I've been playing a computer game called Battle Brothers. I've been enjoying and appreciating the game so much that I highly recommend it to any gamer who likes mercenary company management, squad-sized turn-based tactical combat, and a low fantasy medieval setting. The game's great qualities are a superb combat system and an excellent character background and development system. The game features several scenarios and an open world campaign mode with 25+ different enemies, 280+ items, 49 character perks and thousands of procedurally generated mercenaries for hire. Your mercenary company can have up to 20 mercenaries of which 12 can participate in combat (wounded mercenaries need time to heal). Each mercenary can "equip" a wardog that can join a combat at the mercenary's discretion, whereupon the A.I. controls the wardog for the remainder of the combat. Mercenaries have an experience level between 1 and 11. All hireable mercenaries have a background profession which may give them permanent stat modifiers and may determine the equipment that they come with. Combat takes place on a hex grid. Combatants have their turn determined by an Initiative queue, and combatants can delay their turn. Actions consume APs (action points) and Fatigue Points. Blunt weapons are capable of stunning opponents for 1 round. Slashing weapons are capable of causing opponents to bleed for a few rounds. Axes are capable of damaging and/or destroying shields. Mercenaries wielding shields are capable of setting shieldwalls. Mercenaries wielding spears are capable of setting spearwalls. There are 3 types of armour: body armour, head armour, and shields. Each of these types of armour can be destroyed if they take enough damage equal to or greater than their Armour Rating. Opponents include humans (including bandits and knights), orcs (including berserkers and warlords), goblins (including shamen), direwolves, undead (including ghouls, geists, and fallen heroes), necromancers, necrosavants, ancient priests, and ancient honor guards. Combat is brutally lethal. Expect some of your mercenaries to die, especially early on in the game when your mercenaries have very poor armour. You can choose to play the game as good mercenaries who kill bandits and monsters, or you can choose to play the game as evil mercenaries who attack trading caravans (in which case, expect to eventually be hunted down by the regional lord's soldiers and knights). I have been playing this game in Ironman mode and I am loving the experience so much. If you do play this game, then I strongly recommend that you play the game on the easiest difficulty setting because I first played this game on the middle (Veteran) difficulty setting and my mercenary company was wiped out by an orc raiding party. I expect that this game will be a huge time-sink in my life. The game's Steam page is at http://store.steampowered.com/app/365360/ The game's official website is at http://battlebrothersgame.com/ You can read about the factions in the game at http://battlebrothersgame.com/factions/
Yeah, I've been following this one through early access and it is indeed a lot of fun. Murderously hard until you get the hang of it, so go in on the easy setting to start with - you have been warned!
