WARNO is an Early Access RTS title from Eugen Systems, a developer that focuses on RTS games and has released a few noteworthy games like the WARGAME and the Steel Division series.
As an early access title WARNO does not include all features and as of reviewing, it only has skirmishes that you can play at the moment, and in RTS games that is usually all you need or end up playing after finishing the main campaign.
However in this case without the main campaign or a tutorial the learning curve is nearly impossible. I spent 7 hours trying to learn to play the game properly yet the mechanics eluded me, so instead I started to explore the graphics, AI, UI, Sound and music, to try and give this review a fair go. I have always enjoyed RTS and tactics games but never got into the realistic variants. I have always been into the more Command & Conquer or WarCraft type of RTS's, so when I booted up WARNO and saw there was only skirmish available and no tutorial or main campaign I thought to my self: an hour or 2 of skirmishes should be enough to learn the mechanics.
But boy was I wrong. After about 4-5 hours of banging my head against the wall trying to figure the game out I gave up and just started to see how the game reacts to the environment, how the sounds effects sound and if the game was pretty.
Now the game is very pretty when zoomed all the way in. The vehicles look very detailed and sound pretty authentic to my ear, I am by no means an expert in military sounds but it definitely helps with the immersion. The buildings are destructible and will hide your units from the enemy, same goes for trees, if you do not have a line of sight on your enemy, you can't attack them, which makes sense as you can't attack something you do not see and with some micro managing you'll be able to sneak up on your enemies sometimes, but that means they can sneak up on you as well. The AI seems to be capable but since I have a hard time fully understanding the mechanics it is a bit hard for me to evaluate but making a game with AI controlled players and watching that match makes you believe the AI is quite competent. The UI is probably one of the worst I've experienced. Some buttons are obscured or even not on the screen at all. The friend invite button is a tiny little button on the WARNO chat window, which in turn is quite small as well.
Eugen Systems thought the war tent on the front lines was a nice aesthetic for the menu and I can see how they thought that but the way they implemented it is very bad. The screens with the whiteboards that serves as a scoreboard after a skirmish is just the worst. It has a terrible font that hurts the eyes in a game, then there is all the empty space and just generally inefficient.
Now the music is where the game actually shines. I could quite happily just listen to the soundtrack of WARNO. I am not sure if it was made specifically for the game or if it was licensed, but for me right now the only reason to boot up WARNO is to listen to the music.
It is extremely good, with some excellent 80's synth vibes and hopefully they will release the OST alongside the game.
In conclusion wait for a full release to see if they fix the bugs and implement a main campaign and a tutorial. I can't recommend WARNO at the current time unless you are a veteran Eugen Systems games player as you might have a better idea how to play the game and therefore more fun.
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