One of those games that was clearly made in a lab with the singular purpose of pinpointing a game at me, and me specifically. Dark ages medieval fantasy world, warband management, detailed and damageable equipment with unique attacks and abilities, a loose campaign (basically open world with a time limit), it's all like playing a very intricate wargame but without all the bookkeeping that such a game would require of a physical format.

Much of the game centers around Your Dudes, hiring from a pool of illiterate peasants and criminals and drunks to whip them up into a highly lethal fighting machine. Not only are you maintaining your warband's skills and equipment and health, trying to build each one into a specialist for dealing with the arrangement of monsters and bandits you get sent to fight, but the mercenaries themselves have backstory elements that can motivate interactions between each other or cause random events. One of my best hires in my early runs was in fact a deserter soldier from another kingdom, so naturally when they sent a retinue of knights to arrest him I declared war against them on the spot.

The game does just enough of these small detailed touches that you still feel in control of things, but not like you are working with a bunch of generic faceless chess pieces. You learn which guys are cowards, which guys are psychopaths, and you figure out which ones you equip with spears to chain opportunity attacks with each other like it's going out of style.

The only real negative things I can say about Battle Brothers is that the sim elements that offer random story events and the difficulty scaling of certain types of encounter are somewhat overt in their harshness toward the player, without really much warning - This isn't inherently a bad thing as part of the game's charm is learning from disaster and returning stronger, but because of the harshness of these events and the difficulty of maintaining a large budget, these big setbacks can heavily cripple you for the rest of the campaign to the point where you are better off just starting over.

So, I think Battle Brothers is very good with the potential to be great. But the truth is there are alternatives that are superior. A turn-based Mount & Blade + Jagged Alliance 2 with a dark fantasy setting is very appealing and cool. But eventually the loop becomes very repetitive with only a handful of ways to progress. If you really like that loop, this game can be a 5/5 game, but for me on the fourth or fifth campaign it got stale when other games like M&B or Wartales doesn't. It may click for you though, and if it does, hell yeah.

as vezes eu acho que esse jogo foi feito pra mim. é simples. fácil de entender. é sadicamente punitivo e quase (muito quase) que completamente largado a chance. você é capitão de uma companhia de mercenários e tem que sobreviver num mundo low-fantasy, enfrentando ladrões, goblins, orcs, necromantes e seres nefastos, simples assim. os eventos no worldmap saciam minha fome por algo diferente de vez em quando, mas adoro o combate. não é nada demais, mas faz tudo de uma forma excelente, pense em darkest dungeon, mas em um grid de hexágonos em mapas de batalha gerados aleatoriamente que dependendo de qual sua posição no worldmap, adicione ainda mais do sabor ácido de perder tudo e o retrogosto do potencial e promessa de glórias e riquezas que permeiam cada rolagem de dado para acertar um oponente numa situação de vida ou morte. eu aprecio muito cada momento desse jogo, cada micromanaging e macro, posicionamento de infantaria, quais armas vão usar e quais perks melhores se encaixam nele e as consequências de suas escolhas no campo de batalha. narrativa é quase nula, você é basicamente um player e 25% de um dungeon master, você constrói a narrativa e da um fim a ela, seja por cansar de jogar naquele momento ou por ser completamente aniquilado por uma horda de orcs pelados.