy to the troops in their general vicinity, and it's also good for morale to know you're boss is with you in the field and not having a manucure while you're bleeding out.

[@dragmire3D]

It really felt like there were no incentives to mix up your strategy. In AW, how I play Sami, Max, and Grit are completely different because of their bonuses and weaknesses. Wargroove doesn't have that.

[@victorvirgili4447]

Yeah, the only thing that really changes a playstyle is terrain. Changing commanders only changes how you move your commander, since most of them have skills that only affect themselves

[@shady_silhoutte]

Alas, the game ended up the same fate as StarBound, and that too also had potential. Chucklefish has a knack of killing games with a lot potential.

[@sr.lontra]

I still play sb till this day but sadly, I agree There are so many things I wanted in the game, such as enchanting a weapon with your desired element (I searched for mods but nothing either), or frustrating mechanics like blueprints for furniture or crew members. It holds you back too much And also the various biomes could have more dungeons and even have minibosses But alas, now I have a bittersweet taste for chucklefish

[@sr.lontra]

Their only game that doesn't seem to have a problem is Pathway, but looks like it wasn't them that made it. Only distributed or something

[@kefnettheuseless7627]

Sad the game is dead. Even with mods being a thing it still didn’t last long. Hopefully Chucklefish brings a big update. Other then that I’ll try and run some games with friends

[@Heccct]

Chucklefish loves to let games die once there is even the slightest hint that their popularity is running out.

[@edgelord8337]

Kinda sucks as the graphics were really nice and I liked the aesthetic. It just never caught on I assume.

[@7F0X7]

I quit this game after getting perfect S-ranks in the first half and then hitting difficulty spikes so absurd in the latter half that it no longer felt like a "strategy game". The first half's S-ranks were challenging, and some took several tries, but they felt quite fair for the most part. You just had to use all the tools at your disposal, and not make any mistakes. But in the latter half, you are given so many routes you can take across expansive maps, yet only one is viable, and since you can't possibly know how much or where the enemy is going to spawn units at this point in the game, you're now forced to trial and error until you simply memorize turn for turn what's necessary for the S-rank clear. That or just follow a guide turn by turn. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was that one mission where you play as the dog starting on an island, and you have to make your way south. Turns out the only way to S-rank is to spawn a very specific set of flying units and cross the sea attacking only a few specific units and knowing where to place your entire air fleet turn by turn, but the map was made with predominate land and sea routes to give the impression that you're supposed to choose one of the two. Note that doing an air route rush in almost any other mission is suicide, which is frustrating enough. But the sheer amount of unknowable information overall that you must have in order to get the S-clear is flatly not acceptable, and I just got tired the game going out of its way to waste my time like that.

[@cpugamer1012]

The difficulty really does get annoying late in the game. I think the mission that annoyed me most was the one where you have a team of like 10 units at the start, and you basically only get those units for the entire mission. Only way to summon more was through a commander power and even then you could only get footsoldiers or dogs. It made the mission into a puzzle map, which would be fine if the puzzle wasn't the fact that you're so massively outnumbered by units better than yours. Was just annoying and unenjoyable to play.

[@philgodin6493]

The already have puzzle mode and the late game feels like playing puzzle stages that take forever and if you make one mistake it's start over.

[@powerfulberry237]

So in other words you just need to git gud Of all things to complain about you cry about ur lack of skills and aptitute to learn

[@normalguycap]

Same exact mission and problems got me to quit too.

[@photonfield]

I just found Wargroove really boring for some reason. I could only get a few hours into the story before dropping it. Meanwhile, Advance Wars had me hooked from the very start, and I still find myself replaying the whole series every few years.

[@felipesoares5900]

The story was as deep as a puddle. I don't think it was meant to be anything more than a generic campaign.

[@Orrenn]

I think the big thing with Wargroove is that some things are amazing, but others are basic. I think the critical mechanics on every individual units is amazing, and super fun to think about. I also like the dynamic of having your commander be a unit that you're not allowed to lose, and their "Grooves" give a lot of power to their units that feels satisfying to use. On the other hand, the kind of boring thing is that all of the units are exactly the same no matter which faction or commander you're playing as. It's even worse that the Commander units are exactly the same as one another apart from their grooves. The contrast is that this is an area Advance Wars is good at; giving the different COs passive changes to their units that are always active in addition to their powers. That's cool, and that's fun. Is it balanced? Not even a little. But fun, isn't about balance, and that's the biggest detractor I have against Wargroove. In a big way, it's just too balanced to be as fun as it could be. P.S. Actually, I think a game that mixes together the best of Wargroove and Advance Wars would be the dream. Unique unit criticals, distinct unit differences by faction, day to day powers by commander, grooves and global CO powers working on separate meters! Throw it all in with a robust multiplayer mode that let you mix and match factions and commanders/COs, as well as changing various options, and you'd have a super fun, crazy experience.

[@kaiosamatlj4031]

Considering that the commanders are always on the field, I think that they could've copied Days of Ruin CO Zone system.

[@Orrenn]

@@kaiosamatlj4031 Ooh, yeah! I did really like that system. I like the idea that your CO has a tangible "Command Pressence".

[@sandwell27]

What instantly killed this game for me was feeling how slowly the UI and maps played. Every action took 1-2 button presses too many, which is unforgivable over the number of interactions in a strategy game. That told me the developers misunderstood what made Intelligent Systems games great in the first place: not just pretty sprite art, but also UIs and maps that are tuned to perfection. As for Reboot Camp, I've become very wary of cheap 3D remakes of SNES and GBA games that already looked great. That's a stupid trend I don't want to support.

[@krimsonkatt]

The Trials of Mana remake was really good though and made the original game basically impossible to go back to with how much better the remake is in pretty much every aspect. (other than the translation in which most people agree that the fan-made translation for SD3 is better than the official translation for SD3 and the script for the remake) The only "bad" 2D to 3D remakes I can remember are the Adventure of Mana and Secret of Mana remakes which SE remedied with ToM. Maybe also the Pokemon remakes but the new QoL, story content, and gameplay features in those remakes make their superior to the originals by default even if the sprite work is arguably better than the 3D models. The ToM remake looks great especially since it reuses assets from DQ11 for the environments and the character models look really pretty. The only issues being the god awful English voice acting equivalent to a late 90s to mid 2000s Capcom game and the cutscenes having a weird quirk of skipping certain animations if you go through dialogue too fast. Other than that the game is great and an excellent example on how to do a 3D remake of a 16 bit game.

[@corn4618]

@Kartal SD3?

[@cericat]

@@corn4618 Seiken Densetsu 3 aka Trials of Mana

[@iammaxis]

I actually didn't know this game was dead, I'm currently playing it a lot with a friend of mine and we've had tons of fun... Except when he wins... which happens a lot

[@Chr1s_1986]

Its a bullshit clickbeat of Mangs nothing more. Wargroove isent dead and you can find tons of matches if you invest some time (with most people dont do).

