WARNO Review

While WARNO introduces many new mechanics which are very helpful and welcomed like platoons, smart commands or smart movement. Game sadly feels as just not enough of an improvement even keeping in mind that it is still an Early Access product.


This game is simply of lower quality than previous releases from this publisher. I have little hope that bad voice lines will be replaced. Systems which are supposed to be here are simply not here. As an example, this video shows that line of sight system in this game simply does not exist.

        Graphic User Interface

• The first elephant in the room is terrible GUI. User interface on a whole is a big disappointment. It is a hand written text on a white paper. It does not look professional, it does not portray more information as previous titles. It is a lot harder to find buttons you need in unit comparison menu. Trying to scroll through armoury is a mess, pressing small, unimpressive buttons to filter through units. Game lost some of the fluff information like equipment’s year of introduction. Some rows are just empty. Overall GUI is a mess and an eye sore. It feels like an interface from a decade ago.
  
  Game pace
• Game feels very fast, very deadly. It is spam heavy and it does not seem that you will be able to control your units effectively. Everything dies so fast in this game. Everything moves so quickly. It feels like more arcade like version of a Red Dragon. Even if game’s pace would be slowed down, time to kill is too quick, especially when it comes to city fighting or infantry in the difficult terrain. Units also tend to zip through forests. Tanks seem to be as fast as truck and vice versa. Quicker pace seems to be woven into design of this game.
  
  Music and Voice lines
• Music is quite poor. It has that quality to stand out as it does not fit to the setting at hand. Voice lines are even worse. Units are muttering their one liners and I mean – muttering. They say them with such dead voice that you can’t help, but notice how poorly they are done.
  
  Sight System
• Unit sight system simply does not exist in this game. I had captured video game footage showing that this game simply does not have any individual unit sighting system and all of it is just for show. Any unit can see anyone despite vegetation or terrain. To see the proof go to – Warno Sight system is a lie.
  
  Other early access issues
• This game lacks a lot of things. Balance is non existent. There is just few units in-game. Most single player content is locked. Game will no doubt will add those things. I have no doubt that game will grow quantitatively. I’m doubtful however if game will be able to get its act together and increase its base quality. As it stands now, we better hope that a lot of things in this game are just placeholder. Graphics could be improved. Special effects, anti-aliasing, draw of objects are noticeably poor if you zoom into battle. Voice lines are abysmal. GUI is abysmal. Music could be better. Game pace and time to kill is just too fast. Even if developer adds all the missing content, it is rare when such fundamental things are addressed during early access development. It is already past alpha stage and in beta we are left only in adding missing content.

For me, Red Dragon had lost its touch when it moved from Wargamming into an arcade. WARNO is further move towards an arcade side of a spectrum. Total disregard for historical unit balance, times to kill being too high, no modelling of unit’s defensive maneuvers. In reality, if tank is being attacked by an ATGM, tanker would detect a threat and would launch his own smoke. Thus any kind of ATGM would be neglected. Here you have to manually launch smoke. In a same manner, all of the natural behaviour is not modelled in this game which results in overblown turkey shootout which does not represents in any way military engagements. Just tanks going VROOM VROOM. A lot of mechanics are still missing. An ability to see what kind of ammunition being fired, armor modelling, more realistic time warping of objects speeds. Even something as basic as line of sight mechanics are not working in this game. I had recorded how a tank fires and destroys enemy tanks which it can’t see.

I do want an actual wargamming title. Wargamming genre tries to portray realistic military engagements in an entertaining fashion for a player. This product went far from that since Airland Battles to a completely different direction. It feels a lot less tactical, strategic and a lot more arcade which simply doesn’t appeal to me. It is just a bad wargamming title. It might be good real time strategy game. It has a nice core to work around, but developer seemingly is creating this game for a broader audience.

I’m also not sure if they even know what their own audience want as we were asking for another Wargame Red Dragon title for so many years now! Throughout development of Red Dragon these concerns were brought many times, even today in the forums same questions were brought up and developer just arrogantly brushed them aside as laughable. As it stands, release of this game is dully noted and I will review it with all the seriousness which rushed out early access title deserves. This title seems to be rushed out of the door far from ready. It is likely done out of the fear of being beaten by its competitors: Regiments and Broken Arrow. Games which seem a lot more promising as actual wargamming titles than this game does. Finally there is some competition in this genre and I hope that Eugen Systems gets their stuff together. Lately quality of their games just collapsed, WARNO being as prime example.Game lacks any sort of a sight system. In this replay I had captured how units see targets which would be impossible to see. Its mechanic which represents visually what unit is seeing is just one big lie.