WARSAW is a new turn-based RPG that tells the story of the Polish Home Army and their rebellion against Nazi oppression at the conclusion of World War 2. Developed by the team at Pixelated Milk in the very city for which the game is named, there is a clear sense of passion behind the title and tales of valor it seeks to tell.
On the surface Warsaw doesn’t appear to stray far from the standard turn-based RPG formula. Players will take turns issuing attack, defend, and buffing commands to their band of freedom fighters against squads of German soldiers. There is a nice array of character archetypes to take into combat. Some soldiers will specialize in damage dealing with long-ranged focused attacks or area of effect explosive volleys. Other squad members put more of a focus on healing and applying buffs to friendly teammates. A standout was the use of the “Contraband Ammunition” ability. You can use this on a friendly player so that subsequent attacks inflict bleed.
Where WARSAW attempts to differentiate itself is with the added complexity of positioning mechanics. Players will have to choose where to place their soldiers in different positions in the play area. This affects a character’s ability to use certain attacks, but can also shield them from or expose them to enemy barrages. As an example, moving a character with a mounted weapon behind cover will both reduce damage taken and also allow them to deploy a bipod for persistent fire. We appreciated this added layer of strategy as having to use up a turn to move a character means strongly weighing the pros and cons of taking that turn.
The use of cover can also drastically change the course of a battle. Cover appears in conflict at random but certain characters can actually build makeshift defenses on command. These defenses have their own HP bars and can be destroyed. The problem is that they usually have as much, if not more, hit points than the enemies you’re facing. You could spend far too many of your valuable turns trying to destroy defenses just to get a decent hit on a Nazi rifleman. It’s an interesting mechanic that should add layers of strategy. It just doesn’t seem all that well balanced and becomes too much of a hindrance.
Further separating the game from your standard turn-based RPG are the use of rogue-like mechanics. Much like real war, when one of your characters fall in battle, they are lost forever. New soldiers can be found and recruited, but you’ll need to spend valuable resources to do this. Perma-death suits the narrative perfectly but, once again, throws the challenge off kilter. As you’re generally outnumbered in battle, you can easily lose multiple friendly combatants. If you survive the battle, you may not have enough resources to recruit a full party. This leaves you short handed until enough resources can be scrounged together from the city streets.
A bright spot of WARSAW are Text Events. These multiple choice scenarios play out completely in written pop-up menus and will take you back to your D&D days of making quick decisions with vastly different outcomes. These events present themselves at random when traversing the over world and at the end of missions. In one instance, our party came across a lone rifle sitting unattended in the street. We were given the option to leave the firearm or pick it up. Being overjoyed at the thought of free resources, we quickly selected the option to pick up the weapon. Turns out it was booby trapped, and we lost a soldier in the explosion that triggered as soon as the gun was moved. Further events have you choosing what to do with captured prisoners, dealing with suspicious civilians, and building fortifications. All scenarios either yield valuable rewards or have dire outcomes depending on your decisions.
A planning phase takes place in a hidden base of operations known as The Hideout. Here, players can select new missions from The Informant, enlist new Home Army volunteers from The Recruiter, and level up and unlock new abilities for any of your soldiers. Most of what you need to accomplish at your base is fairly straight forward. However, some menu areas are cumbersome and are lacking in crucial detail. As an example, the mission select screen doesn’t offer any indication of difficulty. You have no way of telling if your squad is up to the challenge associated with a certain district or objective. Further to this point, a squad select menu before leaving for a mission doesn’t actually tell the player how many soldiers can be taken into combat. While there are eight open character slots, you can only take four at a time.
After deploying into a mission, you will traverse the streets to accomplish various objectives. This is the most underwhelming part of the game as it boils down to moving an icon through a map from a birds-eye view. A lack of detail in the map means it is difficult to tell open areas from alleyways. A limited number of Action Points means you need to move wisely. As soon as you run out of Action Points, the mission is failed. This can be extremely frustrating as it’s not always clear where your objective is and it limits exploration. Small directional indicators will point out threats and other points of interest, but don’t provide much clarity on where the main goal is. In some cases, you’ll want to avoid enemy contact all together. This is made easier as some squads appear with a field of view that can be avoided. Unfortunately, other squads appear at random and are unavoidable. More often than not, these surprise death squads outnumbered and overpowered us and almost always resulted in a complete wipe out of our team.
While the map design and menu layout are visual misses, the character and battle screen art is fantastic. A hand-drawn aesthetic is reminiscent of Darkest Dungeon in the best way possible. Your soldiers all have interesting and unique visual personalities. This is a saving grace to the permadeath mechanic as every new volunteer you recruit has a refreshing look and feel. There isn’t much backstory provided for your characters, but the graphical design almost coaxes the player into imagining their own back story for each new Freedom Fighter. The immense amount of detail in the hand-crafted backdrops of each battle is immediately apparent. You really get a feel for the sense of connection the artists had to the city when you look at the distinct and war torn back drops.
There was an obvious emotional connection between the creators of WARSAW and the events they are trying to depict. The story that played out with the Home Army in the latter stages of World War 2 is one that has been seldom told but is heroic and impactful nonetheless. Unfortunately in attempting to create a game with genuine war time mechanics, WARSAW suffers and really isn’t enjoyable to play. Constantly having the odds stacked against you lends itself well to the narrative, but not to a fun video game.
WARSAW launches on Steam and Nintendo Switch on October 2nd, 2019.
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
*WARSAW was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