[@carlosgonzalez-almansalare2446]

@@Chr1s_1986 Is that true still today? I'm thinking on buying it but scared online play is dead

[@Chr1s_1986]

@@carlosgonzalez-almansalare2446 its a small community tho if you expect to allways have lobbys open every time of the day than your answer is no dont buy it. The availablity heavly depend on timezones as well as if tunries are played or not (most players are burned out after turnies are finished and you will see less lobbys). But be carefull if you still want to buy the game and you want to play pvp expect alot of good players in pvp. Competitive pvp and pvp in generall isent for noobs that just bought the game tho expect loosing alot since the community is rather small alot of good players are in it.

[@SaltyMaud]

@@carlosgonzalez-almansalare2446 It's like 1€ on G2P. Sure chucklefish isn't going to see any of that, but if you're unsure about the game, it costs pretty much nothing to try.

[@hippolord570]

I would like bring attention to some gameplay aspects as well, when buying into the game you look and see that each faction has unique looking units and create an expectation that each faction functions differently at their core. Frankly from that disappointment alone I ended up losing interest coming from someone who played starcraft and enjoyed how each faction had an unique playstyle.

[@asaltedpudding4041]

That was also by far the biggest turnoff for me. Seeing several super distinct and unique looking units with the same role but different names, only to discover that there is no functional difference between armies. Hell, the only distinct choice you can even make in pregame is the hero, which stat wise have no differences and will only impact the groove, and victory is rarely decided by the groove.

[@panzer_TZ]

@@asaltedpudding4041 Advance Wars armies were functionally the same, but the COs had global effects, so a Sami Infantry is different from a Jess Infantry. I think having fundamental differences by faction or by commander could definitely add some flavor to Wargroove. (Cesar's Battlepups being faster and stronger for example)

[@theoutlander1411]

@@panzer_TZ That would have helped. Though I think the game play wasn't that big of a turnoff playing wise, it just kind of lacked the support it needed. I played a lot of the co-op levels and they were fun as well as the puzzles. I think in terms of gameplay, it lacked a lot of support from Chucklefish to compete in the 2020s, whereas the Advance Wars games were released in the 00s and back then you had to make your own maps and scenarios or physically pass the gameboy around so expectations were lower. Unique Hero armies would have helped a lot, but even the hero powers aren't balanced properly. Sigrid kills one unit on the battlefield but has slow charge, Valder spawns a capturing foot soldier but has fast charge. The amount of times Sigrid had to risk her life just to get the ability when I played, made it not worth playing her when Valder had to just kill a couple guys and you had a skeleton to act as a bodyguard or to capture stuff in the backline.

[@BigKlingy]

They wrote pages of lore on each faction's version of each unit, too.

[@RealityMasterRogue]

Super agree. I think the refusal to make different factions *play* different is a major factor in why people stopped playing.

[@ArthurDraco]

It's kinda ironic how the pc servers(which are free to use) are fine, but the nintendo ones(which as a reminder, costs 20-50$ a year to use) constantly disconnect players.

[@ericquiabazza2608]

This tells you about mod mentality and buying ok Nintendo market shenanigans

[@sigurdtheblue]

It does not cost more than$20 a year unless you acknowledge the fact that the other parts of the membership are worth paying more for. Nintendo online is super cheap and only idiots complain about the cost. The fact that the servers are seemingly designed to be impossible to optimize is a struggle. But considering Advance Wars was presented as a Nintendo game, we can hope they are given the secret to optimize online.

[@elnico5623]

Man, if only i had a dollar for every time chucklefish made a fantastic game full of potential only to shit on it and fuck it over

[@Mangs1337]

I know very little about Chucklefish. How many other games have they ruined like this?

[@elnico5623]

@@Mangs1337 all of them, they only ever care about their very last one, then fuck it and make another

[@XanthinZarda]

@@Mangs1337 Starbound is the most famous example, and the video "What Time Did to Starbound" goes over this in detail. Witchbrook has been in development for a long five years and likely has missed the window of interest seeing as Little Witch Academia has had it's run and gone. As for Wayward Tide, who knows if that's going to actually get anyway. Then there's a few published games that Chucklefish has basically ghosted or vanished on.

[@thegreatestpepe]

Wargroove's fatal flaw for me was a complete lack of CO diversity. Every single faction in Wargroove was 100% alike in every single way. There were no daily bonuses, no map-wide powers or supers, nothing. Everything was a mirror-match. The only difference being your commanders had their one combat ability they could personally do sometimes. That's it.

[@HanakkoLove]

Content/feature creep. Too much stuff that didn't adress the main issues and despite trying to bring new people to the game, they didn't try to make them stay

[@CenturyBlade]

Sorry to say Mango but to your last point about online matches dropping- pretty sure that if games with followings as big as Smash and Mario Kart, and even non-nintendo-published best-sellers such as Monster Hunter Rise and Minecraft, just to name a couple, haven't been impactful enough to get Nintendo to improve the dog shit quality of NSO over the nearly 5 years that it's existed, there's probably no way in hell that AWRB is going to be any better off than Wargroove was.

[@rily2885]

true, lets be real, this what is coming, I even doubt the remake will have any kind of rank system, it may have online play just because they can add it now but its going to be mediocre at best, the art is awful already and the balance may be just as whack as the original, I'm only hyped for the remade music, I think this game at best can bring more people to the classics

[@rcnrbn]

The thing that killed Wargroove for me, primarily, was actually the music. The music is fantastic, don't get me wrong, I use it for D&D games all the time, but it felt *incongruous*. The art style of bright, cheery, cartoony characters just doesn't gel with a serious sounding orchestral soundtrack, the visual design and the sound font just rubbed me the wrong way and kept the game from really cementing itself in my mind as a cohesive experience that engaged all my senses. So, with the central design *charm* of the game feeling off kilter, when it came time to go back through the campaign to try and three star every map, only to find that some maps were literally 'do this sequence in this order or you will not get three stars' levels of artificial difficulty there wasn't anything keeping me there and willing to soldier through. As the sort of player that religiously follows games like Advance Wars without having ever played an MP match in my life that is killer. I three starred every map in Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2 and spent dozens of hours in the war room maps. I don't even think I finished the Wargroove campaign.

[@cccpredarmy]

Owh totally agreeing with you on Wargroove and especially AW which I played and still play (on AWBW) actively. However I'd really suggest you to finish Wargroove campaign. The last level stuck in my head actually and I personally really enjoyed the head cracking expereince playing ALL heroes at once WITHOUT any other unit, going agianst hordes and hordes of enemies. It was a very nice puzzle and challenged your tactical thinking a lot. So definitely worth trying it!

[@rossdepina1881]

This game was a lot of fun. But there is still an active Groove of War KZbin competitive channel that has been uploading pretty often. And I noticed some users are still making maps for it. So there still a lot of love out there for the game.

[@meathir4921]

Same guy is a mod on AWBW Discord lol

[@rossdepina1881]

@@meathir4921 haha. That’s funny. I was watching one of the matches and they were talking about AWBW a lot. This game is def the advanced wars lite that fans have been waiting for. I found a lot of fun playing the custom maps made by Groove fans so I’m hoping that will a feature of the new AW for the switch.

