BattleLore: Command App Reviews

Huge fan of the Command & Color series from GMT Games. I really want to like BattleLore. The command system is an interesting change from C&C but lacks the fog of war provided by random card draw. A number of problems exist which greatly impede having fun with this. -No undo button! This is fundamental omission. Several times accidentally activated a Lore without ANY way of canceling it. Same with accidental moves. -Terrain effects should be displayed for the hex a unit starts in and ends their movement in. -No save feature. Incredibly frustrating to FINALLY be in excellent board position for hard scenario only to lose everything because you cannot save anything. -Ridiculous imbalance with combat results. I thought I was being a baby by getting frustrated at just how unbalanced my combat results were compared to the Uthuk. By reading these reviews however, it appears I am not alone. This is game breaker because no matter how good my tactics are I cannot overcome results having me miss almost all hits during a round (no matter how many extra results are added like for cavalry and Lore) and having Uthuk hitting almost every combat. If this imbalance is on purpose to compensate for poor AI... LAZY!!! No matter how many times I try to beat the spider-riding witch, I cannot compete with the Uthuks combat results. Frankly, I am shocked Fantasy Flight would make such base mistakes with such a flagship product. I am also incredulous at the notion no one at FF considered these omissions and combat results unacceptable. If these issues are addressed and corrected then this could be one of the best strategy games available from the App Store.

These matches are long and I hate that I lose all the progress I put in, when real life needs me to stop play, Id like to save my progress and come back later to pick up where I left off. Remember, this is mobile, flexibility and convenience is key, otherwise I wont touch it unless I know I have the time. And heaven forbid it crashes ... Otherwise, looks like a deep tactical game that has tons of replay-ability.

Im begging here...balance this game and add pass n play! It could be wonderful! Theres way too much potential here, but regardless....playing this game makes me want to crush my iPad. I love strategy games and I want to love this app version of battlelore as much as I love the physical game, but when Im rolling 9/10 misses to the AIs 9/10 hits, its natural to get frustrated. Till Heroscape returns and comes out with an app version, Ill continue giving battlelore a chance.

This game is a perfect fit for the iPad. The tabletop version is fun, but setup takes forever and there’s a lot of bookkeeping — on the iPad all that is done for you. The graphics are top notch and battles feel cinematic. If you haven’t played this before, be aware it’s a “casual” war-game, meaning a battle can take 15-30 minutes, which is lighting fast for war-games. But that offers far more depth and rewards real strategy. This is a great port. The UI can be a little confusing, but it’s not bad at all considering the complexity of the game underlying.

The game has lots of potential, but the balance is clearly off. The AI rolls are almost always a success in some way. Hits, lore, special abilities. It hardly ever misses, but the player rolls are much less favorable. The balance is so off it makes the game from a practical standpoint nearly unplayable. Most assuredly it makes the game an exercise in futility and not at all enjoyable. I also would like to have a deck of command cards vs the same of selections. Not sure why they did this. You are stuck with the same choices and it loses some if the variety of using a deck. The game needs some fixing, balance us a real problem, and variety of command choices is limited. A near miss...not too happy with the game as it is right now.

As a fan of the board game I am so glad to see this on iOS. Wish it would save the game state, not much fun to come back to a game and have to start all over again. I also long for a totally top down view, as well as a way to highlight all units on the board. Looking forward to playing and seeing the improvements as they happen. I am also interested in seeing the Battles of Westeros battlelore board game ported to iOS.

Like many other reviews have pointed out, while this game could have been 5 stars, the impossibly cheap A.I. Keeps the game from being enjoyable, and because this game is so single player focused it kills the game. I dont care how familiar you are with the game, the rules or what strategy you use, there is no reason that three of your archer units taking six different dice rolls against one unit can not generate a single hit, yet the A.I. nearly never fails a roll. Its a shame the devs couldnt use a true random dice algorithm. Hopefully they update the game because as of now its virtually unplayable.

Leave this one for the hardcore enthusiast of the board game. Its too hard and the enemy is too over powered. People who love this game before they play the ios version will probably defend it with their dying breath, but for everyone else, there are better hex/turn based strategy games for less money. This one stinks. Make it winnable and it would be fun but this is silly.

I really like this game a lot. I thought the die rolls were shifted in favor of the computer until I looked up the probability rates of the different troops during combat (located in the manual on the title screen). Now it all makes sense to me.

Crashes after the tutorial everytime on the ipad mini. Too bad, since it looks like a really good port.

