Shattered Throne

I am in the process of playing multiplayer and have completed five campaign missions.
Ideally, I would like to have a few more hours in the game before writing a review, but hastened the process because no one has put forth anything for a game that deserves better.

First things first, Shattered Throne is fun.
The video and screenshots remind heavily of Advance Wars, and the developer has said that that game certainly was an inspiration. However, this game brings in fresh new mechanics into play.

=There is unit progression within a level - units gain xp for kills and level up.

=Unit classes have unique traits - death knights resurrect as zombies after death, crusaders attack enemies adjacent to a target, etc etc.

=There are units with AOE attacks

=There are buildings that do different things, and the most basic building class - the village - can be upgraded into the other building classes.

=There is a combo system that increases damage dealt to an enemy unit that is attacked consecutively, and killing enemies with a combo counter gives you mana.

=Mana allows for the usage of your General's Powers, and each General has one passive and continuous perk along with two Powers.

=There are three factions: Human, Elf, and Undead, with different generals/units/buildings

=There is a take-back-your-moves feature

=I've yet to encounter any bugs or crashes

All the above points increase the breadth and depth of the tactical approaches available.

The campaign so far has been excellent and loads of fun.
The story and dialogue have a largely humorous bent with some genuinely funny moments.
The levels have been challenging without being devastatingly hard, and you can replay them for a better rank.
While there is an amount of flux in the quality range of the graphics, a lot of it is very well done: detailed and tasteful.
Although I did not find the music to be particularly spectacular, it fits the game and there is nothing wrong with it.
Also, the developer has been responsive so far.

I'm really looking forward to what the campaign brings next; just that I barely beat the fifth level because of a stupid mistake that I made and so need some time to recharge.
I also think that the Online multiplayer pvp could be a lot of fun.

Some Cons may be:
-Only 1vs1 maps
-Only asynchronous multiplayer
-So far only a few maps in skirmish mode, but not sure whether this is because I haven't unlocked them

The game works without any problems, has unique elements that differentiate it from other games in the genre, the gameplay is just some plain good'ole fun, and there is spades of personality in abundance in every element of the game.

If you like turn-based tactics and strategy games, I heartily recommend Shattered Throne even in its current Early Access state. For this price, you are getting a lot of value in return.

I might be more receptive to this game if co-op is developed. Its single-player is nowhere nearly as good as some old-but-great games like Shining Force and Warsong, but if the dev manages to add a good co-op system? I'd be all in. Maybe three people maximum with their own little armies of 10-15 units each, perhaps in campaign format? That would be fun! ... Unfortunately, without something like that, this game isn't even worth money -- especially not with emulators readily available. It simply does not compare to the greats.

This is a wonderful light tactical battle game, reminiscent of Advance Wars and that type of game. It has nothing to do with Shining Force, so I don't know why that other reviewer compared them.

There is a very nice variety of units, and all units have unique abilities. This really makes each unit unique, and gives you lots of tactical options. I have only played the first couple campaign battles. The maps are small, set to a single screen. But, there is a lot of terrain on the maps to deal with. Each piece of terrain gives units bonuses or detriments to attack/defend, etc.

The tutorial popups explain nearly everything very nicely. They are quite well done. There are tooltips for most things (not everything). What is especially nice is the tooltips for every unit ability. You can see very easily exactly what every ability does.

It would be nice to add tooltips to the unit stats, but hopefully that is coming. The stats are pretty straightforward, though. I had to ask on the forum what the range of ranged units was, and the developer answered very quickly.

The developer is very active on the forums so far, and it is obvious that this game is his/her baby.

I look forward to playing through the 20+ mission campaign, and getting into some asynchronous online battles.

Very well done game. I highly recommend it for mere price of a burger and drink.

A great tactics game that reminds me of Shining Force and Advance War. Tactics are solid with unit diversity and specialized attacks. If you're a fan of these types of games, you won't lose by buying this game. Also, the price is right!