[@theoverlordplayz8461]

really? can you give me a link?

[@rossdepina1881]

@@theoverlordplayz8461 I put the link twice but it's not showing for some reason. But you can find it on the official war groove blog section of their website.

[@krux02]

just looked up Groove of War, last video 7 months ago, so I guess it is dead my now as well.

[@The_Big_Jay]

I felt like a lot of Wargroove's tutorial/learning curve was unintuitive, and that was mainly due it's setting. AW makes sense just due to it's real world basis. You automatically know what anti-infantry, anti-tank/mechanized infantry, and anti-air are because most people who play it have some baseline knowledge of simple military stuff. An AA gun beats Air units, a Tank buster beats tanks. Then you get to Wargroove. What beats a Dragon? I dunno. Ice? Arrows? A special sword? It's world isn't intuitive because it's a fantasy world, and it does a very poor job actually making what beats what memorable. Most of my story matches, on Normal, turned into several turn stalemates, and it really left a bad taste in my mouth. And a minor nitpick about it's sprites, while pretty, they don't allow for quick recognition of what is and isn't an enemy, or which unit is which. AW has every CO share the same unit overworld sprite, with bright colors denoting who's unit it is. Wargroove is just like... Here's a spec of blue... They're blue team. Why not make them REALLY blue?

[@archmagusofevil]

I didn't face this issue at all. Many of the units are clear parallels to AW counterparts (with minor adjustments, but same counter play): Pikemen are Mechs Dogs are recons Calvary are tanks Mages are Anti-Air Harpy is a bcopter Witch is a fighter Dragon is a bomber

[@The_Big_Jay]

@@archmagusofevil Unfortunately I didn't have previous experience with AW, so having a, "Blank is just like blank from AW." Moment never happened for me.

[@shinyrayquaza9]

even as an advance wars player, I had to constantly check unit match ups in the memu playing war groove

[@adisander]

It was the unit recognition that really did me in. At a glance the battlefield always just looked like a jumbled mess, with too many units looking similar to others/not looking distinct enough for what role they are, and the sprite overlap. Good lord, so much sprite overlap. Units overlapping units behind and sometimes to their sides, stars, the hit point indicators overlapping the heads of the units in front of them, all usually not by _that_ much, but enough that it would muddy and confuse the outlines of units, making it even harder to identify them quickly.

[@The_Big_Jay]

@@adisander Every time you look at an AW, every unit takes up 1 space, minus and slight top and bottom overlap to give the illusion of 3D, and your units are one clearly defined color.

[@nikosagantz]

Remember kids: Robin beat Bartre. Bartre beat Ninja Oboro. Ninja Oboro beat Robin.

[@soulhoney1227]

Mangs: ' this curse will never go away'

[@glitchwarrior7270]

you know if you use the fates weapon triangle this actually works

[@Pink.andahalf]

Every six months or so I go back to try and finish the campaign. Usually I'll finish one mission and then forget about it again. Just doesn't keep my attention.

[@GermanicusCaesar117]

For me, once the novelty of playing "Medieval Advance Wars" wore off I stopped playing the game. It's kind of a shame cuz I was about 4/5th through the campaign.

[@sjaugust1]

My issue with the game was the factions didn't have anything that made them play differently. The only variation was in the named characters. Otherwise the undead played just like the plant people and the plant people play just like everyone else. Needless to say I got bored pretty quickly

[@Sines314]

One thing that hurt it for me was the AI. I never really played with other people. However, there were several times in the main campaign where I was legitimately checkmated by the AI... who then proceeded to ignore killing my Commander. That kind of killed it for me. Perhaps if I tried playing with other people I would have had more fun... but I never did, and I guess if I did, I would have run into the problems you mention. I also felt it was kind of underwhelming that the Commanders had no day-to-day bonuses, and that they all functions as just souped up Infantry, rather than each playing as a different kind of unit. So all you did was choose your one super power, and the coat of paint on your army. Wargroove DID have a lot going for it though, and I hope that if we ever get Advanced Wars 5, it'll borrow some concepts from it. Or at the very least, from all the people commenting on the balance problems with Advanced Wars :D

[@spayced]

I see a lot of the same thing. After you last X number of rounds the AI just suicides for some reason? It's weird.

[@sp0ckz0mbi3]

Yeah I don't know whose idea it was to put the ending behind having to perfect the entire game. Saw that put the game down, never touched it again.

[@AdachiCabbage]

The problem with Advance Wars is that Nintendo didn't market it at all OR give it any support. Remember Neo the World ends with you? That wasn't marketed and it failed. I feel that unless Nintendo REALLY pushes Advance Wars, then it will fail too. Metroid Dread, a game that hasn't had a game in around the same length of time as AW, even has ties with Famitsu and other anime series to market it. But Advance Wars? Nothing. I didn't even know the game was delayed. The community is not helping either because people on Reddit are saying "Nah don't buy it fam just emulate the older games," and "Why should I pay 60 dollars for a game like that?" There's a lack of support on all ends and it's sad but shows how a majority of people do not care about this series and are single-minded.

[@kstplt8010]

I think SE should have been the one more responsible to NEO than Nintendo, lol. I think I agree though that Nintendo do have their golden boy franchise they want to push. Kinda sad but it seems that even Nintendo doesn't expect the remake to be successful.

[@Zetact_]

Neo also got a lot of bad publicity when people showed how garbage the localization was.

[@Bethany38326]

Never even heard of Wargroove before thus channel. Such a shame it didn't last. The game is beautiful though. Reboot camp would look so much better with this art style instead of the cheap plastic-looking art style they seem to be going with.

[@JoelDiez]

I agree completely, that garbage play doh style, it has turned me off immensely, literally the only thing I felt was off

[@igunn8632]

@@JoelDiez im hoping we can use some pixel art instead of that which looks like a bad toy army paint job

[@Dhalin]

What happened to Wargroove? Answer: Chucklefish. They have a history of just abandoning their projects and then going dark. They've made and/or published some games, but from what I can tell, there's no communication whatsoever from them about any of the games they've developed or published, and in the case of games they publish, it's up to the developer of the game to maintain communication. Even Stardew Valley seemingly abandoned Chucklefish Forums and apparently has its own forums now, from what I could tell. Seems like CF has their "flavor of the year" game, they support it for awhile... and then they abandon it to go chasing after something else. Browsing CF forums, it's very slow over there, with the majority of the traffic seeming to be games not developed by CF but rather published by them, and of course, a good healthy dose of spam left unchecked, and the dev blog section having almost no traffic 'cept for the occasional person asking about the xbox port of Starbound (lol) that was announced 2 years ago and a forum moderator going "it'll come out when it's ready" (despite the fact it's going on 3 years now). I couldn't find any posts made by any Chucklefish official staff, only a forum moderator or two.

[@PunkietheAlien]

I could not have worded it better. THIS is the whole reason why CF needs to sell off the games to better studios to help save them.

