Battle Worlds: Kronos Review
Game Details
Title: Battle Worlds: Kronos
Developer: KING Art Games
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Website: https://kingart-games.com/games/1-battle-worlds-kronos
Genre: Strategy
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: PEGI 12
Release Date: 11.06.19
Price: £26.99 – Rapid Reviews UK was very kindly provided with a review code for this title.
The Switch is fast gaining a substantial catalogue of good turn-based strategy games, a genre which is particularly close to my heart. So when I was given the opportunity to review Battle Worlds: Kronos, I jumped at the chance. I had already had my eye on the game for a while.
Initially funded on Kickstarter, absolutely smashing it’s funding goal of $120,000, eventually raising $260,235, from 7564 backers. This meant that the game reached 2 of its 3 stretch goals (part of the second package of rewards included a release of the I’ll fated Ouya Android system). A lot of the interest surrounding the game from its unique story arch.
Taking place in a planetary system with two main planets, Rhea and Kronos, where the president is chosen through conflict following a brutal war of succession. Rival families compete in a Televised war for the title and the ability to take power, with all of this unfolding on the unfortunate planet of Kronos. Whose beleaguered population must endure the hardships of the conflict, well that’s the theory.
There are four factions involved here:
The House of Telit – The house of the previous President, technologically advanced, arrogant and generally self-serving.
Yerla Inc. – The biggest private enterprise on the planet Rhea. They are rich, ingenious thinkers and ruthless strategists.
The Order of the Lumati – Thet are the religious leaders of the planet Rhea, masters of cunning and espionage.
The Residents – The last remaining inhabitants of Kronos, technologically inferior but hoping to put an end of the cycle of violence and destruction on Kronos.
Battle Worlds: Kronos offers a choice of single-player skirmishes, two single-player campaigns and hot seat local multiplayer gameplay.
Campaign one challenges the player with leading House Telit to victory in the war for the presidency. The campaign here appears short at first, being made up of 13 missions across two halves. However, missions take a good while to complete adding up to a good 30ish hours of gameplay.
Missions here are intersected by some questionable cut scenes which help to reinforce the slightly unusual story arch to the player.
In terms of missions, the game finds itself nestled somewhere between the classics of the RTS genre such as Command and Conquer and the classic Advanced Wars.
Missions are challenging enough to keep the player interested while not so hard as to put off the more casual player. Similarly, the story attached to the missions is enough to be interesting but not so much as to be intrusive and irritating.
In terms of control of the units, the player has two options, touch screen, or buttons and thumbsticks. Unfortunately, this is where things start to fall apart on the Switch. The game’s controls are somewhat clunky with the player having to cycle through endless units to get to the one they would like to use, some of this is compensated for through the use of the touch screen, however, this is an issue in docked mode.
Battle Worlds: runs at a very stable framerate in both docked and handheld while appearing to run at 720p and 1080p respectively.
Visuals are run of the mill, models look decent enough but don’t do anything to break with traditional visual styles. Similarly, cutscenes are well done and fit for purpose, again without breaking from tradition. That’s all there is to be said. The game looks decent and runs fine nothing out of the ordinary here and to be honest, that’s no bad thing.
Audio is similarly familiar – engines, gunfire, acknowledgement of commands. It’s all here in boatloads. But nothing is groundbreaking. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the voice acting in the cut scenes.
Battle Worlds: Kronos is a decent enough strategy game on Switch which runs, looks and sounds fine. Offering an interesting storyline but doing little else to break the mould, this might be one to wait for a sale unless you happen to be a fan of the old school C&C games with clearly provided a lot of inspiration here in which case don’t wait, you will not be disappointed.
Rapid Reviews UK Rating
If you would like to buy Battle Worlds: Kronos, you can do so here: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch/Battle-Worlds-Kronos-1562792.html