Shattered Throne is sort of a hybrid between Nintendo's Advance Wars and Fire Emblem games. From Advance Wars it takes the basic flow of gameplay: make money, build units, trade casualties, capture buildings, as well as COs and CO Powers. From Fire Emblem it takes the fantasy-medieval setting and individual unit level-ups. That being said, Shattered Throne brings many new mechanics to the table which set it apart from these games.

The meat and potatos of combat in this game is the combo system. Units are afflicted with a "combo" when struck, up to a maximum of three. Combos reduce their defense and counterattack strength, but will only stick around if the unit suffers many consecutive attacks. If any other action is taken (attacking a different unit, not attacking, ending the turn, etc.) the unit loses all combos and regains its usual stats. Since most units in the game are actually quite tough, an attacking player must be careful not to lose their combos before the enemy unit is dead.

Thankfully, Shattered Throne also has an "undo" function. You can reverse any move you have made during the current turn, allowing you unlimited flexibility to optimise your moves prior to ending your turn.

The rest of what this game has to offer is better experienced than explained. If you're a fan of Nintendo's old turn-based strategy games, you will definitely enjoy Shattered Throne. Even if you've never heard of those games, Shattered Throne is still a worthy addition to any TBS gamer's library.

2 hours in, and I am loving this game. If you are like me and love classics like Warsong/Langrisser, Fire Emblem series, and also perhaps Wesnoth, then this one is for you!

Development is ongoing, with a strong focus on customer feedback. Well done!!

It is a good game with good content for a fair price. Updates seem to be forthcoming and I'm optimistic that it will be even better. It is not the best game in my library, perhaps not even the best tactics game, but it is certainly the best value in my library. I've paid more for less.

Thumbs up from me.

Excellent strategy game with an Advanced Wars feel to it. Capture villages, and choose whether to devote them to troop makers, advanced troop makers, or gold producers. Has a Campaign, Skirmish, and Online Mode, along with a map maker and you can even save replays. Very fun, and I recommend it to any strategy game lover.

This game is a godsend. I've played on another account before and decided to buy it again. The perfect mix between Advance Wars and Fire Emblem. Makes me feel like Wargroove got its idea from this lol. But in all seriousness, this is a fantastic Turn based strategy game.

What is this game?
Short answer: Fantasy Advance War.

You have three very distinct factions: Humans, which mostly operate on combos and simply strong units, elves, which specialise on mobility and guerilla tactics and the undead, which have a lot of regeneration abilities.

You only control nameless mooks in battle, there are no heroes like in fire emblem. It really is more like Advance War in that way. But every faction has a number of different generals (two to three per faction I believe) who each have a passive and two active effects. The passive ones are things like taking over citeis imedately or all units having more health while the active ones range from healing to having everyone who is in a forest act again. Active abilities are powered by mana, which you get for combo kills.

What are combos? Attacking an enemy will place a combo marker on that unit. If you attack that unit again with another unit without doing anything else in between (moving and attacking with one unit counts as one action and does not break combo) will deal increased damage and reduce the damage of the counter. This stacks up to three times. Killing a unit with combo markers on them will generate mana equal to the amount of markers on that unit.

The campaign is good. It doesn´t have a deep story with any notable twists (so far) but it is written in a humorus way. Don´t take it seriously, it doesn´t take itself seriously too.
And best of all: Everything is deterministic and you can undo each of your actions however often you want during a turn, so even if you misclick you can undo and do better till you have foudnd the best combo. So battles are decided by long term strategy, not by who can calculate the best and does the least misclicking during short term skrimishes.

I love this game. There are a few glitches in the interface, but nothing that can't be jiggered out of. The strategic mechanics are spot on. Graphics are acceptable and reminiscent of SNES days. The campaign is long and the puzzle mode is pretty cool. Theme and dialogue are cheesy, but the mechanics more than make up for it. Definitely a good buy for a few bucks!!!