[@csrjjsmp]

No advance wars game ever got a post launch update. Wargroove just isn’t good.

[@cericat]

@@csrjjsmp No Advance Wars game was released as an EA title. Both of CF's and everything they've published have been. Also you'd be wrong, there are different version of the AW games, Advance Wars 1.0 and 1.1 cartridges do exist for a start, mostly map redesigns and minor at that but to say none ever got a post launch update is flat out wrong.

[@csrjjsmp]

@@cericat that’s not what an update means. even ocarina of time famously had newer versions of the games released on later batches of cartridges. That doesn’t mean anyone would say it had post launch updates unless they were deliberately twisting words to be misleading.

[@cericat]

@@csrjjsmp You really aren't helping your case. 1.1 of Ocarina of Time fixed two glitches in 1.0, 1.2 fixed a couple of conflicts changed the fire temple music and Ganon's blood to green to keep its E for Everybody rating.

[@Penumen]

For me it was the lackluster wordy story and the overly large maps that took time early on inn the campaign. The best part of Advance wars was the simple plot and small maps so you coud focus on strategy. I was so hyped for this game and got it on Switch and just never got into it. Literally spent ages getting S ranks on all levels and challenges in Advance Wars though because it was fun.

[@kohare1320]

Wargroove was released on steam, xbox and switch at the same date. Unlike some claimed, Nintendo alone has nothing to do with its popularity. They also don't support multi-platform at launch. Personally, while I love design theme, being in medieval fantasy with dragons and wizards. I despite character personalities. They have that crinchy, smirking, "I'm better than you" expression that only younger audiences would relate to. Add a cheesy story on top of that, made me wished they were just plain characters or there were ways to hide portraits. In reddit and steam reviews, Wargroove was mostly praised because it has dogs. I love dogs too but I doubted those who were excited for this inclusion actually cared for long, dragged out, competitive matches. Wargroove sales was going to be driven by nostalgic value. Unfortunately, Chucklefish simply chose wrong target audience and failed to make appeal to AW veterans, such as myself.

[@theoutlander1411]

I'm constantly surprised by people who like the game because of Caesar or like the character. It's literally just a dog that acts like a dog. The dogs as recons also don't make a lot of historical sense either, as War Dogs were used kind of like light cavalry attacking weakened and disordered troops, not something you would use on trained swordsmen 1 on 1.

[@ancientofdays8644]

Honestly, I simply never really liked the Heroes or the unit design all that much.

[@DankBeard19]

i think its just the fact that theres like a hundred new games being launched every day

[@Dragonite43]

The problem I had was with the campaign and the side story feature. Campaign's difficulty ramps up too quickly. The side story had maps that required cheese to win. It just felt unbalanced and unfun to play.

[@powerfulberry237]

Out of all the complaints this is the stupidest by far. Good job.

[@edenengland1883]

saying "the difficulty ramps up too quickly" is the understatement of the universe's entire timespan, some of the levels seem practically impossible Kingdom Rush Vengeance has tamer progression and you get healers and diggers paired together in the same wave by level three

[@SirDave]

​@@edenengland1883THIS. This is why I stopped playing. I was so disappointed.

[@Aeivious]

honestly, I think the biggest reason this game failed was because of the campaign. It's such a slow build up, maps are riddled with empty space and each map just feels bland. If I am like any other gamer out there, I play the campaign first to teach me the mechanics and then play the multiplayer, but if the campain is just uniteresting and uses its own mechanics poorly then I am never gonna bother shifting over to multiplayer.

[@beebindy]

I love Wargroove and have continued to play it online with a friend since launch. I can't see us ever getting sick of it and hope that a Wargroove 2 is in the works.

[@mr_beezlebub3985]

One thing I dislike about this game is how they promised a native Linux version, but never delivered.

[@dorpth]

Main thing that killed it for me was that the unit attacking had such a MASSIVE advantage. Far beyond what firing first gave you in AW. Attacking first against a mirror unit left it crippled while the attacker took almost zero damage. The attacker advantage was so ridiculous, that a unit attacking its own hard counter ended up trading almost 50/50. And then a bunch of other stuff just added up. The character art design was lame. Way too many of the campaign missions ended up being puzzle battles where only one solution was viable and you had no way of predicting it.

[@Overdoseplus]

One thing that really put me off was how the portrait of the characters looked. They look a little straight from Tumblr and the red marks on faces either seems like everyone is completely hammered drunk. This usually isn't a big deal but its not exactly what I was expecting from the genre especially after that good looking animated trailer.

[@MrVisde]

I love Wargroove. Whenever I tried online multiplayer I couldn’t find a match. Oh well, single player is still fun.

[@LiveFromTheAsylum]

I like Wargroove quite a bit, but it really feels like it was banking too hard on Advance Wars nostalgia to be super successful. The term "fantasy Advance Wars" comes up a lot in discussion about Wargroove and that's a pretty accurate summation, since the game makes very little effort to really stand apart from Advance Wars. The CO's lacking day-to-day powers in favor of just having metered CO powers was probably the biggest mechanical difference, and that mostly feels like an oversight. There is also literally nothing done with the musical theme to the names on a mechanical level, which makes that whole thing feel like a cheap writing gimmick. Admittedly, the map design does seem to emphasize naval units more than Advance Wars does, which I do regard as an improvement given how utterly pointless naval units are in most Advance Wars maps. The addition of Marines, basically sea going infantry, is an addition that I'm actually surprised never happened in Advance Wars. But in the end, Wargroove's biggest accomplishment may be what killed it. It made me really want to play Advance Wars again, and I don't think I'm the only the one. I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunck of old Advance Wars fans found out about Advance Wars By Web because of Wargroove and swapped over to that. Or dropped in favor of getting ready for Re-Boot Camp. When you bank that hard on nostalgia, you're gonna lose out if the nostalgic thing you're leaning on comes back.

[@bk1128]

> Competitive online multiplayer > Nintendo We're boned.

[@MrMacMan23]

No difference between factions (besides CO) = massively less replayability

[@Ravnesss]

1:30 who are these people who think a game should be dead in 3 years ?

[@jare3459]

to be fair Advance wars peak during dual strike because of all ways to play could do 2v2 Cos 1v1 Cos 1v1 and 1v1 2 map battle Cos 2v2 2 cos battles and so on

[@GerardMenvussa]

Indie games are being constantly over hyped and treated like the 2nd coming of Jesus. But I find very few of them actually deliver. In fact, statistically, they might even have a worse track record than "non-indie" devs on average. I have been burned a few too many times in the last few years, nowadays, I approach this kind of devs with a lot more caution.

[@dragonfolffolf907]

As much as I hate to compare it to another of their properties, this has the same kind of issues that Starbound currently has, where it's only really being held up by it's community and even then it seems fleeting, case in point being where the last 'official' update for Starbound was around the same time Wargroove came out. Wargroove looks fun just like how Starbound is, but it can't be kept afloat by just it's communities, else it'll just end up fading into irrelevancy.

