Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue Review - RIB11

Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue Review

Disclaimer: I died on the last mission of this demo, about 70 minutes in and didn’t bother going back through to beat it. I say “today” in this review because I’m writing it at 10:30 PM EST on July 17th, but there’s a chance this will be uploaded after midnight.

TLDR: The game’s pretty fun but has some minor flaws. I like the story and feel of the game, the gameplay is really nice if you want to scratch that tactical mech itch us Battletech fans feel from time to time but it’s not as complex. On the bright side it plays pretty fast, is easy to grasp, and I’m wanting to see what the full release has to offer.

        Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue released today on Steam, for free, as a sort of demo for the full release of the game of the same name containing the first hour or so of story content. I’ve had my eyes on this for a while after seeing some of the promotional material on X and so I decided to play this on launch (today is also the day the loot from backing Battletech: Mercenaries came in the mail, talk about an omen).

        I like what I played, though there are some gripes that I have. The overall lore or story went over my head for the most part, but it doesn’t really matter here, your country is fighting some other country, it’s a war. The aesthetic is grounded in something akin to Vietnam, I don’t mean to offend any actual vets by saying that, all I mean is that as far as I can tell it’s two nations fighting each other in some land full of jungles, small villages, and war crimes.

        I liked the characters. I’m not going to say they’re deep or complex, we haven’t really seen enough to show any sort of real character arcs, but the game relies on standard tropes that make it engaging, especially since they’re voice acted for the actual cutscenes. The graphics are charming, they’re sort of low res textures (not that bad, I don’t know how to describe them) but the actual combat effects have good dynamism and a snap to them, the gunfire, explosions, mech damage, etc. I can’t tell if I heard multiple soundtracks or not, I’m not a music person but whatever I heard fit the mood pretty well, though I will say that it would’ve been better if the title track had more of a memorable edge to it, I don’t remember any part of the music and I’m writing this just after the last mission (and I sat on the title screen for a bit before playing to try to absorb the music too).

        It would probably take only about 40 minutes to get back and beat the demo now that I know what to expect, and I know I’m making excuses here but I hope you’ll believe me when I say I don’t feel the point to it. Someone might read into that and think that the game is boring but that’s not the case, it’s the end of the day and since my memory’s fresh I don’t think it’d be as fun compared to booting it up a week from now and giving it another go. I hope the devs can implement a sort of random mission generator in the main release (or maybe some encounters do change between runs, I wouldn’t know but it seems unlikely).

        I liked the experience but there are some things that the game doesn’t explain. I’ll give you an example. The game basically involves traversing an overland map and engaging in Battletech-esque skirmishes at various locations along the way to your objective. The game doesn’t tell you your artillery is limited on the map and so after the very first encounter my team was pretty spent, I lost a guy getting to the last mission and the boss kills another team member before the encounter starts. I think this is a bit surprising because I feel like most people would lose a member along the way to the boss, and so once the encounter begins the odds are stacked way against you. Stealth isn’t symmetrical between enemies and the player, or at least it doesn’t seem that way. Enemies can hide in the trees and you’ll lose sight of them, but if you do the same they can still get you if combat has begun. I also found two rest locations right before the boss and, well, I don’t think they did anything. I don’t know what the point of those are, my mechs were still damaged, my ammo was still spent, and I was still down a man.

        I wouldn’t say that my criticisms soured my experience, now that I know what to expect I think most people can beat it easily enough. I’m at fault for a lot of the failure as well because I engaged in fights where there was no need and, although the game doesn’t explicitly mention this, I’m pretty sure they tried to explain the stealth thing by saying that the enemies are more used to fighting in the jungle than your team is, so it’s not like the game is unfair or anything (I can’t explain what I mean by this following statement in parentheses because of spoilers, but if they change the stealth experience in the last mission and I didn’t catch on then the game is actually goated, though I also doubt that they did that for the lore flavor, you’ll see what I mean if you play it yourself, it’s a cool thing to think about).

My biggest gripe is probably the realization that you have to avoid fights in scenarios as much as you can. It makes sense, being a tactical game and all, but it makes me wish for a random mission or ladder mode. The way the game is set up now makes it so that during the story missions you have to avoid fights, but since you also need to figure out where the boss is you’re going to get into them whether you want to or not on a blind run (unless you activate gamer logic mode and sniff out where the boss is immediately, which is satisfying for us gamers when it happens because it feels like we outsmarted the devs, but also unintended. I don’t think this is a spoiler but what I mean is the trope where the last or furthest location is the right one because of gamer logic, you know what I mean?).

        This really seems tricky to me, I don’t see the story experience itself being fun, I think this overland navigation mechanic is flawed because of the same problem I stated before, once you go through it, get deep into a level and perhaps die, then you know what to expect. I wish the story just shuttled you from fight to fight because I was actually pretty entertained by the narrative itself, despite the simplicity. It also diminishes character deaths when a character you might like (and there was more than one that I genuinely did like) dies in some random skirmish that has no bearing on your objective (plus you’re down on more armor/HP and artillery if you used it, not very fun). The actual fights are great though, I was thoroughly engaged and it was really fun. I wish that was what the game purely was because it’s nice to boot up something that  won’t melt my little old laptop and play some tactical mech battles (I’m looking at you, BTA).

        Lastly, after some fights I got mech parts and the game said I could check them out in the garage (which I think might’ve been the way to restore mechs) but I literally didn’t see this garage anywhere, I think it might’ve been a location on the map I didn’t explore near the beginning but again, the game doesn’t tell you this type of stuff, and so some polish is definitely needed for the user experience to be smooth for everyone. It’s still fun though, I want to play more but I need to give myself time to forget where the enemies are (see my predicament?).

Overall I think I’ve said everything needed, I look forward to the full release. I don’t mind potentially having to play levels twice, though I’d want to see the plot be spectacular to make up for it. If the devs implement some way for you to just enjoy the combat then I’m playing it like a dog regardless. Look out for the full release on Steam, go wishlist it as it’s still pretty cool (I don’t know what the difference is between the prologue as a release and the demo on the full game page, but it seems like the prologue is the way to go).

Nikhil Saxena

Founder, Destrier Studios

https://linktr.ee/destrierstudios