WARSAW is a turn-based strategy game that takes place in a destroyed city during World War II. Although it can be a bit challenging at times, can it still be fun? 

   You play as a squad of resistance going up against troops in the World War II era. Players begin by moving their squad through the city’s streets, trying to find the way to the next battle. The birds-eye view of your squad appears as a little circle; some arrows can be used as indicators of where you are supposed to go. If the arrow appears to be white, it is an optional objective. If it is yellow, then you are heading towards a story mission. Deciding which way to go isn’t as simple as it may seem. Moving around the map requires Action Points (AP) and if you run out looking for where to go it’s mission over. Story Missions are usually based on actual historical events, a nice little touch. 

WARSAW

One thing that stands out is, at random encounters, you might be confronted by civilians who are demanding supplies. You can choose to either give them supplies or to calm them down. Another interesting thing is your party members can freak out and turn the gun on you. You can either try to calm them down again and take them back to the team or kill them. While I’ve seen these types of choices and strategy games before, it felt fitting. It was a nice feature considering depending on what you choose it could have a different outcome on the game. Also to be able to pull off a feat of calming them down would depend on the stats of the character doing so. If their charm was high enough you were more likely to be able to do so. 

WARSAW

One of the things that stood out to me almost immediately was the hand-painted art-style. I could appreciate the amount of time and effort put into them and just how beautiful it looked. The music is rather relaxing, which was odd considering it’s a war game, yet it somehow felt balanced. 

WARSAW

One such criticism of WARSAW, aside from the full name being grammatically incorrect due to it being all capital letters,  is it can be an overwhelmingly difficult game. Once a character has died they are permanently dead. I didn’t see a way to turn it off.  It can sometimes be hard to recover after losing a party member.  For instance, the loss of a medic can take a long time to acquire another. While I can appreciate the fact that this is much how war is it can also result in many lost missions, which gets a bit frustrating.

While I enjoyed WARSAW the only real complaint I had was the difficulty from time to time. Overall the game looked good and was an enjoyable experience.  Those who prefer less of a challenging experience should look elsewhere because WARSAW offers a challenging but rewarding turn-based strategy game.