[@Abundy]

Sad to say, but for a small publisher like Chucklefish it wouldn't be worth it trying to revitalize a dead game like Wargroove, maybe they'll make Wargroove 2 at some point and hopefully improve on these issues. As you said the most worrying thing for AW itself is being bound to Nintendo's dogshit online services, whether it runs on their terrible servers or P2P the Switch just isn't great for online play. Maybe the devs can figure out a way so that dropping out isn't a death sentence and you can rejoin without too many issues.

[@lightguard1]

Apparently when Nintendo added online game for Super Mario Party, it had a different server functions in it. The thing is that most people on switch play on unstable Wi-fi and if you in the game with P2P online play, you are screwed to have high lag and disconnects. AW remake deffinitly needs some kind of reconnect feature as some games can go on for a while, it sucks to lose a game that had gone for at least a hour due to disconnect.

[@Abundy]

@@lightguard1 I mean Wi-Fi is never ideal compared to LAN, but it's honestly also on the Switch for having terrible reception, all other consoles or phones etc have less trouble doing online stuff with Wi-Fi and much better reception.

[@Kujapaints]

Am I the only one who just didn't resonate with a single commander in Wargroove? I miss the army wide passives and preferences rather than one strong unit with one ability.

[@Tr0tim]

Lack of variety in commanders definitely hurt replayability. Most of them only change one unit, not the way the whole army plays like AW.

[@theoutlander1411]

The commanders for the most part sucked personality wise as well. Out of the 12, only Sigrid and Sedge have personalities, one is power hungry and the other likes to feed on people. You'd have a hard time giving a personality description for most of them like you could even with the shallow AW commanders.

[@saltysaltmaker3848]

@@theoutlander1411 Or you know, Ragna. Can't forget Ragna. More memorable than Sedge anyway.

[@theoutlander1411]

@@saltysaltmaker3848 Ragna was just overly dramatic and angry. It's implied the anger comes from her wanting to prove her value but that is never explored, reflected on or given any attention. She's kind of there to throw a child like temper tantrum while the MC rolls her eyes.

[@saltysaltmaker3848]

@@theoutlander1411 Well yeah, but it's far more memorable than uh...that one plant from space or 'literally just a dog'.

[@MonochromaticPrism]

A major turn off was that they made the factions too fundamentally different from each other for them to still all field identical units. Florans are a species of tribalistic sentient carnivorous plants, the Felheim alliance is full of vampires, ghosts, and swarms of skeletons, and the two human groups come from vastly different medieval settings and implied military and technological backgrounds, yet every unit is exactly, Nay, PERFECTLY identical to each other. You could justify it in advance wars as everyone in the setting was human and had equal tech and production requirements (aka factories, airports, seaports). That clearly identical starting base was also why the commanders stood out so well, the small bonuses and weaknesses of each unit were as much an expression of the commander's character as their actual story moments. However in Wargroove the variety creates the opposite effect. Where I would, at a minimum, expect each faction to have different offensive and defensive stats on their clearly different units (and honestly they really should have unique units as well), instead every basic skeleton is a cookie cutter of every human is of a cookie cutter every Floran. Frankly the idea that a healthy trained human has identical capabilities to both an undead and a completely alien species boggles the mind.

[@jcol341]

I'll admit I never played it despite being an AW fan both due to Chucklefish and the tumblr art style.

[@antinumeric7218]

The leaders had too small an impact on playstyle - no passive effects or bigger tactical changes. It made every mission feel the same no matter who I was controlling. Very frustrating.

[@theDarkerSan]

It din't "Fail". It did not not become a huge classic that's played years and years after launch. and that's OK. I don't think they were aiming for that. I also don't think AW remake is aiming for that either.

[@stefenboney7145]

I really enjoyed the campaign, I even completed the all Caesar missions. Tiny Metal FMR did a collaboration with Wargroove and I enjoyed that too, because dog. The map/campaign editor was fun as hell to play around with. I made a some AW2 missions map with black hole inventions with the in-game script editor that anyone can learn. There's also a scenario editor you can make for your campaign or just make a short film/video for fun. (I used it for a school assignment and got a 100 kek). There are some really incredible mod/minigames the community has made like a tower defense or a CIV-like game just using the script editor iirc. While at its core, it is just like Advance Wars, but a personal issue is the just theme of the game. Medieval fantasy isn't something I gravitate towards. That's just me. But one issue I remember seeing around is about the commanders. They all play the same(excluding their grooves) and there's no D2D effect on the armies. I feel the same way. Battles play kinda the same. I'm sure with the last script editor update you can somehow change that and add D2D, but it's been so long since I've messed with that. I might go back and see if can do anything with that idea. Wargroove; great game, art, music, lots of customization, but it just doesn't scratch the same itch like AW does. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@sgtsaltstick2729]

This isn't the first time Chucklefish has done something like this. Introduce game with great potential. Completely switch direction, double down. Throw it into the trash once the hype is dead. Starbound taught me that.

[@Mangs1337]

Would you care to elaborate what you mean by "switch direction"? Based on what I'm seeing. Wargroove failed due to Chucklefish not changing it enough.

[@gabrielnguyen5580]

phenom penh taught me that

[@Plutoniumcube]

I used to be decently active in competitive WarGroove before moving onto AWBW. I was never any good, but it was still fun. I was honestly pretty confused when you were so fatalistic about how bad WarGroove’s online was and that it would spell doom for the Reboot camp whenever you mentioned it on stream. Putting the fact that you don’t want to use it aside, Discord is actually a pretty good setting for match making and for a community, and if the AWBW community takes up the mantle in the worst case scenario, we’d be better off than WarGroove just because of size and a pre-existing base. I am miffed about that cloistering casuals from the community a little, but that’s a constant in many competitive games, especially ones published by Nintendo. What this video did to qualify this argument of mine is that I realized the importance of expediency in playing a game. I didn’t play many WarGroove games and didn’t get very good because I had to boot up my Switch and go through the hassle of setting up a match. I play a lot more AWBW games because of the auto-matchmaking system that just makes you keep going. I love starting my session of whatever I’m doing on my computer by just answering my turns. Notifications, as you said, could do the same thing for Reboot Camp and WarGroove for the average Switch player. (I actually think WG has this on PS4 though…) A subtle thing that could help, and indeed kind of miffs me about WarGroove, is the lack of embrace for async play. It should be the standard for these types of games, but I don’t know if many people really see it as mainstream outside of AWBW and to a certain extent competitive WarGroove. Last time I checked, Wargroove quick play has a timer. Why have that? Set the expectation of it being async and it will feel quick. One thing WarGroove does have that Reboot Camp probably won’t is the embrace of fanbase competitive maps in quick play. If you didn’t know, with a few updates Chucklefish added competitive maps from there into their official pool because fans didn’t like the stock maps for competitive. I guess another thing is having most of the commanders available in versus. I really hope you have almost all of the commanders unlocked for competitive right away.

