Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus

Played for 30-40 hours on the switch in 2023.

Good: It had the perfect amount of complexity in the turn based strategy where it was always interesting and new systems were being introduced throughout the whole campaign.

Good: I liked the RPG elements of upgrading Tech Priests and the depth it added to the overall campaign.

Good: The variety of maps, enemy types and mini dungeon crawling was cool. Even though I got destroyed by the final boss (on easy) I can see a lot of replayability now that I understand the mechanics a lot more.

Good: The soundtrack is incredible and fits the mood of the game just perfectly.

Meh: The graphics are fine, but in some levels the color schemes are so monochrome that it’s hard to see what’s going on sometimes,

Bad: After playing for a few hours, the switch the performance would slowly degrade until it became almost unplayable because the frame rate was so low. I had to save and restart the whole game (with a long unavoidable intro) to make it snappy again.

Bad: There is an alternate view when viewing all enemy health (L2) which is also used to place the initially units. The problem is the way it reduces the map to two colours makes it literally impossible to see where the map connects, which is super important before the battle begins.

Verdict: I really enjoyed this all the way though, it never felt like a grind despite playing for almost 40 hours and knowing I was certainly going to lose the campaign at least a dozen hours before the end. This has high replay value, but on better hardware where the performance doesn’t become so shocking after a few hours. Despite its failings, this is one of the best turn based combat games I’ve ever played.