Shattered Throne is a game with great core mechanics but sometimes questionable design choices. It's largely inspired by Advance Wars, and it does a good job of capturing a lot of the great fun in those games, but it's also quite ambitious and does a lot of new things to make it stand out.

One of the greatest things about this game is all the different units. First of all, there are three factions that you can play as and they all have their own units. The factions are well balanced, and it's a lot of fun to strategize around their different playstyles. Each of the individual units also has a lot of personality, because they all have unique skills that can give them the edge in certain situations.

The skill system is a great addition to the game, but one problem that can come up here is a lack of clarity. Almost all the skills in the game only take effect on either your phase or your enemy's phase, but there's no indication telling you this! It would be so easy to just put a little icon by all of the skills to signify when it's active, but for some reason it just doesn't tell you at all. There's a similar problem with effects like buffs and debuffs, where you're left wondering exactly how much an effect increased a stat or how long it's going to last or when the effect even takes place.

The campaign in this game is a good length, and it continues to provide new content throughout the whole thing, so I think it's pretty good overall. One ugly flaw to rear it's head here, though, is the difficulty modes. First of all, there are three difficulties: Normal, Hard, and Challenge. However to even play a map on Hard you first have to beat it on Normal, and in order to play a map on Challenge you first have to beat it on hard. I hate this sort of design because it completely ruins the point of having difficulty modes in the first place. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that Normal mode is ludicrously easy. Many of the maps provide you with so many resources that you can flat out skip the main mechanic of the map and go straight for a win. I would love to just play Hard to start with, since it's a lot more fun for me, but instead I have to play baby mode first. Ugh.

Challenge mode is even harder than Hard mode (often frustratingly so) and usually adds on an extra condition, like "you can't lose more than x units" or "your units take gradually more damage after x days". I think these extra conditions are really interesting, but I would love to experience them without having to play the same map three times.

As you may have guessed, I really dislike the difficulty modes in this game. Normal mode is balanced terribly, and the other two aren't a whole lot better. Instead of having a bunch of redundant and poorly balanced difficulties, I would have liked to see just one or two really well balanced ones.

Another big feature of this game is the map editor. Just like in Advance Wars you can make your own maps. The editor in this game is obviously very ambitious, since it allows you to set lots of different rules and conditions, and even lets you put in reinforcements like in Fire Emblem. However, there are also several problems with it. One simple one is that you can't drag your mouse to paint multiple tiles, so you'll have to click each and every individual tile if you want to make a big ocean area, for example. The max map size is also only 29x29, which would be too small to fit many of the basic maps of other similar games. Another problem is that you have to set all the win objectives yourself. In Advance Wars' map editor, if you put down an HQ it's automatically a win objective. But in this game even if there's an HQ on the map, you have to manually go into a little window and put in the objective, and on top of that you have to type in a description telling the player what the objective is for some reason. You have to do this for both armies. And even though it might seem obvious that defeating all enemy units would also count as a win, it isn't by default! Just like before, you have to manually add in the win objective AND description, for both armies. And you have to do this every single time you make a map. I think the map editor in this game totally misses what made map creation in Advance Wars so snappy and fun. It's obvious the developer focused on minute customization without giving a thought about the quality of life features that it more desperately needed.

So I've complained about quite a few things here, and rightfully so. Shattered Throne is far from a perfect game. It has this problem where it's just over-designed in a lot of areas. I think if the developer would have just cut back a little and focused more on quality rather than quantity, the game could have been better. But I only complain so much because it's a game worth complaining about. This game has so many unique features like the factions and skills, and others I haven't had time to talk about like upgrading bases and the combo system. It's a game that doesn't shy away from it's roots, but at the same time it's willing to try lots of new things. No matter how many other similar games come out Shattered Throne will always have it's own place and it's own personality. If you're a fan of Advance Wars or Fire Emblem, or strategy games in general, you should pick this up. You'll get lots of great hours out of it.

there's a reason it's cheap compared to the greats (fire emblem, shining force)

Awesome game. It's like Advance Wars but better. There's tons of different unit types, scenarios, and challenges to keep the game fresh for many hours. It also comes with multiplayer (hotseat) and a map/scenario editor for when you run out of things to do. This game is super polished and has a suprising amount of depth considering it was created by a single developer.