[@theoutlander1411]

I think Wargroove's problems go beyond what you mentioned here. The campaign was just awfully written, while there may have been a few fun levels to play here and there, the majority were tedious. The actual story and dialogue were pretty bad, and I actually was kind of impressed that they killed off Ragna only to bring her back. Both the Floran and Japanese nation were pretty bland and their role in the story felt unnecessary (probably chalked up to bad writing) and they could maybe have been replaced with other fantasy nations/groups. I know Elves, Orcs and Demons are played out a bit, but it would have given the game less of liberal nerd vibe as opposed to plant people in tune with nature and weeb samurai. I don't want to dwell on the politics of that other than it made it seem stale, unspired and less fantastical. I remember reading that the reason Floran were chosen over Elves was to make it seem less bland but I think it had the opposite effect. I'm not a Night Elf or Zerg player in Blizzard games though so maybe I don't know what I am talking about and there is a niche out there for the Floran. The only faction I thought that was done right really was the Undead. Even Cherrystone was written awfully and that is where the cultural legacy of Wargroove missed their mark. Advance Wars has different but likeable styles, characters and factions. Sure the story is kind of shit in AW1 and only somewhat better in 2, but it had a charm to it. There was something people could like from every faction and their campaigns in 2 were given a different feel to them. I think a lot of people like Blue Moon because of the tone of desperation in their campaign and demands for Blackhole to fuck off and leave them alone. Green Earth has a desperate tone but it's more framed as a counter-attack by cocky and confident commanders. OS and YC had different feelings towards them that for brevity I will leave out. Wargroove didn't really have that. The Cherrystone 3 were dull as dishwater, Sedge filled a sort of evil looking out for himself archetype that while interesting as an archetype wasn't utilized in a meaningful way. The Japanese faction had absolutely nothing out of cliches, and the Undead did good though I felt Ragna was a miss personally in that she wasn't developed and Valder was portrayed as misunderstood or tricked but not as the actual villain he should have been forming a temporary alliance. Wargroove's campaign felt kind of like all the worst aspects of AW1's campaign, of misunderstanding after misunderstanding, but with even less likeable characters. It's one thing if Andy is moving through Yellow Comet like an idiot without asking permission and Kanbei charging to fight him like an idiot without asking. It's another thing when a Princess of a government in exile is "oops sorry" destroying entire nations as well as her own at the advice of her "wise" wizard mentor and everyone else just going along with it. It makes everyone in the series look dumb. Chucklefish put zero effort in making a good property. They took Advance Wars, added heroes and spells (and merfolk) made a few changes here and there and phoned in everything else. I actually enjoyed the multiplayer, I think it was top notch, and when playing Co-op was better than Advance Wars. However, that doesn't carry it as a title (as with many games relying on the multiplayer). The game lacks imagination and unique ways to play it. I could write 5 more paragraphs about the story and aesthetics but it's what killed the game for most I believe. Probably the worst main story out of any game I have played in my life, and I am not being a drama queen when I say that. I've seen fanfics with more depth to them.

[@itsdripnovababy]

Wow. I mostly play games for the story, so hearing this just makes me… mad. It sounds like such a waste!

[@nickdegugs7190]

Technically Steam notifies you when it’s your turn. You’ll still find players if you host a match, “suspend” it and return when it’s your turn. Honestly I think the multiplayer would be more active if more people were more open to “asymmetric games” (ie, I send a turn, you send one back on our own respective time) but people just straight up leave when they notice the game is asymmetric. Somehow titling the game “Send turn and Suspend” or “Don’t surrender just Suspend’er” isn’t enough to let people know “Hey, I’ll be back!”

[@nicono123]

Bought the game of the Switch and the multiplayer was glitched out so I couldn't play. Game came out later on Gamepads and the same multiplayer glitch happened again. Posted on the Wargroove reddit page and a dev ended up responding along with a bunch of other people who had similar issues. Nothing ended up coming from it...

[@uncledrake6606]

The nintendo servers are fine. have been for years now. The issue is with cross platform play. AW is switch exclusive, so no worries there

[@DanBottiglieri]

If I could choose where Wargroove would expand the game, it's more replayable one play content. I just so much preferred the War Room to the WG Arcade even though I like the two series campaigns about the same.

[@tubey84]

Wargroove is excellent. But it isn't Advance Wars and all that entails - being made by 'The Big N', being a leading title on its' own platform, whereas Wargroove is indie, third party on Nintendo and upon release was lost in the quagmire of Steam. To be honest, if Advance Wars released on Steam in 2019, I think it'd have met the same fate, regardless of how good it is. The genre itself is fairly niche after all. I think Wargroove was an absolute success for what it was.

[@XanthinZarda]

I beg to differ. Advance Wars has hidden depths that Wargroove lacks; compelling Co Powers, day to day affairs, a legacy that goes back to the Famicom and all the tuning that comes with that, and more.

[@pdc4930]

I recently played Wargroove on Switch, I held off on PC due to the want to take it on the Switch. Overall it's fun at first, but I lost interest with the Battles. I don't like the concept of Heros that end the match if killed. It lead to me playing keep away with my hero and and trying to bait the others I like the Hero Concept of Days of Ruin, where you can lead a force but losing the leader on the battlefield isn't the end of the world.

[@Yous0147]

Expanding on the music getting repetitive, I really like the game, but I think this is a huge one for me, including the sound effects in the game to. I'm not too sure why it is so, but it makes a difference with how satisfying moving units and ovetaking opponent units and buildings feels, there's a certain point where I sort of tire of it in a way that I don't do with AW and I think it paints the whole experience a great deal. With the music it might be that much of it is reused in the same situations in the game, I think listening to the beginning part of "Cheeky Ruckus" for the upteenth time has an effect despite me liking the rest of the song. feel if a sequel does happen it would be cool if the devs of the game further considered the applications of their songs within the game beyond making otherwise great arrangements.

[@RiskOfBaer]

Every new RTS game that comes out dies sooner rather than later, all RTS games we play nowadays are old classics. Even the new AOE game will lose most of it's players after a couple of years. It's just not a popular genre anymore. A turn based strategy game was even more niche than that, and it's even more niche today. So if you want to look for the reason Wargroove didn't stick then it's that, there is simply not enough interest. The majority of people who had a chance to stick with that game were Advance Wars fans, and those I assume just went to play AWBW instead. Same can happen to the Advance Wars reboot. If the game isn't pristine and doesn't have a good enough multiplayer support to give people reasons to stick around, people will just go back to AWBW and it will meet the same fate.

