Battle Brothers Review: Excellent Game, Mediocre Port

Battle Brothers is a dark fantasy tactical roleplaying game with management elements with a vibe often compared to Game of Thrones. Developed by Overhype Studios and published by Ukiyo Publishing Limited, the game was originally released in 2015, and the full excellent package of Battle Brothers is now coming to the Switch. Whether the comfort of portability outweighs the stumbles of the port to easily adapt gameplay to buttons and joysticks is going to come down to the patience of each individual player.

In Battle Brothers, players take control of a mercenary company as they travel through a low fantasy world in search of fame, fortune, and the next contract. Gameplay is split between an overarching management game and tactical combat. Both sides of Battle Brothers are deep, allowing players to dig into every aspect of their company’s day to day fortunes like food, equipment, morale, and overland travel. When battle is engaged, players take control over their forces in a turn-based wargame where positioning, action point and fatigue management, and the correct application of strength are all key to victory. With the resurgence of interest in tactical combat on the Switch thanks to Project Triangle Strategy, Battle Brother’s release is well timed and offers a grim counterpoint to most Switch games in the genre.

Battle Brothers is a fascinating entry into the roguelite genre. Despite the lo-fi technical presentation of the game, the art, procedurally generated quests, character backgrounds, and world building all come together to create a living, breathing world that remains fascinating to maneuver through. A living economy, complete with bandit raids, rebuilding efforts, and supply and demand, make the decisions surrounding how to conduct the player’s mercenary company just as entertaining as tactically positioning soldiers during battle.

The battles themselves form the tense core of Battle Brothers’ gameplay, which is much more involved than other mobile offerings like the upcoming Dragon Quest Tact. There is a lot to think about in every engagement, as a stray arrow or axe swing can permanently disable or hamper the abilities of star fighters. On a warrior’s turn, players can choose between a variety of actions based on their equipment. Each action takes stamina, which replenishes each turn, and fatigue, which adds up over time. Rotating soldiers out of the front line and allowing them to rest becomes key to sustaining long engagements. Battles against humans are interesting and difficult enough to master, but mid-to-late game monsters throw wrenches into established plans.

The only major downsides to Battle Brothers are issues of performance and control related to the Switch port. There doesn’t seem to have been a dedicated attempt to adapt PC controls to the Switch, unlike 2020’s Gears Tactics. Performance suffers when there is a lot on the screen. Zooming out on the world map, for example, creates noticeable lag as the player pans around the scenery. Controls are alright, but the lack of a mouse is felt from the moment the player gets control. Some menus with multiple scrollable text boxes are impossible to navigate, never breaking the game but occasionally obscuring world building text. Selecting abilities with the arrow buttons during combat snaps the cursor to the ability, forcing the player to drag the cursor up every action to center it over a target. Having built in options to snap to potential targets would have been much, much better.

There are many examples of Nintendo Switch ports with good performance, so that Battle Brothers stumbles in an area that’s been proven to be doable hurts even more. The game itself is excellent, but it remained frustrating to battle the Switch for the duration of each play session. Whether these issues are enough to detract from the ability to play Battle Brothers on the Switch is down to the individual player’s patience, of course, but that its being tried at all is an annoyance given the quality of the title.

Battle Brothers on Nintendo Switch is a tricky game. The base Battle Brothers experience and its DLC is as excellent and engaging as it was on the PC years ago. It remains one of the most interesting and replayable tactical wargames and management sims in recent-ish memory, but even though the unfortunate issues that come from porting Battle Brothers to the Switch are solvable, they must be taken into consideration before anyone makes a purchase.

Battle Brothers is available on PC and releases today, March 11, 2021, on Nintendo Switch. A Nintendo Switch code was provided to Screen Rant for this review.

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