There is a sequel hinted at on the last level of the campaign, I'm keeping my fingers crossed Checkmark Games, keep up the good work!

Shattered throne is a tactical battler/puzzle game with some interesting concepts that suffers from a lackluster presenation. Fortunatley the presentation is more on the bland side than outright bad and won't torpedo the entire experience for most people.

This is the kind of game I would expect to be excellent when played on a phone and though I expect a little bit more out of games released on pc the quality of the underlying concept and systems are enough for me to recommend the game. It's probably not for everyone but it reminds me of the Advance Wars series and if that sounds like it might be up your alley your going to like what you find here.

6.5/10......If it were a mobile game....

5.5/10......still a slight recommend on pc

Great game! It starts too easy, but it gets good later. First scenario that made me go hmmm was 10 or 11. I recently finished level 15 and you had to embark on a complicated amphibious assault. This scenario was a good example of level design overcoming weak AI.

The huge diversity of special abilities for the different pieces and the hero powers are also very interesting. The no randomness for combat and undo as many moves as you want at any time alleviates what might otherwise be an overcomplicated combat system.

I highly recommend this for anyone that likes this kind of game.

A seemingling light hearted diversionary game is marred by crippling bugs, poor performance and terrible UI.
I keep asking myself, why is such a simple game always hanging? Why is such a simple gaming running at 503fps and consuming 50% of my cpu? Why do I keep trying to cancel a move and end my units turn in error; and why can't I cancel that partial move. Instead I must complete the action before being able to undo. Why do I seem to hate the characters I'm supposed to be rooting for. There are too many unanswered why's for me to recommend this. With a bit of polish it could have been a delightful time waster.

It's better than i thought it would be, that's for sure.
But it doesn't beat Famicom Wars / Advance Wars or Fire Emblem in my opinion.
I won't even compare this to Front Wars and Tiny Metal because those two games are very bad.
Great Big War Game is mediocre at best.
War Theatre is also mediocre.
Wargroove is overpriced.
Other than that, most of the others are mediocre at best.
Battle for Wesnoth is great though.

This one has an enjoyable soundtrack.
Art is cool if you do like pixel games.
There is only three factions but at least they have different units, there's not lot of units but for 3$, it's fair.
The level editor is a great thing to have, even though it could use some polishing.

It's an overall good game that i'd certainly recommend for about 3$ - 5$.
If it had more content and modding possibilities then the price could go up easily.

While not a masterpiece it is really fun to play. The main con for me is that it does not allow you to play in higher difficulty levels until you've cleared quite a lot of stages. Feels to me that it artificially increases the play time with that. In my first 10 missions I only had to repeat one so it seems a bit grindy to have to clear so many levels before being able to turn up the difficulty.

Overall it was a positive experience.

This game is like Advance Wars 2, only too damn hard. Now, I'm all for a good tactical challenge. I beat all the Advance Wars games on all the hardest settings, and completed a ton of the highest difficulty maps where you're outnumbered three-to-one. But this game is just stupidly hard. Even a couple of hours in, you'll find yourself having to defend four objectives right next to enemy spawn points, where they start by outnumbering you, get more gold, have twice as many unit training areas, have the more powerful army type, have four very powerful long-range, high-defense, high-damage units, and if you lose a couple of objectives they get infinite money for the entire rest of the map.

Bruh. Why you do this?

There are puzzle maps too, which manage to be even worse and more eye-rolling. If I wanted that I'd go play Candy Crush.

I bought the game for the background of "The Battle of the Spire of Dreams".
P.S. It is very expensive on the market.