This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out at a later date.
Athena Crisis is in early access, so performance and content is subject to changes.
Advance Wars was one of the biggest games from my childhood, and I have been enjoying picking the series up again on my various handhelds. Despite the lack of Advance Wars games on PC, several similar games are on the market with mixed success. While I enjoy Wargroove and Wargroove 2 for their extensive campaigns and map editor, the relative lack of depth in combat turned me back to Advance Wars. This brings me to Athena Crisis, and fans of the Advance Wars franchise should keep this title on their radar.
Developed by Nakazawa Tech, Athena Crisis is built from the ground up to be a spiritual successor to Advance Wars from the gameplay to the atmosphere. While some games struggle with content and polish at launch, Athena Crisis is not one of those. It is also fairly playable on the Steam Deck, although it suffers from some odd issues that drag down the experience for me.
Athena Crisis is a turn-based strategy RPG with much meat on the bones. Fans of the genre will know what to expect. There are loads of different units for players to unleash upon their enemies, fighting each other across a diverse range of battlefields. Like most strategy games, these units have different strengths and weaknesses.
The sniper has to bunker down for a turn to prepare himself but has a large range and firepower to compensate for the lack of mobility. Jeeps have no combat potential but are fast supply units and can transport infantry across the map. There are even plenty of tanks. Capturing buildings provides income on units, while terrain offers advantages such as increased line of sight and defensive bonuses against attack. Engineers can build various production facilities to fuel your war machine. It is the usual thing on offer for a strategy game, and Athena Crisis has enough variety to make missions interesting.
As for campaigns, the devs supply two of them, each with 40 missions. The story and dialogue have the same theme and feel of Advance Wars, and the little cutscenes before combat put a smile on my face. Some of these missions are pretty challenging even early on, and they should provide veteran strategy fans a fun time. There are three difficulty options to provide a good balance, and some maps can last quite a while.
There is a nice mix of mission types. Some require defending an area or escorting units to safety, while others require a careful mix of logistics and knowing all the unit options available to you. The main goals are usually based around capturing enemy headquarters or destroying all enemy units, but the maps have some twist to make the missions interesting.
In one early mission, I had to defend against two enemy armies while outnumbered and outgunned. It took me a few attempts to complete it, but I liked how the two enemy armies fought each other and me, so I was able to use my snipers to pick off enemy infantry while holding my ground with my tanker units.
That is not all, as Athena Crisis features not just full multiplayer but a host of custom scenarios alongside dozens of skirmish maps. With the solid map editor, you can quickly make new scenarios and upload them to the inbuilt mod engine, although the lack of direct Workshop support is a little disappointing. Some of these custom campaigns are massive and are in the opening weeks of launch.
This might not be vital if you only intend to play on the Steam Deck or PC, but I like how one purchase on a platform allows unrestricted access on all other platforms, such as Mac or Android, with crossplay support. I play on Android handhelds often, so being able to play on my phone and then pick things back up on my Steam Deck is a lovely bonus.
There is a lot to like here, although I have a couple of nitpicks. One thing I found Athena Crisis lacking was its settings. The options available are rather barebones in the way of tweaking graphical settings, and while it has some controller support, it is not perfect. I will cover that more in the performance section of the review, but I wish we had more things to tweak. While Athena Crisis is a fairly lightweight game, it does struggle with odd frame drops, and while there is a redo turn button, there is no way to take back a unit’s movement if you screw up, so I hope the developers add that in.
According to Valve, Athena Crisis is classified as Verified, which mostly holds up. While the game is perfectly playable on the Steam Deck, some weird things keep it from performing perfectly.
Athena Crisis suffers from odd frame drops. Even on stock settings (60Hz, 1200X800 resolution, and uncapped TDP), the game does not keep a steady 60fps, even though the Deck has more than enough power. Through testing, we found that the match purposely reduces the framerate for certain animations or when a player isn't moving to save on battery. This also happens on PC, so it is not just a Steam Deck issue. While this is a little frustrating, we can do nothing about it. Due to its turn-based mechanics, this is not a dealbreaker like in other games, but I wanted to be transparent about it.
Athena Crisis seems to work equally well no matter the performance mode, and with no graphical options to tweak, our options are limited. I performed my usual battery-saver test. Because Athena Crisis is unfazed by power management, I turned the TDP setting to 3 with a 40hz refresh rate and found it to have a similar performance to stock, which is weird, but I will take it!
The power draw will vary significantly, so hammering down a reliable average was difficult. Still, at the 3W TDP setting, I saw an average power draw of 6 watts, while the stock settings saw an average power draw of 8 watts. For this reason, I recommend playing Athena Crisis at a 3 or 4W TDP for the extra battery life, with up to 6.5 hours on the LCD Steam Deck.
Although I found some problems navigating the map editor mode, the standard controls work reasonably well. While you can navigate the map using the joysticks, I found no way to access the editing tools with the controller. I only got it to work by using the touchscreen, so I am unsure if this is a bug or a quirk with the controls. I could access the editor as intended by switching to the Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse configuration. However, I would recommend sticking to a computer when making a map over the Steam Deck.
Athena Crisis is available in English, French, German, Italian, Ukrainian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, and Korean.
As I mentioned earlier, Athena Crisis is rather thin on accessibility options. You can adjust the volume, change the animation speed during combat, toggle map tilt, change map fog from hard to soft edges, and change the confirm action command from always to never. I found no way to rebind controls on the keyboard or controller, and the game lacks colorblind support.
You can change the name of your faction, character profile, and portrait and rename units.
Although there is no UI scaling, the text is easy to read out of the box.
Athena Crisis packs a lot for its $20 price tag with the content available. The tactical elements pack a punch, and plenty of units exist for diverse gameplay. I enjoy the amount of name customization you can put into your faction and the robust campaign editor. Strategy fans should enjoy Athena Crisis, particularly if you like a good challenge. This title is crafted with love and shows in every corner.
The odd framerate issues I experienced on the Deck do drag down the experience a little, and I hope the developers consider adding more accessibility settings to the game. If you can look past those, Athena Crisis is worth the asking price.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Athena Crisis is a great turn-based strategy, although it does have some performance and control quirks on the Steam Deck.
