Wargroove 2 was provided by Chucklefish for review. Thank you!
As someone who loves Fire Emblem-esque games, Wargroove has held a special place in my heart. Not only did it remind me of the good ol' Game Boy Advance versions, but it included some amazing features with multiplayer, including a way to build your own maps! This made the game feel nearly endless if chosen to dive into community-made maps and campaigns, where you can tell your own stories with cutscenes and all! Wargroove 2 not only continues this but expands it further.
The core of Wargroove 2 is its gameplay loop. In battles, you will have a commander that is a bit more powerful than the rest and other more generic units. You will go through the map, capturing towns and castles, all while eliminating the enemy team. The more buildings you capture, the more income you have, which you can use to buy/spawn more units. Each unit has some specialty. Some can only attack ground troops, some fly, and some only go by sea, but each one has its purpose. Managing your income and choosing which troops to use is essential in winning, and I love it.
The game also added a new "Groove" system for the commander, which gives them a special ability or attack they can use once it is charged up.
Then, we have the different modes that revolve around this loop. The story mode sees you through a campaign of the developer's design, and the roguelike mode has smaller battles with progression from match to match. And then, we can create content. Wargroove 2 features an editor that allows us to not only create our own maps, but full-on campaigns with cutscenes and all! The editor is awesome and has made me lose tons of time just diving into what crazy stories I can make.
My biggest concern is that it doesn't really feel like a sequel. At the end of the day, it has all the content I loved from the first game, but I could see this being an expansion more than a full sequel. The new commanders, units, and roguelike mode are awesome, but it feels like it doesn't stand apart as much as I would like. It still feels great and has more of the content I love in the series, but I can see it as a big expansion for the original game.
Thankfully, playing Wargroove 2 on the Steam Deck is incredibly easy to do. Without any changes, the game runs flawlessly at around 6.5W battery drain. With the type of game this is, I did expect it, but it is great to see it nonetheless.
As for options, we do have some specific accessibility options for color-blind and photosensitive people. Outside of that, we can change the health display and grid, change language and animations, skip intros and toggle if you want to automatically end the turn, and change sound bars.
Wargroove 2 also supports 16:10 resolutions, and it has full controller support. The store page doesn't say it supports cloud saves, but I did see my custom campaign progress carry over to my desktop, so it is supported!
Wargroove 2 gives us more of what the original showed and it is great. I still love the core gameplay loop and building full campaigns, while the new roguelike mode, commanders, units, and groove system are wonderful additions. I do wish the game felt more like a sequel rather than an expansion to the original, but I would still recommend it to those who don't own the original or really love the game. And since it doesn't need any changes to play well, it is a Best on Deck game that I can fully get behind!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Wargroove 2 is a great way to continue enjoying the wonderful gameplay the original brought, especially on the Steam Deck.