Having loved the boardgame, this was a must buy for me. Though I did hesitate a bit at the $10 price tag. The UI is very intuitive and really well done. Great sound, and graphics. The game is very hard though. And the "random" dice rolls still seem to favor the enemy greatly. Plus their lore powers, seem a lot more powerful than the ones you have access too. Ive been playing the 3rd mission for the past 3 nights, and still cant beat it. It is definitely a trial by fire, and Im sure I will come out of it a better player (the digital, and boardgame version) but the process can be quite frustrating. It can be quite annoying when you are constantly rolling blanks, and the enemy uses a lore power and they are rolling 5-7 dice and always hitting at least half their rolls. Still a great game, and maybe after a pit more practice and tactical thinking, I will be able to roll over the AI, but I think that will take some time. I definitely recommend it to any fan of the boardgame. They did makes some changes to the way the command cards and some powers are played, but nothing too drastic.

Really like this game. I also own the board game but with this please please please give me the option to rotate the screen also after the first quest if I click on one of the flags it closes the app.

A great adaptation of the board game, very slick. I havent noticed the rolling issues experienced by others, Ive been on great sprees before and so has the AI. it all seems to balance in the end and is actually random. Update: so they patched the game and it no longer crashes every time after beating a boss. now it crashes every time at the next level selection. ugh, come on guys! Since they did try to fix it and a crash before you have anything to lose is much less frustrating than at the end of a hard fought level, Im going from 3 stars to 4. Please, please, please fix this game so I can finish it and give it 5 stars. besides the crashes it is SO good!

Unbalanced play. Second mission is very difficult. Dice seem stacked on opponent side in campaign mode. Single Play is very unbalanced.

Really enjoy the game - great conversion to digital. It would be 5-stars if they were to add async play to it. It would go from occasionally being played to opened daily for multiple games. I have several friends who will not buy until there is async play - dont let me down FFG!!

This is a fantastic port of an amazing strategy game, but theres one thing that I really hope comes with the next update: saving. At the moment, exiting the game in the middle of a mission means having to start the entire mission over. Having a save feature or an auto-save feature that would allow me to resume missions would mean the difference between a game I can play on the go and a game I have to wait until the end of the day to play. This game is too cool to have to wait to play it :)

Now with online multiplayer, this is an excellent port of a classic FF game.

Game is fun though the AI advantage is laughable. (And I did beat the campaign mode) It does make you think more strategic because you dont have equal advantage going into battle. I can live with that. What I cant understand is why we cant have and undo function for commands and use of buffs we havent completed yet. I hate when I double tap a squad by accident on the move turn and they ends their move. Also, when you hit a buff by accident and you have to use it even if you havent applied it to a squad yet. If your going to give the AI a serious advantage at least give us UNDO for accidentals. Also, when I beat the blood sister in the last battle I dont see her as an option in my army pool. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

As others have noted the game skews dice results heavily in favor of the computer - I assume to make up for poor AI intelligence. This makes the game infuriating to play because your good positioning and strategy are negated when your units always miss and the AIs always hit. Of course, they might also be doing this to drag out the time spent playing the campaign so that you will supposedly feel like you got more play time for your buck. However, playing the same scenario 15 times because youve been cheated out of victory doesnt feel very rewarding. Fix the skewed dice rolls and this game may have legs, but leave it as is and youll alienate the user base.

I usually enjoy fantasy flight board games, but not this one. The graphics and story art are great but the actual gameplay is not. Combat is broken into 4 sections. First one seems useless. Movement and combat are the meat of it. I REALLY dislike the way movement is done in this game. It limits your choices of what units to choose based on the battlefield being broken into left middle and right. You get to pick from a list of predefined cards of how many from each side can take action, and this gets exhausted until you take a turn refreshing it or pick another side to work on. There are some other special movement cards you can use, but this DOES NOT feel like its a strategic choice. It feels like a limitation for some unknown reason. Combat is not good either. When you fight, units can hit, miss, push, or get a rune action. The rune result feels like it should not be a result of combat. You can use rune powers on groups when you get enough, and they are cool, but the way you get them from combat is stupid. The push action is SUPER annoying. This means sometimes when your group can hit twice, instead it pushes away and can only attack once. So these two things combined in combat result in a system that is annoying. Combine that with bad movement and you get gameplay that is not enjoyable. The only reason I rated this as a 2 star is because the graphics, and art are good, but not enough to save this game. Dont waste your $$$