Review: WARBORN Brings Strategy To Anime Mecha

I think all anime lovers have a special place for giant, mecha battles. In reality, most people love seeing massive robots fight it out. Warborn takes the glorious robot style from classic anime and throws it into a well balanced and entertaining strategy game.

First thing to address here is the great anime style that is clear to see from the moment the game is on. With over-the-top guns, bright colors, big laser swords and a variety of pilots with specialized mechs, Warborn embraces and shows great love for the anime mecha genre. The models are modest and relatively simple compared to something like the latest Gundam Wing series, but they still look great. The environments could have used a little bit more variety and love, especially in the campaign, but they serve their purpose and let the gameplay and mechs be the star.

The gameplay is split into a well paced campaign and a mostly thorough multiplayer. The campaign has 40 missions, which is actually pretty good for an indie game like this, even if some of the missions feel like filler for the overall story. The story isn’t as complicated or deep as their anime counterparts, but it serves its purpose well enough to entertain players a bit between missions. I was surprised that there are only four heroes/factions to command the armies (from the beginning). This is a pretty small number and I think a little bit more diversity in the mechs and commanders would have been nice.

Multiplayer is more robust than I expected. With a simple, yet expansive map editor, a healthy amount of multiplayer maps and a few different kinds of win conditions, multiplayer offers a lot here in Warborn. It also offers online and offline modes and verses AI. Like I mentioned above, more heroes and specialized mechs would have added a lot to the game in general and that lack of variety can be felt after playing for a while.

Lastly, the actual gameplay moment to moment is probably the strongest part of the game. The hexagonal maps and large variety of units allow for building great strategy and combinations of attack and defense. The pacing is really good all around too. The turns are fast, and if players want to watch all the battle animations or cut it out completely, they can. The game doesn’t try anything that hasn't been done before; no risk, no real reward. But it knows how to make the genre staples feel fresh and good to play.

This game won’t be for everyone, but those who do like these strategy games or anime mecha will enjoy playing through this. It could have used a bit more ambition in its overall design and gameplay mechanics, but no one will complain about how it plays in general.