[@kurtkoopa5471]

The thing that heavily made me stop playing Wargroove. I hope nobody gets offended or anything, but it was the Pikemen wall spam always guarding commanders and small choke points. I know the game updated their cost a bit, but they still were way too OP. Mostly once the wagon got onto the field, they were covering each other back. That's like giving one of them a better version of horse back units. Ballista did only like around 3 damage to them. If ballista's did way more too them it probably would have helped as I bet a lot of people got disappointed on the damage on that. Rangers also suck fighting against them. They were way more harder to get on the field due to easily getting overwhelmed by common solders. I played the game and never saw anybody using the rangers. Rangers are to be the counter, but dang they get smacked hard for trying. Make units that have like... I don't know, tanks, elephants, skull grounded lizards, wooden made tanks? I know you want your golems and sorts, but if I heard Wargroove was making like unit types like that. I'd be back playing the game in no time. Mostly if there's more different units to buy that have unique traits and counters. All of the extra commanders sucked that were abled to be unlocked from story and how many stars you collected. So working for them almost seemed like being slapped for all the hard work on getting them. At least the DLC ones are good. But more commanders would always be welcoming and some rebalancing of those who are bottom tier. Quickplay was random. There was no way to make custom rule sets so often times it was just default rules and random maps. Only way to get away with that was to be playing with players in the discord page and often they were insanely good. If there was a better tutorial on understanding some of the building gimmick sorts would of been awesome from Wargroove devs. There were no tutorials on that and required having to learn by messing around. The community had to help in that area of what everything does.

[@SnydeX9]

They put poison in its mutton.

[@fireblast8972]

The biggest thing that killed Wargroove for me is the lack of replayability. Apart from the occasional grooves, all the commanders play exactly the same, so I feel little difference in switching from Mercia to Emeric to Ceasar and so on. Advance Wars did this right by giving each CO a passive along with their CO powers that effect the whole army that pretty much tell the player how you want to play that CO. Playing Max? Use direct units. Grit? Indirects. Eagle? Air units, and so on. Even if they didn't want to give army-wide passives to Wargroove, what about giving each commander different stats for their commander unit. Mercia would be the standard as we know it now, but Emeric could use his magic to attack air untis at the cost of some defense, making his groove more vital to playing defensive with him. Ceasar attacks with his bodyguards' crossbows, so what if he had an attack range like archers, letting his units form around him for his groove? Nuru could be an amphibious unit while Sigrid can shift into an air unit, both at the cost of their defense. Ragna could take less damage from using a shield at the cost of the damage she does. These are just ideas, sure, but they offer more unique playstyles among the commanders than they currently have. There's already tier lists anyway for who's more powerful in this game, so why not make it more interesting?

[@RichardArpin]

My friends and I (all adults with real responsibilities) love AWBW because it's asynchronous. We mostly can't get together at the same time, and asynchronous is a key feature. (We played a 6 player game on my map La Sega over 1.5 months and it was epic!)

[@cericat]

For a TBS async is nearly always the way to go especially for games where armies can take a while to move. I couldn't imagine trying to play Steel Panthers: World at War waiting between turns, you're going to be there a while on a 40k+ battle. Even if it's over in a few turns like the last I played, I was nice and spotted him a 10k handicap but the RNG was with my Panthers, it could take hours to do a turn.

[@jimhultqvist2539]

I don't get it how they just let Wargroove die. It was SO hyped, and had a very good release too. Now the servers almost never works and at best you can find maybe 1 or 2 games to play online.

[@JohnThems]

I absolutely despise the animations in Wargroove to a level that's almost irrational. They somehow overdid them to the point where everything looks TERRIBLE

[@des4929]

I just got back into the game after a while of not playing and have been very invested in the level editor which was surprisingly robust allowing you to set flags counters and events completely custom win conditions and many different ways of doing different things also letting you place any prop in any area though sadly you can't rotate them. Another thing is it's pretty easy to pick up I just started with it yesterday and I've already almost finished a pretty detailed map it's a massive shame this game's abandoned

[@shinyrayquaza9]

played the coop campaign with a friend who had 0 interest in advance wars and they had fun

[@Robert-vk7je]

I bought and played Wargroove for the singleplayer content. It was worth the money imo.

[@johannesrehn6494]

Mangs! I have a request, speaking of things dead. Please do a lets play of the second route of Eligors spear. Its some of the best content I've seen. The game is awesome and you rock it even though its frustrating for you (probably)

[@ninjavanish2361]

Once the second Route of Eligor’s Spear, then Mangs take the time to do the second Route.

[@johannesrehn6494]

@@ninjavanish2361 not sure I follow what you mean mate, has he mentioned anything about doing the second route? I've missed it if that's the case

[@normalguycap]

Video fails to address the real issues. Single player needed to be fixed before multiplayer. Won't get players involved if their personal experience is bad. Navy and air force were all kinds of screwed up. Cost, damage, range. Bad difficulty where the enemy gets way too much money and they make golems and dragons by turn 2. S ranks were never tested properly etc.

[@Ephraim225]

A self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.

[@CoralCopperHead]

Sounds a lot like the "Armello is dead" discussions.

[@infidelgermany]

You could've dropped the fact that this video is related to the Switch version.

[@FDiazContin]

The main reason why I didn't stay playing Wargroove is the fact that I lacks the feeling of discovering something new, that never happen to me playing Advance Wars, once I defeat the game I started the Hard, Wargroove doesn't have that instead is hard since the beginning making hard to keep playing it. About the online, Hardly a game like this is going to have a strong community of online games because it's even slower than Advance Wars, making it very hard to keep the attention of somebody who is use to fast gameplay.

[@kaiosamatlj4031]

While I do agree with your point, I think the dead multiplayer is just the tip of the iceberg. Despite not being a bad game (at least I don't consider it to be), I do have to admit that it has issues. For starters, I guess I could say I'm the minority here, but I am not a big fan of day-to-day abilities from Advance Wars. Sure, they made COs more unique, but at the same time because of them a lot of COs became worthless on certain maps and matchups, and honestly, I don't think a strong bias towards a certain unit (or a type) is healthy for a strategy game, so this was one of the factors that drawn me to Wargroove. However, WG problem is the extreme opposite: Everyone is too evenly matched. The commanders have different grooves but that's it, even them as units themselves are equal gameplay-wise. I think they should've copied Days of Ruin CO Zones since the commanders are active as units in the field, and I think that system was better than day-to-day, especially since it was mainly buffs and didn't made other units beyond their field worthless. (hell, maybe also even copy the skill system from Dual Strike and maybe only apply it to the commanders) And then there's the single player content. The main campaing is basically a reharsh of AW1, cheery tone and everything, but without the "meme factor" that we could say kind of made it "so bad, it's good". And I have the strong feeling that the creators thought that writing a huge chunk of lore that you need to stop everything to read equals engaging narrative, which is kind of a trend that I'm noticing lately. Double Trouble's campaign faired a little better to me storywise, but it was only a slight improvement, not even close to what AW2 was compared to AW1 in my opinion. Overall, I think the problem with Wargroove is that it has a identity crisis. It tries to be a inspired game that bring a new spin to the table, but at the same time it has plenty of nostalgia pandering. But looking at the bright side, it could be worse, it could be Future Wars.

[@Tippex_Official]

Considering wargroove is getting a sequel, I do hope that they can improve the flaws with the original (and also add Day to Day powers, would definitely make the game better imo)

[@danielmayer38]

So while it's true that there may be multiplayer issues, I think the issue is far deeper than this. The differences between this game Advance Wars are cute but ultimately those differences feel totally to the game's detriment. Furthermore, I don't believe you can just switch the setting from modern to a fantasy setting and expect no difference. The units just don't feel as good or as intuitive as Advance Wars Units. What are wizards specifically for? It's not intuitive or easily understandable. In addition, critical hits are a novel concept and add depth to the game but ultimately just feel like a novelty and do not easily allow for you to drop and pick up the game again. Additionally this game suffers by having the maps be more zoomed out and larger than Advance Wars maps. Sure the movement of wagons are adjusted for that, but it just feels too large. Lastly, I HATE the capture mechanics in this game. Logic aside, having towns fight back caused a different sort of push pull than in Advance Wars and made it so that there was a far more difficult back and forth over a contested property

[@BigKlingy]

A lot of it comes down to thinking of units as AW counterparts, which isn't as intuitive to people new to Wargroove. Wizards I think are supposed to be Anti-Air, they're good against Infantry and Air units, except they can capture and also have a healing mechanic. (Pay funds to heal 3 HP to units in a cross shape) Their crit conditional also makes Emeric the only quasi-unit specialist in the game, since his Groove raises the terrain stars in an area, letting his mages get crits in the open. At the very least, I like that navel combat is a lot more viable, and that Ballistas, the Missile counterpart, have utility outside of fighting air units.

[@dynamitekaitorn7175]

The biggest problem I had with Wargroove is the lack of a "da to day" ability a-la AW. Sure this does mean nearly every match is mostly even (outside of using your groove) but it honest to god made the game waaay to boring to play through. I also like the fact that in AW I had to always keep my strengths AND weaknesses in mind when playing, but in the end I just played Nuru whenever I could simply for the fact I recognised her from Starbound (she was also one of only a small amount of memorable characters). Also unless you're dealing with sea battles the mage unit seems ridiculously easy to spam onto the enemy AI and win most of the time.

[@nothingtoreport1918]

I will say that while it died competitively, I got a ton of fun out of the game by literally making my own campaign. I love that that’s an option! Wish the game got more than one big update lol

[@voodooopaque6357]

If you cross Advance Wars and Wargroove you get the anime called Gate

[@Davtwan]

Because Chucklefish wants to make games without the upkeep. It’s like they’re devs from the 80s trying to survive in modern game culture. If Advanced Wars wants to avoid the same fate, then they _need_ to be on top of any network-related and AFK-related multiplayer issues first and foremost. Otherwise, people might simply go back to AWBW.

[@Lapantouflemagic0]

i found this game after years of searching for some sort of advance wars type of game, and i really love it, i think it's actually better that the advance wars series.* that said i never even thought about playing against random people on the internet, it's just not my cup of tea.

[@TheWeapon33]

Imo, campaign was overall boring and felt very imbalanced, with the AI being so bad they gave every map double your income. I heard they patched lancers to not be as broken though. The game had some cool ideas, but every AW clone needs to implement Days of Ruin's level up mechanic where when you kill fodder enemies you can vet up. Playing AW 1-3 against people that spam infantry (read:decent players) is annoying and DoR took big steps to alleviate that problem, and Wargroove lancer spam was zzz. The last map was cool though. AW is one of my favorite series but I probably won't buy aw reboot unless there's new content. I still play AW DoR and DS occasionally to this day and I don't know why I would downgrade to AW2 at a premium price. (yes I know there's some people that think 2 is better than 3) I also don't care for the "3D" artstyle.

[@pdc4930]

So that is why the AI in Campaign seem to have all the advanced units while you precariously used your hero to carry the entire army. The Only AW game I played a lot of was Days of Ruin and loved it.

[@theoutlander1411]

they made Spearmen more expensive, which makes the campaign take even longer to compete.

[@shikikankillzone4239]

Oh yeah, I remember this game. Played it for a while but quit after a while

[@envyus4073]

Tbf, it's also an indie game, and indie games generally aren't known for their thriving multiplayer communities. You just can't do that much when you have all of zero marketing power. Add to that that it's a rather niche genre, and multiplayer for the genre is not (as far as I can tell - I personally never indulged) its primary draw.

[@FireallyXTheories]

I never even attempted to do an online match in Wargroove. XD

[@supert1326]

well the comparation with age of empires 2 isnt the greatest at all Cause the game and the Comunitty line up together You got Age of empires 2 Age of empires 2 The conqueror's Age of empires 2 Hd And now you got Age of empires 2 Definitive edition They comunity keep playing the game as long the Dev's keep """Updating""" them ( i dont count it as an update, cause the sell you the "very same game" but i guess you understand me )

[@XanthinZarda]

Plus, AoE 2, each empire has at least a unique unit, building, or advantage which makes them each play differently enough that you do have to plan to counter the Greek Fire Ships should you be vs the Greeks. Wargroove has _none of that._

[@LimakPan]

No support. That's it. The game wasn't perfect, but it gathered enough marketing to get a playerbase going. However, Chucklefish decided to focus on one big update that took them forever, and then abandoned ship. They promised a lot of changes to the game and expansions to the level editor, but they never came around. That's not even a new occurrence, they made very similar mistakes with Starbound. Chucklefish's strategy is to sell a decent game and then do a new one. Not a great game, not a bad or rushed one, just something decent. Something okay. That would be good enough if they kept supporting them post-release, but they prefer to work on something else instead. That's just their way of things. Will Reboot Camp share the same fate as Wargroove? Most likely - I don't think they plan on making updates or expansion for that.

[@dudu28r81]

Yeah and there's also no way nintendo are gonna fix their servers out of nowhere when much more popular games(like Super Smash Bros) didn't make them do it

[@eh5732]

For me takiing Advance Wars and putting a fantasy setting over it felt a bit awkward. Why can a dragon only hit ground units? Because its just the bomber plane from advance wars but it did not feel right for me. They made some changes to fit a fantasy setting like archers but it did not go far enough for me. They could have had a magic system and more units that wern't just copies of AW ones like horse archers and war elephants. Luckily I still have my DS with Advance Wars Days of Ruin/Dark World I still go back to and play AI matches :D

[@Lapantouflemagic0]

i actually played both an prefer wargroove. i think it makes sense that a dragon can't attack air units, because they are big and slow, it would be very hard to hit a small flying target. there's no way you'd be able to catch a mouse with your bare hands because you're just incredibly slow compared to it. but what you're forgetting is that deep down, you can't just "reinvent" the bases of warfare. Modern artellery fills the same role as archer in ancient times : kill the other guys from afar. no matter the time and setting you always have light troops, heavy front-line soldiers, flankers, support and whatnot. the fact that each unit has some condition that allows it to do critical hits makes you think and plan differently than what you would do in advance wars, this makes for a different gameplay despite the units being arguably the same.

[@feasibilyheretical]

I love Wargroove, I feel like it had so much potential. I still play it with my friends now, and then.

[@darth_hylian]

Unfortunately it seems like most indie games in general struggle to keep active players online in the long run